What’s next for Wall Street? A porno portfolio?

Matthew Carr has looked at aspects of America's
insanity – and discovered there's money to be
made there.

No, this isn’t another of those rants against the evil Bankers of Doom, prepping to vampire-suck your

financial blood from your bank account’s veins.

It’s way more ominous than that

Over at The Oxford Club, a subscription service that recommends investments, their “Emerging Trends Strategist,” a dude named Matthew Car with what appears from his photographs to be a shaved head, has looked at various aspects of our paranoid nation’s insanity and decided there’s money to be made from all the nut cases – and that Wall Street is the place to make it.

In an e-mail to investors Carr reminds his fans:

“…back in August 2012, as shows like Doomsday Preppers really began to gain ground, I started thinking, "Are there profits to be made on the apocalypse?" 

It's a very capitalistic idea, I know. But that's my job. 

So I developed a "Doomsday Portfolio" and shared it with my readers in Investment U.
The idea behind the Doomsday Portfolio was simple: What are Preppers focusing on? And what do they need to survive - and thrive - during an apocalypse? 

Carr honed in on makers of doomsday “essentials” – manufacturers of “firearms, camping gear, generators and radiation detection devices.” He would also have recommended investing in bomb shelters except that, as he mournfully points out, there are no publicly-traded bomb shelter manufactuers.

Anyway, he put his recommendation out there for his subscribers. And how did it go?

Money, money, money, mon-eeee!

If you bought Carr's portfolio, “An $8,000 investment on August 20, 2012 would be worth $12,706 today,” he rejoices, “A total portfolio gain of 58.83 %.”

Next he came up with his “Death Portfolio. (Well, he called it a “Funeral Services Index” but we all know what that means.)

This one also did well, since (brace yourself for the inevitable pun) people are dying to make money for it  – although it didn’t do quite as well as the crazier Doomsday Portfolio. In the case of the Death Portfolio, an $8,000 investment in Carr's list of funeral companies on March 4, 2013, would be worth $9,767 in late October, a ”a gain of 22.09% in a little more than seven months.”

Which leads me to believe that Carr may be on to something. I personally prefer archly conservative, reliably-dividend-paying, no-fun, old-fogey stocks like utilities, insurance companies, and manufactuers of  household staples. (Even in the worst of times you’re not likely to say, “Honey, we’ve really got to cut back. How about us doing without toilet paper this month?) And in fact, The Oxford Club has a guy who recommends just that sort of thing for retirement portfolios – toilet paper manufacturers (two of them), utilities, pill manufacturers and others yawners, most of which do nothing but lie there and reliably dribble money into my old age fund.

Even so, in a crazy nation (which our The United States most assuredly is) there actually may be something to grouping our insanities in clusters and investing in them.

The National Bankruptcy Portfolio, 

the Texas Secession Portfolio, and 

raw, uninhibitedly-profitable sex

Since races to the cliff edge of national bankruptcy are becoming America's favorite spectator sport, how about a national bankruptcy portfolio? I’ll leave it to Carr to pick the stocks, but it might include a Swiss or Bahamian bank where the billionaires can ship their own stashes before their U.S. banks cave in; an airplane leasing company or small jet airplane manufacturer, so the rich can get the hell out of the country without waiting on security lines before Everything Is Worthless; a tin cup manufacturers and a pencil maker (need I explain?); and a a pharmaceutical company that makes pills useful for quick and painless suicides that avoid messy plunges from the 20th story windows. (Can you still get a prescription for Penobarbitol, the suicide drug-of-choice back in the 1950s, and under consideration for snuffing Death Row inmates today?)

I’m also rather fond of the idea of a Texas Secession Portfolio. The Tea Party whackos down there are acting as if they’re part of a separate nation anyway. When they break away and form their own separate Republic they’re going to need their own army, making them a natural customer for American defense industry companies. They’ll need their own currency (consider purchasing stock in companies making printing and engraving equipment.) And they’ll need elementary school textbooks that reflect their special way of life. Sooner or later, some public book publisher will put out a reader that begins, “See Dick. See Dick run. See Dick run black people, Hispanics and women out of the voting booths.”)

Finally, whether there’s a democracy or a dictatorship, a kingdom or anarchy, people will always need, love, and practice sex. It’s just never going to go out of style. Matthew, which condom manufacturer's stock should I buy Also, should I buy the makers of Viagra or of Cialis? There’s no public manufacturer of inflatable sex dolls, but I do take note that Amazon.com, which is certainly public,  offers “inflatable love dolls” including an inflatable love sheep, and "Sex For Dummies" books.

Of course, porn will always be big business (and no, I’m not going to give you any URLs here. Do your own homework.) But if Vivid Entertainment ever goes public, please do count me in on the IPO.

Over to you, Matthew.

Barack Obama, “Obamacare” and “Brand Experience” marketing

The bad marketing job that killed
the Ford Edsel is a tragic
historic milestone.
Will Obamacare be another?

President Obama may have seen to it that what is now called Obamacare became law, but he has flunked Marketing 101. The delivery system of The Affordabled Healthcare Act is so far a total flop. And not for lack of demand. The president forgot, or didn't know, that ordering and delivery are part of the marketing mix.

Once the bill passed, the president pretty much pulled back into his shell. He needed to be talking to the nation – constantly talking –  explaining how the plan would work, why it would work, why it was better for the nation than the lack of national healthcare we’ve had for all except Medicare and Medicaid recipients.

If you’re old enough to remember John F. Kennedy, think about how Kennedy would have talked up a prized bill, at frequentl intervals, with unforgettable and inspiring eloquence. 

Instead, we had the once eloquent ("Yes you can!") Barack Obama occasionally, and evidently without enthusiasm for the job, umm-ing and uh-ing his way through it, but only when he seemed to have no choice. Nor did he proceed, pedal to the metal, to prepare either the nation or the Internet for the arrival of the badly needed product that is Obamacare.

It’s a shame. Not only do huge numbers of Americans want the Affordable Care Act despite the President's less than spectacular sales job, but the Republicans did the President a great favor. They gave the Affordable Healthcare Act a memorably nifty brand name — Obamacare. For that, the President ought to send the Tea Party a thank you note. They inadvertently helped market affordable healthcare more than he did.

But a great brand name, and even some advertising, rarely sells anything unless every phase of the product lives up to the advertising. We used to have a saying on Madison Avenue, where I worked for over 45 years,  that nothing kills a bad product faster than a great ad.

The reason was simple, lots of people, moved by advertising, would buy a product in a hurry. If they didn’t like it the product they’d stop buying it in an equal hurry and the market would collapse.

Now it happens that Obamacare is a great product, with a few exceptions (such as the prices charged for it in rural areas due to lack of insurance company competition.) What sucks is the order and delivery system – tagged with the misnomer, “computer glitch.”

Mr. President, it’s not a glitch. It’s a massive fuckup. For the sake of good public relations you ought to acknowledge it as such and get on with the business of properly fixing it – and do the acknowledging sooner, rather than later. Trust in the brand, smooth ordering and flawless delivery are part of how people think of Obama care, too. And so is the opposite of smooth and flawless.

Imagine if, as the Christmas season approached, you couldn’t find Big Hugs Elmo,  one of the season’s most-wanted toys, in the stores. If you were a parent trying to make a child happy, and if your child, having been exposed to the advertising, was pining for a Big Hugs Elmo, you’d be mighty angry. You’d get angrier each day you got closer to Christmas and you were in danger of disappointing your offspring. Eventually, you might try to placate your child by saying, “Big Hugs Elmo’s no good anyway. Let’s get some ‘Despicable Me’ figures. Do you suppose they make a Ted Cruz figure?”

What the White House has forgotten is that consumers aren’t sold only by brands or the advertising for them. They’re sold by something called the “total brand experience” ­– any and every thing having to do with the brand that has touched their lives. If you get stuck in a phone tree for two hours trying to contact your cable company, you’ll hate that company's brand even if their cable carries great programs (which you can’t get) and offers cheap rates. Another cable company could easily lure you away.

President Obama, you’re soiling your own once-sterling healthcare brand, and you’re in danger of letting voters get lured away, over time, by Republicans. You need to do what a smart marketer would do when faced with a similar problem:

1. Apologize to the nation for unexpected delivery problems and offer them the equivalent of a make-good. “We’re sorry most people haven’t been able to buy your Obamacare healthcare insurance yet, especially since it’s such great healthcare insurance. To put your mind at ease, we’ll delay the fines for non-compliance one day for each day a fully working, non-crashing system is delayed.”

2. Stop the Silicon Valley “surge” nonsense. The implicit notion of, “Throw everything you’ve got in Silicon Valley into Washington" smacks of an old Leslie Nielsen movie gag. The last thing we need is a huge bunch of nerds with undefined or fuzzy technical assignments bumping into each other in Washington. Instead, what you need to do is recruit one Internet star with the technical knowledge, creativity, and proven organizational genius to figure out how to fix the problem. Maybe a Bill Gates. Maybe a Jeff Bezos. (And how I wish Steve Jobs were alive!) Conscript the right person, if necessary. Then stand back and let him or her figure out who else is needed — and how long it will take — to solve the mess and get the system operational.

3. Kathleen Sebellus is a great Secretary of Health and Human Services. However, she’s a thoroughly lousy Secretary of Computer Network and Order System Construction. Take away her authority to oversee construction of the Obamacare Internet order system. Give that to Gates or Bezos. Leave Sebellus in charge of making sure we’re all inoculated against the flu.

4. Also, don't even think about seeking out somebody to punish. Everybody at the top, including you Mr. President, is guilty ­­of taking on a project without the technical skills to follow through on it. That’s not a crime. It’s the ineptitude caused by inexperience. If you could forgive the Bush-era players who dragged us into Iraq instead of prosecuting them, you certainly can forgive the klutzes who don't know what it takes to get a health care system on line. Let's find somebody who knows how to do the job and then get out of their way.

Further, the job here is not to punish the inept or to cover up the ineptness. The task is to fix the system, get it on line, get people insured and save the brand before Obamacare goes the way of the Edsel.

Mr. President, you gave America a great healthcare insurance system. Please stop screwing it up. Fix the brand experience now.

Obama does it!

At long last, President Obama has demonstrated that not dealing with impossible Republicans is better than trying to “go halfway” with them.

So cranky congratulations to the President. But congratulations with a caveat. For a few weeks, at least, the once-greatest nation on earth has its borrowing powers and its shaky government operations restored. That’s hardly enough. But it’s an excellent example of what works when dealing with these right wing creeps, and what doesn’t.

We’ve been seeing, since the beginning of the Obama administration, that it’s fruitless to attempt real negotiations with far right Republicans – and also with so-called “moderate” Republicans whose position is anything but moderate when they’re in the thrall of the Tea Party crazies. Exhibit A, of course, has been John Boehner.

Step halfway in compromise toward Republicans and they instantly step the same distance back back. Approach them again, and once again they step back. Calling them 'The Party Of No" or saying that "they can't take 'yes' for an answer," have become new political cliches.

That’s because thee object of the Right is not to settle, but either to have things their way or to sink the whole nation with a loss of cash, credit and credibility. (Not that it wouldn’t sink anyway, albeit more slowly, if the Tea Party actually had its way.)

If the Tea Party and other Republicans were Al Qaeda operatives atempting the exact same thing, we’d looking to to arrest or terminate them. Since it’s Republican lawmakers, we offer them the courtesy of not either smart bombing them or packing them off to Guantanamo Bay.

President Obama has promised to negotiate a “grand bargain,” and there are fears part of that might mean cuts, however gradual, in Social Security and Medicare, when in fact, increases are needed for both. The so-called “chained CPI” is one example. It would effectively tax the oldest and most vulnerable Americans, by using a way of measuring inflation that would actually reduce their benefits, even as the price of medicines, rent and food (among other things) rises.

The Social Security problem could be solved for about the next 75 years, simply by removing the cap on Social Security Taxes, currently $113,000. If your heart bleeds for people who are making, say $250,000 a year and will be forced to pay a few hundred bucks extra for the good of the nation, then bleed. Every other civilized Western nation takes care of its people without a qualm.

The question is, will the President sell the oldest, weakest and sickest down the river to appear “reasonable,” (and save some millionaires a bit of what for them is chump change) or will he continue to use the one technique he finally tried that works against Republicans and continue hanging tough?

Your move, Mr. President.

Is New Jersey’s Governor Christie a corrupt crook? A New York Times expose might lead you to think so.

The New York Times this morning reports an alarming story of systemic corruption in the Hunterdon County, New Jersey sheriff’s office, with a trail leading straight to the New Jersey Attorney General and other appointees of Governor Chris Christie.

I’m not going to recapitulate the whole tangled spider’s web of sleazy and corrupt interlocking acts by Christie appointees. Just go here and read the lengthy and very well-reported New York Times horror story by Michael Powell.

But I can’t resist a few highlights:

• A Hunterdon County Grand Jury indicts a  Christie-appointed sheriff on 43 counts of what comes down to downright abuse of power worthy of a police state. So what happens?

• The state takes over the county prosecutor’s office and fires three veteran prosecutors

• A deputy state attorney general walks into a state court and asks that the case be dismissed, insisting that the case was full of “legal and factual deficiencies,” but enumerating not one of them. Does the judge ask the deputy attorney general what the heck he's talking about, or for evidence of those "deficiencies?" Nah! The judge simply dismisses the case.

• When one of the dismissed prosecutors sues, “claiming that the attorney general killed the indictment to protect prominent supporters of the governor,” the records of the indictment get spirited away to the state capital, where the state has now has them hidden while it resists and appeals court orders to release them.

There’s more. Powell learned of so called “law enforcement” officials doing the backgrounds checks on…themselves! There were threats from law enforcement against someone whose website reported on the matter. Police IDs get issued to friendly campaign contributors. Explanations from the attorney general’s spokesman about what’s going on and why change with the wind.

I urge you to read this, and keep in mind that Governor Christie is a potential Republican candidate for president. Given his police state tactics in New Jersey, that’s not just worrisome. It’s terrifying.

Below is a portrait of John Boehner and the Republican Party deliberately destroying America

The right wing fanatics who base part of their insanity on their belief in the wisdom of free markets need to look at this chart. It shows how one free market, the stock market – as measured by the Dow Jones Industrial Averages and the S&P 500 – has been reacting to the shenanigans of John Boehner and his fellow Republicans.

The chart comes right off Fidelity’s website at the close of market yesterday, Oct. 8. As you can see, it shows that things were going quite nicely for your retirement investments ­– until the Republicans start playing games in mid-September.

Clearly, the Republicans have done a good job of grabbing the controls and attempting to crash the airplane. They are economic terrorists, pure and sample, insisting that unless their minority has things their way they will wreck your 401(k) and your IRA, smash the economy, squash the recovering value of your home, crash what there has been of an economic recovery, ruin lives, and destroy the full faith and credit of the United States forever.

One might even conclude that their true objective is not only to kill Obamacare but also to deliberately kill the American economy, in the hope that a couple of years down the road, they will be able to use a Koch and other special interest contributions to spin a major American recession, or perhaps even another Great Depression, into a reason to vote Republican.

And if you wonder whether President Obama bears some responsibility for this mess, or whether it’s a pure Republican play, I encourage you to pay a visit to this Crooks and Liars post and laugh along with Jon Stewart as he catches John Boehner in a full-throated lie about who’s responsible – until you weep for America.

Cross-posted at No More Mr. Nice Blog

Why I shot the guy in the head

He was asking for it. Read my story and you’ll see what I mean.

I was on this dark street when the guy comes out of a bank vestibule. I knew he must have been getting cash because it was late at night and there’d be no other reason to go to the bank. So I walked up to him and stuck my pistol against his ear.

“This is a stickup,” I said. “Give me your wallet.”

“What? Why?”

“Don’t ask me any stupid questions. Just give me your wallet. I want the money in it.”

“That money is to take care of my family,” he said. “I can’t give you the money.”

“I don’t care about that,” I said, “I want your damn money, so give me your damn wallet.”

“But if you take my money, my family won’t eat,” he said. “My family will starve, so I can’t give you the money.”

“What is it about a gun barrel in your ear that you don’t understand?” I said. “Give me your money. And your wallet.”

“This is very foolish,” he said. “If you shoot me, the cops will come after you. They’ll arrest you. They’ll throw you in prison for the rest of your life. You could maybe even face the death penalty”

“That’s baloney,” I said. “The cops are on my side. The judges, the prosecutor, everybody is on my side. And they all hate you. I happen to know this, from friends of mine who get around. The fine people of this city are fed up with you.”

“Where did you get that crazy idea?” he said. “Nevemind. Just forget about taking my stuff. I’m not going to do it.”

“You’d better do it. I’m sick of you. Everybody’s sick of you. Give me your wallet.”

“ I just can’t give my family’s money away to some guy just because he walks up to me and demands it. And if you shoot me, you’re going away to prison for the rest of your life.”

I thought about that for a couple of seconds. Maybe he had a point.

“Okay then,” I said. “Then let’s negotiate.”

“Negotiate what?”

“Let’s negotiate you give me the money so that I don’t shoot you dead.”

“There’s nothing to negotiate,” he said. “I can’t sacrifice my family’s future.”

“I'm trying to be reasonable,” I said. “I’m trying to negotiate.” I cocked the hammer of the pistol. It made a click. “Don’t piss me off. I’m offering very nicely to negotiate with you.”

“No negotiations. And if you shoot me in the head, you’re in prison for the rest of your life. Maybe you even go to the death chamber and they will stick a needle in your veins and zap you.”

Holy crap! This guy was scary. I don’t like to admit it, but he was scaring me.

“Okay then, but you can’t just walk away,” I said.

“What are you talking about?” he said.

“Well, even if I don’t get your money, I have to get something out of this.”

“Like what?” he said.

“I dunno,” I said, “But I want something out of this, even if I don’t know what it is yet.”

“This is nuts,” he said. "You're getting to sound like a psychopath."

“Okay then, here’s what I want. I want your credit and debit card. And the deed to your house. Oh, and also all the money in your wallet. Plus the wallet.”

“I told you, I can’t give you that,” he said. “Also, that’s not even negotiating.”

“You’re refusing to talk,” I said.

“I’m talking a mile a minute. Negotiating is when you give up something to get part of what you want. Your idea of negotiating is to insist on getting everything you asked for in the first place, and then ask for more on top of it. ”

“Also I want your car and I want sex with your wife,” I said. "I'm glad I just remembered to ask for that."

“I told you, I’m not negotiating,” he said.

So that’s when I pulled the trigger and blew his brains out. I don’t know why everybody turned against me over this – the cops, and the prosecutor and the jury and the judge and everybody. I know they’re really on my side. I have it on good authority. I have good friends who told me. Besides, like I said, the guy was asking for it.

For my last meal I’d like a sirloin steak, rare, and French fries with ketchup and three scoops of Rocky Road ice cream with chocolate sauce on top. Oh, and I still want the guy’s wallet. And his house and his car and his wife.

Cross Posted at No More Mr. NIce Blog

It’s time to work on shutting down Speaker John Boehner. (Oh Boo Hoo!)

It’s pretty clear that Tea Party Congressmen or not, a single human being can stop the impending collapse of the United States, its credit, and its economy.

That man is House Speaker (Republican) John Boehner, who singlehandedly is preventing an up-or-down vote on the so-called CR, or continuing resolution that would let the government keep operating.

Fortunately, if he can feel more threatened by Democrats than by the Tea Party wing of his own party, the future of America has a shot at survival.

At first glance, taking down Boehner doesn’t look easy. Boehner comes from the outrageously gerrymandered 8^th Ohio Congressional District, a Republican stronghold (and evidently a Tea Party stronghold as well.)

On the map, the 8th looks like the letter H lying on its side, with one of its legs sawed off and the other leg so busted it appears to be suffering from series of compound fractures, as if some thug from a loan sharking operation did a job on it with a sledge hammer. 

The district includes a few Republican suburbs of Cincinnati, and rural “We’re-Republican-‘cause-we’ve-always-been-Republican” bastions of small thinking such as Troy (where I once worked as an off-the-books newspaper reporter on the Troy Daily News,) Tipp City, Piqua, Middletown, and others – not to mention a tract of turf owned by the Darke County Fish and Game Club.

In other words it’s your basic Fox News-watching, beer-drinking, I-know-what-I-think- and-I-don’t-need-to-know-why Middle America.

They can be swayed into hating Boehner and making him feel so threatened he'll stop blocking the up-or-down vote. It’s not cheap, but they can be swayed.

Somebody needs to finance the most expensive anti-incumbent advertising campaign ever launched against a congressman. It should begin immediately, while Boehner is still tying up Congress. In addition to running early, the advertising should run often. Very often.

All spots might begin with Boehner in tears (there’s got to be hours of tear-soaked Boehner video around.)  Typically a voice over announcer might say: 

John Boehner weeps crocodile tears about everything except the permanent and devastating damage he’s doing to The United States, our economy, and our citizen. It’s John Boehner alone who’s interference with the work of Congress, who threatens the continuation of your Social Security checks, who threatens to cut off your Medicare, who has closed government offices, national parks, food safety inspection, and imperiled the job of every hard-working American.

If a foreign terrorist tried to bring down America, its economy and its people, we’d rightfully arrest him and pack him off to Guantanamo.

Well, John Boehner is trying to bring down America, its economy, and it’s people. What do you think should happen to him?

Tell John Boehner to resign his office and go back to tending bar before you lose your job, your security, your health and before America loses its future.

Boehner can be stopped – and can serve as an object lesson to other right wing crazies – if he feels more threatened by the next election than he does by his Tea Party co-saboteurs.

Billionaires and millionaires of the left, open your wallets.

Cross-posted at No More Mr. Nice Blog

Medicare For All — or how Democrats can throw their own monkey wrenches into the works if Republicans ever come back into power

In the highly unlikely event that you need reminding, “Obamacare,” or the Federal Affordable Healthcare Act if you prefer, was originally a Republican idea, sprung on the world by the likes of Mitt Romney. Its purpose was to provide close to universal healthcare coverage while saving the butts of Romney’s pals at the insurance companies.

Medicare For All, otherwise known as single payer healthcare, would make the United States government the one and only healthcare insurance company. It works great for us old-timers who are of Medicare age. It would work even better for everybody under the age of 65, because it would cover so many young and healthy people who are less of a drain on our healthcare system, that costs would come down even further.

Alas, now is not the time for it. But if the Republicans by some freak accident ever simultaneously control the House, the Senate and the Presidency again in the next half century, here’s what the Democrats ought to do.

First things first: stand up in the Senate and read “The Cat In The Hat,” a Dr. Seuss poem about how “somebody else” wrecks everything, and then talk nonobjectively about nonobjective art, meanwhile letting funding run out for major government contractors and pork barrel subsidies to rich land owners.

Second, demand a 99 percent marginal tax bracket for anyone earning over $10,000,000 a year.

Third, stand up in Congress and read “The Sneetches,” a Dr. Seuss poem about a group of critters who have stars on their yellow bellies and therefore think they’re entitled to stuff nobody else has.

Fourth, demand that anyone who has ever registered Republican be forced to surrender his or her firearm, on the grounds that being Republican is a prima facie indicator of insanity.

Fifth, stand up in Congress and read the Dr. Seuss poem about the north going Zax and the south going Zax, who meet  on the Prairie of Prax “nose to nose, face to face,” and refuse to budge for each other.

Sixth, demand that Ted Cruz, John Boehner, Eric Cantor…well the list goes on, but it includes every Tea Party Republican and current corrupt shill for collapsing the government and the economy. John Boehner included. Demand all Tea Party-ites turn themselves in as the Al Qeada agents they most probably are, and confess to conspiring to destroy the United States for ideological reasons.

Seventh, stand up in Congress and read the Dr. Seuss poem about the “pair of pale green pants with nobody inside them,” another perfect metaphor for John Boehner and other “heads” of the Banana Republican.

Eighth, institute an excess wealth tax on individuals with assets over $20,000,000. If you have $19,999,999, that’s enough to live very, very comfortably. You don’t need another dollar. Add to that an inheritance tax of 100 percent on all estates larger than $10,000,000.

When the Banana Republicans begin to scream and bleat, declare that you’re willing to negotiate nearly all these issues if they'll institute the 100 percent excess wealth tax first, but that they refuse.

In the end, nothing tastes as bitter as your own medicine.

Cross-Posted at No More Mr. Niceblog

A short ode to Ted Cruz

Of all the obstreperous, bloviating gas bags in Washington, Senator Ted Cruz (Republican, naturally) has just taken the cake with his filibuster to logjam the government. So this is for you, Senator:

I do not like you, Mr. Cruz

I do not like you in the news

Your babbling mouth is full of spam

I do not like you, Cruz-I-am

I do not like you in the news

With your ripoff of Dr. Seuss

You cannot stop Obamacare

So just shut up

And sit  — right there!

Cranky explanatory note: Try as I could, I was unable to find a way to make Cruz rhyme with asshole. I just want you to know that I wasn't denying the obvious.

Note to House Republicans, Wayne LaPierre, House Democrats and President Obama about America’s future. There’s a lesson for all of you in this film clip.

You most assuredly must remember this famous scene from that great 1981 movie, Raiders of the Lost Ark. Indiana Jones is running through an Arab marketplace, vanquishing attackers with his bullwhip. Thug after thug attacks him. Thug after thug is whipped into submission.

Finally, along comes some ultra-thuggish sword-waving cuthroat, making fancy movies with his flashing piece of cutlery, and Ford has had enough. He simply pulls out is pistol and blows the sucker away with a single shot.

There’s a story behind this scene, which was filmed in Tunisia. Ford, and most of the film crew, had come down with what has been alternately described as a “horrible stomach flu”  and as “food poisoning.” Harrison was gamely shooting his scenes, feeling sick as a dog. Finally, the effort became too much and sick-to-his-gut Harrison suggested blowing away the last thug instead of more efforts at bullwhip gymnastics.

The scene is a classic because it resonates with Americans who can take just so much of a posturing pain in the butt before they do something the other side doesn’t expect. In the Senate, the Democratic majority has bullwhipped down loony bill after loony bill defunding Obamacare, allowing innocent Americans to get murdered in the name of gun “rights,” cutting food stamps, short-circuiting the economy with short-term debt ceilings, and more. At some point, enough will be enough.

No, we can’t go around shooting Congressman, nor should anyone advocate that. But if the bullwhip can be a symbol for the Democratic Senate overturning Republican mischief, than the pistol can be a symbol for the power of the Presidency.

President Obama needs to get his political shooting iron out and start blasting away. Does some obstreperous Congressman have earmark money going to a beloved constituent or campaign contributor? Slow the money down. Let the check get lost in the works. When the constituents and contributors call to complain, answer that due to your Congressman’s impossible behavior, the administrative machinery is so clogged that the President and various civil service departments won’t even be able to look into it for a while.

Congressmen and their families handle a lot of money. Some of it from PAC contributions. Evidently tons of it from the NRA. Some of it from speaking engagements. Some of it from inside investments. Mmm, sounds to me like grounds for an audit, even if it means sending some good guys with guns to Wayne Lapierre's home and office to go over the books. Eh, Mr. LaPierre?

Finally, there’s the power of the mouth. Mr. President, no more shilly-shally speechifying like this: to what are essentially congregations of the converted:

“This is an interesting thing to ponder, that your top agenda is making sure 20 million people don’t have health insurance,” he said of House GOP lawmakers.

Agreed, but too damn gentle. We need for Mr. Obama to pull out his presidential shooting iron, the verbal one, and start blasting away.

Let’s call Republican obstreperousness what it is. Mr. President, I submit this passage for your next speech:

If an Al Queda agent put Anthrax in a city reservoir and hundreds of people died as a consequence, with a total of 20 million in danger, America would rightfully demand military action, to take out these saboteurs before they take any more American lives.

But Republicans in the House have been killing thousands of Americans, by preventing them from getting the healthcare they need, and by spreading lying propaganda that helps block the path to saving lives. This is no longer politics. This is an act of war against the American people.

Speaker Boehner, I accused you of an act of war against the American people. Congressman Eric Cantor, I accused you of an act of war against the American people. Senator Ted Cruz, by your false propaganda against affordable healthcare, you also are guilty of an act of war against the American people…[The list would continue from here.]

 Would this j’accuse rhetoric create a huge hullabaloo? You betcha. Would there be lots of rage on the Republican side? Frightened people are always rageful. Would President Obama take intense heat for a speech like this? Tons of it. But…

But the conversation in America would change, from whether we should have Obamacare and gun control, to whether the anti-Obamacare and 2nd Amendment crazies  are guilty of treason. Believe me, theTea Party legislators would not enjoy it. But they would learn to fear the president, perhaps (or probably) enough to fund Obamacare, put some sane controls on the proliferation of real guns and consequent real murders, and raising the budget ceiling for more than a few months at a time.

The question is, does Mr. Obama have the courage to put down that silly bullwhip and stage a rhetorical gunfight?

The not-so-fine Republican art of speaking about Obamacare in self-contradictory gobbledygook

Gobbledygooker Tom Graves

In their desperate attempt to kill something they know the American public will love once they can enjoy it, Republicans resort to a brain-busting mockery of logic. Here's a glaring case in point of their gobbledygook:

"All of us are united in understanding that once you start enrollment [in Obamacare], it becomes a totally different dynamic even though they're not receiving benefits. When somebody enrolls in something, they assume they will be getting them. That's why the American people are expecting us to fight now, not delay the fight until next year some time." — Georgia Republican Congressman Tom Graves

 They must be putting massive doses of Stupid in the water down in Ranger, Georgia, where Congressman Tom Graves hails from. Just read the paragraph above carefully, trying hard not to let your eyes cross.

In that short paragraph, a formidable example of how to deny what you’re saying while you’re still in the process of saying it, Graves is declaring that the American people are begging him to fight Obamacare now, because they’re afraid they’ll like it and won’t want it taken away.

Right. And we all need to wear blindfolds starting daybreak today, because comes a dark night and a blackout, we won’t be able to see what we’re doing.

But what can you expect of a former sandwich shop operator turned Congressman who makes a side business  of selling American flags on his website ($9 and up) where he feels compelled to explain, “The American flag, which is affectionately referred to as “The Stars and Stripes” or “Old Glory is a symbol of freedom and democracy…”

Wow! I guess he bets you didn’t know that.

How to tell if you are a New York cop

Just take this simple 3-question quiz:

1. The photograph below shows clearly and self-evidently:

A. A loaded pistol
B.  A hand with a cocked thumb and pointed finger

2. On a crowded New York City street, when you are in pursuit of a perpetrator who may be guilty of something or other, the proper thing to do is:

A. Block off the streets and wait for backup
B. Start firing your weapon wildly at the guy, even if you hit a bunch of innocent passers-by in the street
C. Let the guy go, or follow him to a location where, if necessary, you can fire your weapon without hitting nine innocent people

3. You heard from a guy, who heard from some other guy, that somebody or other threatened to pull a gun on somebody else in a nightclub. So when a bunch of people get out of that nightclub and head for an SUV, the appropriate police technique should be to

A. Intercept the people and question them before they get into a vehicle.
B. Wait until they get into their SUV, then pump 50 bullets into the vehicle, killing or injuring its occupants, including innocent passengers (not to mention the innocent driver).
C. Go into the nightclub and ask the manager there for a bribe not to shut the place down.

Correct answers:
1 (A) 2 (B) 3(B)

If you correctly answered even one question correctly, you already are, or have the makings of a New York Cop. If you answered two question correctly, you are a police genius. If you answered three questions correctly your attitude marks you as having makings of a police commissioner or billionaire mayor.

Civilian Solution: Since cops think pointed fingers with cocked thumbs are dangerous weapons, and legitimate reasons to kill anyone who points a finger that way are you, as well as hapless people on the street, take firearms away from police. Instead, when confronting dangerous or presumed dangerous suspects, police should be instructed to point their fingers at the suspect and yell in a very loud voice, "Bang Bang!" Repeat until suspect either surrenders or falls down dead.

The man who’d literally run over kittens with a train (and his far-right-wing billionaire backers) gear up in New York to smash liberal mayoral candidate Bill DeBlasio

Joe Lhota said he'd have no problem
running them over with a train

New York City is about to become a proxy battleground between the progressive wing of the Democrats and far right wing Republicans.

I hope the nation is paying attention, because ultra-conservative, union-smashing, tax-the-poor, enrich-the-billionaires individuals like the Koch brothers certainly are.

The story so far

In case you’re either a New Yorker who just got home from a six months vacation on Mars, or an out-of-towner who understandably pays less than full attention to New York politics, here’s the story – a story notably worthy of your attention.

Bill DeBlasio, a progressive Democrat with an interesting background (he has a black wife and two mixed race kids) appears to have won the Democratic nomination for mayor. (There are complications, but you can mortgage the farm to put money on the likelihood of his candidacy.)

One of DeBlasio’s campaign promises is that he’ll try his darndest (the odds of succeeding are daunting) to raise the marginal tax rate by half a percent on the incomes of city residents who earn over half a million dollars annually. The money would be used to pay for a desperately needed pre-school program.

For your average, run-the-mill New York rich guy (there are 27,000 thousand of them earning between $500,000 and $1,000,000 a year) the average tax increase would come to $973 a year – which is less than a pair of imported tan summer loafers or a new frock for his wife would cost in a neighborhood Madison Avenue boutique on the Upper East Side.

Holy crap! You’d think DeBlasio was proposing mass extermination of anyone with more than two dollars in his pocket.

Joe Lhota's head explodes

“Class warfare!” exploded Joe Lhota, the Republican nominee for mayor in his acceptance speech — reviving a favorite whine of the greedy one-percent.

Only in America could the formidably rich declare financial war on the poor and middle class, and  then complain about "class warfare" when the poor and middle class push back.

The one percent crashed the financial system, got a bailout from the 99 percent of American taxpayers who never see much, if any financial security, and now grumble about “class warfare” when asked to chip in an hour’s pay or less for the benefit of the people they milk dry.

Not surprising that Joe (“Mr. Warmth”) Lhota is so kindly, so empathetic, that when — during the primary campaign, yet! — some stray kittens were found wandering the city’s subway tracks, Lhota favored crushing them with a train rather than stopping the subway to save them.

Bloomberg fires up desperate
(but empty) charges of "racism"

Michael Bloomberg took another tack. He accused DeBlasio of “racism” for showing his multi-racial family in television campaign spots. As if no political candidate has ever shown his family in campaign advertising! (I guess it’s okay if they’re all lily-white, like Mitt Romney’s family.) What did Bloomberg want DeBlasio to do — put whiteface on his wife and kids? Did he want them to wear mime suits, too?

Most ominous of all, the multi-billionaire Koch family has contributed more thusfar to Lhota's campaign than they’d pay in a good part of a century if Deblasio’s tax increase should ever come through.

A popular movement?

And that’s what it’s really about. New York could be the beginning of a popular voter movement, at long last — of the average working stiff, the under-employed recent graduate, the squeezed middle class and the strangled poor — against the one percent.

Billionaires like the Koches and Bloombergs are afraid it’ll spread and that, given enough time, voters might restore the financial equilibrium of the 1950s and 1960s, and the rich will have to pay their fair share again. O, the horror of it all!

Expect to see mountains of right wing dollars poured in to make that right wing iceberg Lhota look good, and to cover up what he really stands for.

Here in New York, the election is really a proxy battle of the super-rich against everybody else. What happens here may not stay here. And that’s what’s terrifying the billionaires and the corrupt politicians who live off them.

And now this:

The President,the Premise, the Problem, the Syrians, and the Economy

Let’s start off with a basic premise here, shall we? Because if you don’t agree with that, there’s no point

in reading on.

Premise: Any Democrat, including Barack Obama, is better than just about any Republican who might be in office today instead — Mitt Romney and even John McCain not excepted.

 However, Barack Obama came into office propelled by a slogan (“Yes we can,”) and experience that essentially consisted of less than a full term in the Senate. Not exactly a long resume for somebody who would sit in the White House and make sink-or-swim decisions for the United States – and then lead us to support those decisions.

During the first Obama primaries, I supported Obama over Hillary Clinton, although I did not, to the best of my recollection, blog about it. My fear about Hillary was that, given all the hate for her that had been generated by the Republican propaganda machine over the years, she might lose a national election, whereas Obama could win. I was right, or at least right enough about Obama there. The Republican machine didn’t generate the ongoing deluge of anti-Obama bile until they realized they were going to be stuck with him for a while.

However, Barack Obama has proved to be an inordinately inept president. Most of what he has done wrong could be summed up with the phrase “bargaining with himself,”  and the rest by the verb "dither" Bargaining and dithering led to a weaker Obamacare plan than we might have had otherwise.

Perhaps the President’s biggest mistake vis-à-vis Obamacare was to allow years to go by before implementation, giving the right wing a world of opportunity to stir up a hornet’s nest of opposition and weaken the plan. They have done both.

The President missed a great teaching moment, at the very beginning of his first term, when he failed to indict – or at least impugn – George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, et al for lying us into a war in Iraq that cost a still-mounting-and-being-calculated fortune in American lives and treasure – and also weakening our resolve to engage in legitimate wars, when called for. Mr. Obama wanted to make nice-nice with thugs and crazy people. Did it work? As you may have noticed, nobody in Washington has sat around the camp fire singing kumbaya since the President was elected. Or before then, for that matter.

Since late in the 20^th Century, effective presidents have had the courage, or perhaps the unmitigated gall, to seize initiatives first and ask for authorizations later. Certainly in an age of missile technology and surprise attack warfare – from Pearl Harbor to 9-11 – a U.S. President who admirably but foolishly stands in the middle of the highway and calls for a Congressional consensus before taking action is likely to get knocked down, run over and squashed flat by the onrush of history. Such is the case with Mr. Obama.

Moreover, he speaks and acts authentically, from his heart rather than from cold calculations. This is an admirable trait in a friend but a liability for an American president. If an enemy is using poison gas and you want to destroy that capability, do so without dithering, and without making fruitless appeals to the UN and then to Congress. Fussing and diddling with the niceties only gives the enemy an opportunity to bury or otherwise hide the offending goods. This makes the attempt to destroy the enemy’s poison gas capabilities – if the effort ever comes – more of an exercise in futility.

In retrospect, had Mr. Obama spent eight or a dozen years in the Congress, preferably on committees related to defense and diplomacy, and eight or so years in a senior government administration job – Secretary of State, governor of a state, mayor of a major city – he would have been better prepared for what faces the Presidency in every administration.

As for domestic policy, the president has compromised the nation’s economic future, not with his admirable push for healthcare, but by his compromising on a national economic stimulus when it was needed; and by his acquiescence to financial austerity, which is still not needed. We could have full employment and a growing middle class in America again if the Preisdent were willing to fight Congress tooth-and-nail and pour the bucks into the economy.

Instead, we have a president dithering while the world burns and the American economy coughs and sputters. His inexperience has cost him – and all of us – prestige and power in the world, and social advances at home.

His push for national healthcare was a great and important thing, and bore some fruit, albeit shriveled fruit. His halfway measures on the economy were better than nothing. This is not a failed presidency. It is a well-intentioned but mediocre one. The greatest mark Barack Obama  will leave will be for becoming the first Afro-American president of the United States. That achievement is certainly not to be belittled. Nor is Obamacare, no matter how wanting.

But how sad that he has been able to achieve so little beyond that.

September 10th addendum: The news late last night and this morning has Russia offering to act as sort of an intermediary in an attempt to secure Syria's gaseous WMD. If that works — and it's a very iffy if — the nation will perhaps have been spared direct military intervention in Syria and President Obama will look like a hero. Interestingly, if that works out, Vladimir Putin will be holding a huge chit from Barack Obama. One wonders how he'll cash it in. This is one of those times when I yearn for the ability to see into the future.