CART WILLIAMS

Curmudgeonly, crusty & cranky.
Always on the right, seldom if ever wrong
yet hardly ever dangerous.


On a mission to impose a hundred and
eighty degree course correction on a confused and
divided nation headed in the wrong direction.

That's not the case this time. Part of the reason so many banks are imperiled is that no one is sure what their investments are worth.

Most economists agree absorbing the bailout's costs are preferable to running the risk of the entire U.S. financial system unraveling - a calamity that would probably trigger a global depression.

But knowing things could be even worse probably won't make it easier to stomach the turmoil still to come.

It usually takes years to recover from a financial crisis severe enough for politicians to ride to the rescue with truckloads of taxpayer money.

Take, for example, the U.S. government's August 1989 bailout of the savings-and-loan industry. The stock market fell by 12 percent within the first 14 months of the rescue plan while the economy slipped into an eight-month recession that began in July 1990. Housing prices that had just begun to erode continued to fall for another three years.

There's little reason to believe it will be dramatically different this time around, particularly since this bailout involves harder-to-value assets and comes with the U.S. economy already on the edge of a recession, if one hasn't begun already.

These four people - Obama, McCain, Biden, and Palin - not a single one of them deserves the job they’re applying for when you get right down to it. Not a one of them, not even close.

McCain is the only one who I think is actually smart enough, but he’s an asshole. So you have three dummies and an asshole running for the two most important jobs on the entire planet.

Honestly. If you saw any of the Palin clips, can you in good faith and true objectivity tell me that you wouldn’t rip her up if she was a Democrat, or even just someone you wanted to defeat for whatever reason? The woman truly does not seem to know what she’s talking about.

They could draw a line against the Barney Frank-Chris Dodd proposal to put 20% of any upside from the eventual Treasury resale of the assets into an "affordable housing" funds for their political allies.

They could also resist the plan to let bankruptcy judges repudiate mortgage contracts, as well as the attempts to prevent foreclosures that are probably inevitable anyway.

Anyone who thinks that capitalism will fare better after a crash should recall that the 1930s didn't end politically until 1980.

Another reality is that taxpayers are already going to pay to refinance the banking system. The only issues are how and how much.

If the Paulson plan fails, the Fed will still have guaranteed $29 billion for Bear Stearns, will still own AIG, and will still have a balance sheet that increasingly piles up ugly assets. Those are taxpayer obligations too.

Meanwhile, banks will continue to fail, and the Treasury and FDIC will eventually have to come up with the capital to rescue those.

But Democrats have already decided to spin off potentially billions of taxpayer dollars from the bailout fund to their own political buddies -- not on Wall Street but on nearby K Street.

The House and Senate Democratic drafts contain an indefensible and well-hidden provision. It would mandate that at least 20% of any profit realized from the sale of each troubled asset purchased under the Paulson plan be deposited in either the Housing Trust Fund or the Capital Magnet Fund. Only after these funds get their cut of the profits are "all amounts remaining . . . paid into the Treasury for reduction of the public debt."

What we have here essentially are a pair of government slush funds created in July as part of the Economic Recovery Act that pump tax dollars into the coffers of low-income housing advocacy groups, such as Acorn.

Acorn, one of America's most militant left-wing "community activist groups," is spending $16 million this year to register Democrats to vote in November.

In the past several years, Acorn's voter registration programs have come under investigation in Ohio, Colorado, Michigan, Missouri and Washington, while several of their employees have been convicted of voter fraud.

And if there’s a money-back guarantee for greedy and stupid decisions, we’re in real trouble, because there is only so much money in the bank but supplies of greed and stupidity are endless.

So how do we inflict some badly-needed pain on people who need to feel it, without hurting the rest of the good and honest folks who pay their bills responsibility?

Well, there are three simple rules that we must follow. Unfortunately, no one knows what those three rules are. So here we are. I’m as flummoxed as the rest of you.

I will say this, though: half way through the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln had a plan to buy the slaves. He would give the south a chance to end the war early by compensating them — with Northern cash — for the market value of the slaves that they held. It was a monstrous sum, but he thought it was necessary.

So he wrote: “Certainly it is not so easy to pay something as to pay nothing; but it is easier to pay a large sum than it is to pay a larger one. And it is easier to pay any sum when we are able, than it is to pay before we are able.”

My own irresponsibility got me looking at 50 years of age without health insurance. I’m going to owe that hospital about two grand for this adventure. If you think I won’t miss that two grand, then you have over-estimated the financial value of internet punditry. But it’s my obligation; it’s my debt. I owe it and I’ll pay it, and I’ll try to remain focused on the fact that it could have been much, much worse. It was only that pain that got me to change my ways.

Our government borrowed ever more money from foreign creditors, because it was a collective reflection of our own profligate financial habits. Of course, we should reform Wall Street and Washington — and punish severely the crooks in both places.

Democrats counter that the laissez-faire capitalism espoused by Republicans for two decades encouraged financial piracy while tax policy favored the rich speculator over the middle-class wage earner.

But no one dares to ask what really drove the wheeler-dealer portfolio managers. Who re-elected these shady politicians of both parties? Who fostered the cash-in culture in which both Wall Street profit mongering and Washington lobbying are nourished and thrive?

As a means of accessing a seemingly endless supply of cash for those on the inside, this scandalous state of affairs represents the zenith of “community organizer” aspirations. And it is no surprise that Obama is among the chief recipients of “donations” from such enterprises.

In both cases, while the common people remain at their predetermined rung on the lowest end of the economic ladder, the “community organizers” and politicians become wealthy beyond belief or understanding.

John Zogby, president of Zogby International, told a group of businesspeople today that it’s up to Democratic Sen. Barack Obama to convince voters to go with him. If he’s not successful, the country will likely vote for “a comfortable old shoe”, that being Republican Sen. John McCain.

Despite the books Obama has written, Americans are still asking, “Who are you, where are you from?,” Zogby said.

First and foremost, marxism believes that no action or tactic is prohibited that advances the cause of totalitarian socialism. This coincides with the psychopath's belief that they are always right and their actions are always justified.

You will never hear a Democrat or a liberal fascist or a marxist admit they were wrong.

Second, the celebration of degeneracy and norm-breaking behavior is common to these psychopathic ideologies.

Third, the rewarding of irresponsible , even criminal behavior, and the punishment of honest citizens and responsible behavior is another key feature of liberal fascism and marxism.

Fourth, Democrats, liberal fascists, and marxists all use ad hominem attacks and vehement hateful denunciations immediately toward anyone who disagrees with them in the slightest degree. It is impossible to reason with them because they don't see any point in it. They want to destroy their opponent, not compromise with them.

Fifth, all of these psychopathic ideologies use lies and deceit constantly - the biggest of which is the lie that they are promoting the interests of "the little guy".

The pronouncements of the psychopathic ideologies of the Democrat party, liberal fascism, and marxism, are invariably propagandistic falsehoods. And of course, these psychopathic ideologies are reckless and impulsive.

There is no question that charming Bill Clinton is a textbook case of the psychopath, with Al Gore, John Kerry, Hillary and Obama being no less psychopathic although less demonstrably so.

All of this boils down the atheistic American socialist minority hating the religious American majority. This secular minority wishes to rule over the majority through the use of unjust political power - political power which does not derive through the consent of the governed.

All the evil tyrannies of the twentieth century, i.e.: Nazism and Communism, were minority movements against the majority. Minority rule is elitism and it is unjust, and it will eventually become tyrannical.

"Bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will, to be rightful, must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal laws must protect, and to violate would be oppression." Thomas Jefferson

Alinsky-style elite minority rule, i.e.: Marxist Socialism (or Nazism), is not reasonable and they don't give a damn about the equal rights of the majority; which under their system the laws will not protect.

This is in exact contradiction of the personal values of most Americans, and certainly of the values written into the Constitution of the United States of America and the Bill of Rights.

The current mortgage crisis (~$1 trillion) was written and legislated by Democrats following Marxist principles, starting with the Community Reinvestment Act 1977 (Carter was president and signed the law) and it's various amendments.

But CRA 1977 was not the biggest Marxist-inspired law we have. The War on Poverty resulted in the almost total destruction of Black family life in the United States, at a cost of a mere $6 trillion, but the cost was spread out over thirty years, unlike the mortgage crisis which came to a head suddenly.

And then there is Social Security, which the Democrats also insist on ignoring.

Most conservatives still think that they just need to reason politely with the worst of their opponents. They don't get the true nature, the pure malevolence, of most on the left and until they do get it, we won't be able to improve the state of this nation.

1. Failure to conform to social norms ...

2. Deceitfulness ... or conning others for personal profit or pleasure;

3. Impulsivity or failure to plan ahead;

4. Irritability and aggressiveness ... ;

5. Reckless disregard for safety of self or others;

6. Consistent irresponsibility ... ;

7. Lack of remorse, as indicated by being indifferent to or rationalizing having hurt, mistreated, or stolen from another.

I would give Mr. Clinton credit for Numbers 1, 2, 6, and 7, and possibly 3 (impulsivity) and 4 (irritability and aggressiveness).

Dick Morris, who advised the Clintons for 20 years, describes dramatic scenes that certainly fit the description. Or Bill's inability to stick with a meeting agenda, impulsively running endless bull sessions at the White House.

I’m against the $85,000,000, 000.00 bailout of AIG.

Instead, I’m in favor of giving $85,000,000, 000 to all Americans as a “Dividend”.

To make the math simple, let’s assume there are 200,000,000 bonafide U.S. Citizens 18+

Our population is about 301,000,000 +/- counting every man, woman and child.
So 200,000,000 might be a fair stab at adults 18 and up..

So divide 200 million adults 18+ into $85 billion that equals to a hefty “$425,000.00″

My plan is to give $425,000 to every person 18+ as a “Dividend”
Of course, it would NOT be tax free. So let’s assume a tax rate of 30%.

Every individual 18+ has to pay $127,500.00 in taxes. That sends $25.5 Billion right back to Uncle Sam.

But it means that every adult 18+ has $297,500.00 in their pocket.
A husband and wife have $595,000.00.

What would you do with $297,500.00 to $595,000.00 in your family?
Pay off your mortgage – “housing crisis solved”
Repay college loans – “a great boost to new grads”
Put away money for college – “it’ll be there”
Save it in a bank – “create money to loan to entrepreneurs”
Buy a new car – “create jobs”
Invest in the market – “capital drives growth”
Pay for your parent’s medical insurance =E 2 “health care improves”

Remember this is for every adult U S Citizen 18+ including the folks who lost their jobs atLehman Brothers and every other company.

If we’re going to re-distribute wealth let’s really do it…instead of trickling out.

If we’re going to do an $85 billion bailout, let’s bail out every adult U S Citizen 18+

As for AIG – liquidate it and Sell off its parts. Sell off the real estate. Let the private sector bargain hunters cut it up and clean it up.

Yes, our betters tell us these things daily. But that doesn’t mean we have to believe it.

Ask the common people of all politics and persuasions aboard Flight 93 whether greatness and courage has deserted America. Through this magical crystal ball — the one we are using right now — we common people can speak to one another. And by reminding ourselves and those around us of who we are, where we came from, what we have achieved together and of the marvels we have yet to achieve, we may laugh in the face of despair and mock those people that think a man with an MBA from Harvard knows more about running a gas station than the man that actually runs the gas station.

It is the small-town virtues of self-reliance, hard work, personal responsibility, and common-sense ingenuity — and not those of the preening cosmopolitans that gape at them in mixed contempt and bafflement — that have made us the inheritors of the most magnificent, noble, decent and free society ever to appear on this earth.

This Western Civilization… this American City… has earned the right to greet each sunrise with a blast of silver trumpets that can bring down mountains.

Further, “patriotism” is taught by dragging an American flag across the classroom floor, because the nation’s truest patriots, as we should know by now, are those who are most able to despise it.

This is only high school, remember: in college things get much, much worse.

Two generations, now, are being raised on this poison, and the reason for that is this: the enemies of this city cannot come out and simply say, “Do not defend the city.” Even the smartest among us can see that is simple treason.

The government has quietly sanctioned the powers for sharia judges to rule on cases ranging from divorce and financial disputes to those involving domestic violence.

Rulings issued by a network of five sharia courts are enforceable with the full power of the judicial system, through the county courts or High Court.

Previously, the rulings of sharia courts in Britain could not be enforced, and depended on voluntary compliance among Muslims.

Mr. McCain told CBS's "60 Minutes" that Mr. Cuomo had "respect" and "prestige," praising his tenure as secretary of housing and urban development in the Clinton administration.

Mr. McCain must be looking at a different record than I am. Mr. Cuomo was a political grandstander at HUD, ranging far afield to file frivolous lawsuits against gun manufacturers. He also spent taxpayer money to hire such firms as Booz Allen Hamilton, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, and Ernst & Young to paper over snafus at his agency.

Among the problems created by Mr. Cuomo while at HUD were what the liberal Village Voice called last month "a series of decisions between 1997 and 2001 that gave birth to the country's current crisis."

We're talking about buying thousands of houses, not millions of mortgages. And yet the resulting higher mortgage debt prices automatically would help to recapitalize the banks, while (knock wood) leaving some Paulson powder dry for future contingencies.

The fine print of the Paulson plan includes sweeping authority to buy "other assets." Going after houses and knocking them down would fit this commodious garment -- and would let the agency wrap up its work quickly and go away in the natural course of things, whether everyone was satisfied with the result or not.

There's a reason Barack Obama is delivering secular sermons in places like Green Bay, Wis. Green Bay's beef with a culture of corner-cutting predated Bear Stearns.

Wall Street hasn't been the only font of wretched excess. More than opportunism has landed this presidential campaign in places that represent standards, like Saddleback in California and Messiah in Pennsylvania. People want standards again because they work -- in business, in schools, in daily life.

In my ear, I can hear one of the four candidates giving a speech connecting Wall Street to the nation's Main Streets. Standards, responsibility, accountability, rules? You bet. Bring 'em all back.

Two months ago, one of the campaign's most important events took place at Saddleback Evangelical Christian Church, the Rev. Rick Warren presiding.Before that in April, Hillary Clinton and Mr. Obama did a "Compassion Forum" at Messiah College in Grantham, Pa. Sen. Clinton talked about feeling the Holy Spirit "on many occasions." Mr. Obama was still wearing sackcloth for "cling to religion."

This election may be won by whichever man looks better riding an economic surfboard the next month, but the campaign's undercurrents are pushing the basics back to the surface.

Yes, politicians will bend to any new wind that blows through, but this past week of financial turmoil has shown there's a strong whiff in the air for the values of the greatest generation. This was the 20% generation. In the post-war years, young couples knew they'd somehow have to save 20% of the down payment on a home mortgage. That's thrift, an archaic word I think is still in most dictionaries.

Push this idea far enough, and you're talking the world of "Ozzie and Harriet" (ABC-TV 1952-1966) versus "Sex and the City" (HBO, 1998-2004). Push further and you arrive at happy Sarah Palin and that family of hers. What Sarah represents produces pushback from the smart-set women on "The View" and big-city comedians and newspaper columnists, all trying to knock Little Miss Muffet off her too-perfect tuffet.

Mr. Liu himself expects GDP growth may slow to 9.5% this year, from over 11% last year. While that's not slow growth by developed world standards, it's slow for China.

Mr. Liu says the current credit crisis was driven by "greed," not by the failures of models, rating agencies or mark-to-market accounting. His own motto: "Morality first, profit second. Service first, profit second. And behind the leadership problems, that is [the] regulator's problems. . . It's the regulator's duty to over[see] [the leader's] behavior, and give him a call saying that you are not doing your job very well, and the board [has] got to change."

Yet even Mr. Liu, who operates within a one-party state, understands that as China opens up its economy to the world, it will be increasingly exposed to both the benefits and the problems of global financial markets -- and will have to adapt.

Plus, a stronger U.S. economy, with its financial players having clean balance sheets, will become a safe haven for capital.

Europe is threatened by an angry Russian bear. The Far East, especially China, has its own post-Olympic banking house of cards of non-performing loans to deal with.

Interest rates will tick up as the economy expands -- a plus for the dollar. Finally, a stronger economy driven by industry instead of financials means more jobs, less foreclosures and higher held-to-maturity payouts on this Fed loan portfolio.

You can slice the numbers a lot of different ways. My calculations, which assume 50% impairment on subprime loans, suggest it is possible, all in, for this portfolio to generate between $1 trillion and $2.2 trillion -- the greatest trade ever.

Every hedge-fund manager will be jealous. Mr. Buffett is buying a small piece of the trade via his Goldman Sachs investment.

Over 10 years this could change the budget scenario in D.C., which can also strengthen the dollar. The next president gets a heck of a windfall.

The statement, Jesus as community organizer, Pontius Pilate as governor, was an unquestioned attack on Sarah Palin, the governor of Alaska and the Republican candidate for vice president who has apparently engendered great angst on the left.

That the last two Democrats who called 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. home were both former governors was somehow overlooked. Probably for the best, since one of them, the former governor from Georgia, was a disaster as a president and has only tarnished his reputation since, and the other, the former governor from Arkansas, disgraced the office with his actions with an intern.

The problem with the campaign theme is that it is tragically flawed in its premise, which has become all too typical of the treatment of religious themes by those in the hierarchy of the Democrat Party.

Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House, has on numerous occasions, the latest being this year’s Earth Day, cited the Bible. “The Bible tells us in the Old Testament,” she said, “‘to minister to the needs of God’s creation is an act of worship. To ignore those needs is to dishonor the God who made us.’”

This is now a national disaster for the United States. The centrality and import of inexpensive and available credit to America's function is total.

from the debt collapse ground zero. US$3.6 trillion in global stock market wealth has evaporated this week. The job losses and macro effects are not far off.

Over the past 14 months one assumption after another has been proven unsound. Why? We have been waiting and working toward a return of normality. The normalcy of the past six years is illusion. Credit conditions designed to keep the macro-economy and asset prices at peak levels filtered into balance sheet leverage, government debt and consumer debt levels well beyond prudence. This happened because credit easing does not and cannot substitute for earnings, wages or tax revenues.

Well beyond the US's oft-discussed addiction to oil is its never-mentioned addiction to foreign credit. In 2007, America imported 49% of total global reported imported capital, the lowest US percentage in several years. Thus, our 25% reported share of oil consumption is much lower than our share in imported capital. We became addicted to debt - especially foreign debt - and that addiction becomes an illness in a credit constriction. Leading US banks and financial firms grew large and reaped huge profits writing, packaging, trading and rewriting, repackaging and retrading all that borrowed money. Thus, the boom created the bust.

To move forward we need coherent national policy from leading firms, regulatory agencies and pundits. We need to move forward toward lower debt, higher earnings and sustainable government spending. We need drastic and proactive reform of regulatory bodies. We have a patchwork of overlapping regulation in some areas with giant gaps of under-regulation and absent regulation. This has created a situation where actions are piecemeal and graceless in the midst of a crisis.

Regulation is inherently prophylactic and cannot be properly created in the crises it seeks to prevent. Today calls for a single coherent and transparent approach to falling house prices (destined to continue), asset write downs (destined to continue) and liquidity crises (destined to continue). We simply cannot have Sunday closed-door meetings deciding the fates of tens of thousands of jobs, life and death for industries and billions in investor losses. Want to see what that creates? Pick up a newspaper.

It is an invitation to abuse of power unparalleled in American history, in which ill-paid civil servants will set prices on the portfolios of the banking system with no oversight and no threat of legal penalty.

Why are the voices raised in protest so shrill and few? Why will Americans fall on their fountain-pens for their bankers?

If America is to adopt socialism, why not have socialism for the poor, rather than for the rich?

As for the promises and plans of Barack Obama and John McCain -- be it for national health insurance or middle-class tax cuts -- they are going by the wayside.

For the United States is as bankrupt as Lehman Brothers, with this difference: Uncle Sam can still borrow from abroad because foreigners see many juicy U.S. assets they would like to take off our hands with their hoards of ever-cheapening U.S. dollars.

Looking at the federal budget -- the five or six major items are Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, defense and interest on the debt. All are going up, as tax revenues fall. Add the cost of two wars and a bailout of U.S. banks that some estimate will cost $1 trillion to $2 trillion, and we appear to be looking at budget deficits ad infinitum.

"There is a great deal of ruin in a nation," Adam Smith once consoled a friend who lamented that Britain would be ruined if the 13 Colonies were lost.

U.S. autoworkers who saw Ford and Delphi plants shuttered as new Ford and Delphi plants opened in Mexico. U.S. textile workers whose mills closed and jobs vanished.

Middle-class American families have paid and paid -- in lost jobs, lower wages, a falling median income -- to save the big banks from the consequences of their follies.

And those bank bailouts are behind the trade deficits that set five records in the Bush era, reached 6 percent of GDP, forced huge U.S. borrowings from abroad and ravaged the dollar.

Life is unfair, said JFK.

In his testimony before the Banking Committee, Paulson told senators that quick passage of the administration's plan is "the single most effective thing we can do to help homeowners, the American people and stimulate our economy."

But even before Paulson could speak, lawmakers expressed unhappiness, criticism of the plan and - in the case of some conservative Republicans - outright opposition.

For the hope-and-change candidate, those natural readjustments now appear insincere and opportunistic — especially given that he had to move so far from the left to get to the middle.

On campaign-finance reform, FISA, NAFTA, abortion, capital punishment, guns, Iran, Iraq, the surge and drilling offshore, Obama has fudged on his earlier positions in the normal way of savvy pragmatists — but not in a manner befitting angelic idealists.

For example, in 2003, 749 members of Fannie Mae’s management team received a staggering $65.1 million in bonuses, a portion of which was attributable to the overstated earnings that followed from the accounting irregularities.

Over the past five years, the top 20 Fannie Mae executives reportedly received combined bonuses of $245 million. This disconnect between reward and mission suggests that any reconciliation with the Securities and Exchange Commission should also require that the FNMA’s management return their bonuses to a fund administered by a bona fide not-for-profit entity, such as Habitat for Humanity, for the purpose of assisting prospective homebuyers of modest means.

Although management’s unearned bonuses have generated most of the headlines, the real cost to the nation is not the tawdry looting of the company by its top management team.

The real problem is the concentration of risk in the hands of two massive and privileged companies that now dominate America’s housing finance markets.”

The fiscal collapse was predicted years ago. Such disasters occur when individuals have more power than they choose to exercise responsibility.

Those positioned to do something to avoid the crash refused to take action. Now the same politicians who allowed the wreck to occur are pontificating about handling the bailout conscientiously.

It is unfortunate that the public must rely on these charlatans to clean up the chaos and even more regrettable that we must listen to them belch noble words as they do.

Congress ignored the warnings. Now will they take some good advice?

The Cato Institute’s Alan Reynolds says, “Any serious solution must begin by requiring Freddie and Fannie to do what other troubled firms are routinely required to do – sell assets, raise capital and reduce debt. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac need to be downsized and de-leveraged, relieved of special privileges and loan guarantees and broken into small pieces agile enough to sink or swim on their own, without taxpayer support.”

Average Americans holding traditional values would be harmed by an Obama presidency and should not be fooled into voting for a man to make history based on skin color. Better to wait for a black person who shares the values of most Americans and who has sufficient experience to step into the highest office in the land, than to vote on emotionalism.

If a moderately black liberal like Colin Powell were the Democrat candidate (assuming the same degree of media favoritism) he conceivably would be running away with a landslide victory.

It is disingenuous and insulting to cry race when we are speaking of a half-term senator who has no record of reaching across the aisle in bipartisan fashion and whose radical voting record bears witness to his relationships with radical leftists.

The first group consists of dyed-in-the-wool lefties who embrace the tenets of modern-day liberalism: strict secularism, moral relativism and American anti-exceptionalism. This group feels good about saving the planet from capitalism; mocking traditional religion and values; and establishing a brave new world with new values – its members largely share the extreme liberal views of Obama.

The makeup of the second group might lean heavily to the left, but also has its share of moderates and conservatives unwittingly flowing downstream.

“Poll: Racial misgivings of whites an Obama issue;” “Race may cost Obama;” “Polls show Democrats’ racial views could hurt Obama in close election;” “Widespread racial bias among whites could tip election, poll finds.”

Apparently, it has not occurred to liberal journalists that Obama’s problems have less to do with the color of his skin, and more to do with his haughty elitism and liberal extremism (and maybe Obama’s behind-closed-doors remarks in San Francisco labeling small town Americans as bitter bigots didn’t exactly help his race relations).

Liberal journalists must sit around in their conference rooms lamenting over their fact of how Obama would be walking away with the election if not for racism – what else could it be? He is just like them, perfectly “mainstream.”

The answer to the question posed by the title above, regardless of what the media say, is a resounding, yes.

Conservatives and liberals are eager to elect a black to the presidency; of course, liberals want a black liberal and conservatives want a black conservative.

The question, “Is America ready for a black president?” however, does not accurately frame the Obama question.

The question as applied to Obama reads something like this: Is America Ready to Elect the Most Far-Left Candidate in U.S. History? The answer to that question is a resounding, no.

Channeling his inner Queen of Hearts, John McCain furiously, and apparently without even looking around at facts, said Chris Cox, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, should be decapitated.

It is arguable that McCain, because of his boiling moralism and bottomless reservoir of certitudes, is not suited to the presidency.

Unreadiness can be corrected, although perhaps at great cost, by experience.

Although California reinstated the death penalty more than three decades ago - by a Legislature that overrode then-Gov. Brown's veto -- it has executed just 14 murderers since then and has nearly 700 condemned inmates, most of whom are housed at San Quentin on San Francisco Bay.

“I didn’t know we did it and if I had anything to do with it, we would have never done it”

“While the New York Times and other media outlets were silent in the face of Barack Obama’s shameless and dishonorable attack on John Mccain, even Obama’s own running mate has now condemned the ad as terrible,” said spokesman Brian Rogers in a statement.

"What about the husband?" asked a Times reporter during a mock assignment meeting for the paper. "You know he's doing those daughters. I mean, come on. It's Alaska."

The assignment editor for the Times, portrayed by actor James Franco, responded: "He very well could be. Admittedly, there is no evidence of that, but on the other hand, there is no convincing evidence to the contrary. And these are just some of the lingering questions about Governor Palin."

"It is time the Palin family brought out the big guns. They need to sue General Electric, NBC, 'Saturday Night Live,'" said Al Barrs of Bascom, Fla. "This is clearly criminal and defamation of character of an entire family and state. All the above needs to be taken to their knees big time once and for all."

This is nonsense. What we are witnessing is the collapse of Gordon Gecko ("Greed Is Good!") capitalism. What we are witnessing is what happens to a prodigal nation that ignores history, and forgets and abandons the philosophy and principles that made it great.

A true conservative cherishes prudence and believes in fiscal responsibility, balanced budgets and a self-reliant republic. He believes in saving for retirement and a rainy day, in deferred gratification, in not buying on credit what you cannot afford, in living within your means.

Is that really what got Wall Street and us into this mess -- that we followed too religiously the gospel of Robert Taft and Russell Kirk?

"Government must save us!" cries the left, as ever. Yet, who got us into this mess if not the government -- the Fed with its easy money, Bush with his profligate spending, and Congress and the SEC by liberating Wall Street and failing to step in and stop the drunken orgy?

For years, we Americans have spent more than we earned. We save nothing. Credit card debt, consumer debt, auto debt, mortgage debt, corporate debt -- all are at record levels. And with pensions and savings being wiped out, much of that debt will never be repaid.

Our standard of living is inevitably going to fall. For foreigners will not forever buy our bonds or lend us more money if they rightly fear that they will be paid back, if at all, in cheaper dollars.

We are going to have to learn to live again without our means.

The party's over

Up through World War II, we followed the Hamiltonian idea that America must remain economically independent of the world in order to remain politically independent.

But this generation decided that was yesterday's bromide and we must march bravely forward into a Global Economy, where we all depend on one another. American companies morphed into "global companies" and moved plants and factories to Mexico, Asia, China and India, and we began buying more cheaply from abroad what we used to make at home: shoes, clothes, bikes, cars, radios, TVs, planes, computers.

As the trade deficits began inexorably to rise to 6 percent of GDP, we began vast borrowing from abroad to continue buying from abroad.

At home, propelled by tax cuts, war in Iraq and an explosion in social spending, surpluses vanished and deficits reappeared and began to rise. The dollar began to sink, and gold began to soar.

Yet, still, the promises of the politicians come. Barack Obama will give us national health insurance and tax cuts for all but that 2 percent of the nation that already carries 50 percent of the federal income tax load.

John McCain is going to cut taxes, expand the military, move NATO into Georgia and Ukraine, confront Russia and force Iran to stop enriching uranium or "bomb, bomb, bomb," with Joe Lieberman as wartime consigliere.

Who are we kidding?

What we are witnessing today is how empires end.

The Last Superpower is unable to defend its borders, protect its currency, win its wars or balance its budget. Medicare and Social Security are headed for the cliff with unfunded liabilities in the tens of trillions of dollars.

What we are witnessing today is nothing less than a Katrina-like failure of government, of our political class, and of democracy itself, casting a cloud over the viability and longevity of the system.

Notice who is managing the crisis. Not our elected leaders. Nancy Pelosi says she had nothing to do with it. Congress is paralyzed and heading home. President Bush is nowhere to be seen.

Hank Paulson of Goldman Sachs and Ben Bernanke of the Fed chose to bail out Bear Sterns but let Lehman go under. They decided to nationalize Fannie and Freddie at a cost to taxpayers of hundreds of billions, putting the U.S. government behind $5 trillion in mortgages. They decided to buy AIG with $85 billion rather than see the insurance giant sink beneath the waves.

An unelected financial elite is now entrusted with the assignment of getting us out of a disaster into which an unelected financial elite plunged the nation. We are just spectators.

If any of these media dunderheads worked for the DNC, Howard Dean would have fired them by now.

"Let's diss hockey moms!" "No, let's diss soccer moms!" "No, let's diss women in general!" "Let's diss small towns, people who devote their evenings to PTA meetings, hunters, gun owners, Alaskans!" "Let's diss special needs kids!"

The old line on imprudent debt went something like: If you owe the bank a thousand dollars, you have a problem;

if you owe the bank a million dollars, the bank has a problem.

We seem to have casually accepted the extension of the paradigm: If the bank loans you a million dollars, the bank has a problem.

If the bank loans you a billion dollars, the US government has a problem.

The proverbial “they” hacked into her private email accounts. They swore that her daughter was the real mother of her Down Syndrome baby. They sent legions of reporters and lawyers to Alaska to dig up dirt. They wrote columns suggesting that she was stupid, uneducated, dishonest, a liar, and worse still. All this was the work of moralists, who, in their more extreme manifestations, tried to flood a Chicago radio station to disrupt guests, who doctored photos of McCain to subvert his portrait, who disgraced the Atlantic brand by trafficking in pregnancy rumors, and who now publish the private email of Palin.

And? She is still smiling and apparently unmoved.

He's offered no other explanation for how the U.S. got into this mess. He's signed on to pretty much every Washington bailout.

Mr. McCain has, in short, yielded to every temptation faced by a Republican in a financial crisis. Government largely created this mess, yet in a bid to look proactive he's calling for more government. Markets by necessity have winners and losers, yet he feels the need to offer aid to Americans who made bad bets.

"I definitely do not feel sorry for the bankers who lost their jobs in the last couple of days.

I can't believe that a country like the U.S.A. could have been so careless on a money issue!"

Absolutely, Ms. Noonan. I've always felt this about the presidency. It takes a giant (not a village) to make an end run around the entrenched bureaucratic elite who run our country, and to make their vision of what we can be an indelible part of our history.

In this century, only Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, and Ronald Reagan have had the confidence, force of will, and sense of destiny to do that.

Neither candidate in this cycle has that sense of mission, nor the sheer force of will to accomplish that almost insurmountable task.

I agree that "if you win bad in a 50/50 nation, it makes it really hard to govern." That's been the story for as long as I can remember, with the notable exception of President Reagan.

We all are waiting, I guess, for the grand new paradigm of a statesman, the person who comes along once in several generations who understands what his particular time truly means for the future of our country, and is able to find a new way.I don't think that's going to happen this time around.

Let’s tell the Wolf Blitzers and Campbell Browns, the Frank Richs and the Maureen Dowds that their time at the helm is over, that their influence exists only in the smallest corners of their own bloated egos.

Simply put, one ticket believes in the American people and the other believes in the American government.

One way or another, each episode involved severing the sleazy ties that bind public officials to grasping commercial interests, something even the Democratic left purports to favor.

It isn't just Washington and Juneau. You could open the nozzle on the same reform fire hose to wash the public-private slime out of the capital hallways of New York, New Jersey, California, Illinois and onward.

You say Sarah Palin doesn't have enough "experience" to run Washington? Washington is barely fit to be run.

The problem isn't standard political corruption. The problem is that the $2.8 trillion federal budget is a vast ocean of Beltway pilot fish feeding off scraps from the whale -- lawyers, lobbyists, ex-Members of Congress. No one runs the Sea of Washington. It's too big, too deep.

Obie has been dancing alone in the corner and seeing himself in the mirror as the most wonderful dancer in the world graceful and endearing and suave in every silky move.