Practice Makes Perfect

Tomorrow, millions of people will cast a vote believing that their candidate will change the fabric of our society. To most participants in our republic, Election Day is the ultimate moment of truth. Consider the staggering cost of this election cycle. Congressional and Presidential candidates will have spent over $5,300,000,000 for this day. Cable and broadcast news agencies have logged countless hours of coverage and crazed bloggers from both sides crawled out of the woodwork, ranting and attacking at will. Pollsters have been conducting their own elections daily for months. Sean Hannity has quite literally been counting down the days until "Judgement Day" for 364 days. Obama was either pictured or mentioned on the cover of 12 magazines on the rack at Borders yesterday. Google "Obama" and you will get 216 million hits. Even "McCain" gets 152 million. Either one get more hits than Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, and Lindsay Lohan combined. What I'm trying to say is that this election has been hyped like none before. And this hype really makes me hostile. This election has been aready been overanalyzed and probed before it ever actually happened. All this analysis exists to tell we the people what we are going to do. Another result of all this hype is that everyone feels that the results of this election must be historic. The fabric of our society will be altered and the path of our nation will be changed. But let me ask you a simple question that I have yet to hear: Will tomorrow's election be a cause or an effect? Does an election reflect or create social change? The real essential question is whether electing Obama will fundamentally change our country, or does electing Obama reflect a fundamental change that has already taken place? Allow me to digress for a moment. I had a moment of inspiration while reading an article about the Dallas Cowboys in my most recent Sports Illustrated. Zach Thomas mentioned an old saying: "You don't win on Sunday. You win on Wednesday and Thursday." In other words, what you do in practice determines the result on game day. I remember football practice. It started each day with stretching and agility sprints. Then the team splits into position groups to learn and execute the fundamentals of their position. As a lineman, mostly I ran through the line cage and hit the sled. After that, we ran either laps, sprints, or relays. I never was very fond of all that exertion. But I recognized that performing those menial basic tasks in the proper manner would determine game performance. A slow lazy weakling at practice was a slow lazy weakling during the game. People who ran fast and hit hard during practice did so during the game. Now consider America as a football team. Tomorrow is game day. Do you think that our country is full of slow lazy weaklings or do we run fast and hit hard? How hard have you practiced the fundamentals of democracy, freedom, and independence in your everyday life? How about your teammates? How many people do you know who already live off the government? How many people you encounter on a daily basis are ignorant and apathetic about their freedoms that are already being stifled? Are you one of those who have succombed to the tyranny over the minds of men? If Obama wins tomorrow, it will not mean that capitalism will die and freedoms will be torn away from us. It will not mean that we will become a country that embraces the killing of unborn children. It will not mean that we will become dependent on the government to provide our needs and wants. It will not mean that we will give up on the war on terror and open our borders. It will not mean that we will become a nation that values style over substance and charisma over character. It will not mean that America will become a lesser nation. No, if Obama wins tomorrow, it will mean that all of this has already happened.

Monsters in the Woods

Untrue myths and legends are born out of fear and ignorance. The more fearful and ignorant people are, the more believable those myths are. For example, the Big Piney Monster lives in the caves around the Big Piney River and eats canoers. Now, if you've floated and camped along the Big Piney for your entire life, that legend will not keep you awake at night when you're camping on a gravel bar. But if you've never been camping anywhere before and you hear the story of the Big Piney Monster, you are more likely to think something sinister is lurking the bushes. That's because you're easily frightened and simply don't know any better.

Scared and ignorant people make really, really bad decisions. There's scared little voice in our heads that override all common sense. That little voice tells us to shoot the monster grunting and rustling in the bushes in the dark. In truth, it's one of you fellow campers taking a crap in the bushes. That little voice tells us to swerve around the deer in the road. In truth, you're swerving into a semi in the other lane. That little voice tells us that the crowd fleeing from a nightclub fire must be headed to an exit. In truth, that crowd is heading to a locked door. You see that big, loud voice of panic will get you and other people killed. That is why I would consider keeping people scared and ignorant to be the greatest tyranny one can exert over the minds of man. Even calm and informed people are sheep. Keep them scared and ignorant, you can manipulate people to do almost anything. And once you manipulate one, the herd will follow. All of this is a metaphor for the current state of "the" economy. Right now, millions of Americans are scared and ignorant about economics. They are told in every news broadcast the latest, worst economic news the media can find. Seizing on this, Obamabiden became the scared little voice in everyone's head that sounds so logical in a time of crisis. They tell us that the rich are monsters and must be punished. In truth, they are just as innocent as a guy crapping in the woods. They tell us that we must allow the federal government to take drastic steps and take away more of our money to help those less fortunate. In truth, we are avoiding a minor impact to our wallets and steering to a major impact that will take even more money and freedom away from us all. And they tell us that we are all in an economic crisis together. In truth, they are herding us toward a locked door. So, for the sake of our economic well-being and freedom, take a deep breath and let some common sense creep past the voice of panic and be the one who lets the guy crap in peace, hits the deer to avoid a semi, and doesn't get trampled in the herd.

Have You Ever Seen Scanners?

Due to my recent head explosions I had been unable to keep current with my posts. This happened the instant that I heard that the governement (that is, we the people) bought out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. After I pieced my head back together and cleaned the walls I hear that we also bought AIG. That was when this photo was taken. I have now fully recovered, but the walls are a lost cause. I'm going to Home Depot for some red paint. I honestly had no idea what the hell Fannie and Freddie did until after I bought them. After a week of research I guess I know what they do, but I sure as hell don't understand it. I'm not going to take up all my blog space with details. They take the value of existing mortgages as collateral for new loans. Let that soak for a moment. They use other people's existing loans as collateral for new loans. Let me use a smaller scale example to show how absolutely crazy this is. Let's say that I want to get a loan to buy a house that costs $100,000. I walk into the bank to talk to a loan officer. I have no down payment, no credit history, no assets, and no cosigner. However, there are five people that live on my street who have $100,000 mortgages for their houses in different banks in town. Each of those other people have paid in $20,000. To secure my loan, I tell the loan officer to "purchase" those other five loans from the other banks. So, my bank pays the other banks a total of $500,000 plus a little interest to purchase the other loans. Those other five people still pay their own banks and have no idea this happened. Since each loan has $20,000 in equity, my bank now has a total of $100,000 in equity, which they give to me to purchase my house. So now my bank has $500,000 in liability and zero assets. The other five banks still count each original loan's $20,000 as their equity. My bank now relies on the other five borrowers and me to make our montly payments to bring in assets. If just one of us forcloses, the bank resells the house. With the housing market no longer overvalued, it can only sell the house for $85,000. That means the bank just lost $15,000. If my bank hadn't given me my loan, the bank would have actually profited $5,000 since the original loan had $20,000 paid into it. That sounds like a pretty bad situation doesn't it? But wait, it gets worse. Much, much worse. Let's throw in some varibles. Let's say the guy that forclosed actually had taken out a second mortgage to pay his credit card bills, buy a boat, or just spent it on hookers and booze. So the original note of $100,000 became $140,000. Now the bank lost $55,000. But it couldn't get any worse than that, right? Well, Congressional Democrats (including the entire Presidential ticket) want that person who foreclosed to keep his house. That means the bank can't resell the house. That means a total loss of $120,000 on a house that was originally only valued at $100,000. And the bank has zero assets and still has another $400,000 (or more) in liability. Hooray, Democrats. Now, to understand why Frannie and Freddie were "too big to fail," just change the $500,000 total liability in the above example with $6,000,000,000,000. We must also understand that when Frannie and Freddie "purchase" these loans, they never leave the books at the banks from which they buy them. The actual consumer never knows that their equity was used to secure loans for other people. So, when you take out a second mortgage, you're actually taking out a third mortgage. In the above example, the bank that originated the loan currently has the right to collect the $20,000 of equity from my bank in the case of a forclosure. If Frannie and Freddie closed shop, it would mean that half of the home equity in America (that's $6,000,000,000,000) would just disappear out of banks all over America. So, you and I have oficially purchased these two brilliant companies. But what you didn't know is that they had already taken every ounce of equity you thought you had in your home. They took it to loan it to other people. And the insanity of it all is that even with government control, they show no signs of stopping this practice. This system was originally designed to help poor people secure loans to buy modest homes. Today, it is being used to secure loans to buy wealthy people (including many politicians) multi-million dollar mansions that they could even pay for in cash. Now this system is not limited to just Fannie and Freddie, they compose only half of the secondary mortgage market. That means there is another $6,000,000,000,000 out there in secondary mortgage companies with palms outstretched. So those talking heads that say this buyout will cost taxpayers over $1,000,000,000,000, get ready to purchase the other half soon. Now, I've always said that I don't deal with solutions, but I have a little more to say. These companies may be too big to fail, but this system is far too insane to continue. We may not be able to close them down, but for the love of all that is good and pure, heed the words of Lemonhead from The Shield. "Why can't we just do what we're supposed to do and stop?"