Ken's Comments

The link below is to an interesting story about President Obama. The gist of the Politico article is that there are some themes or "storylines" developing about the Obama Administration. If more than one of catches firm hold in the minds of the public it could damage President Obama's chances at re-election. Now you might say, give me an example - last year, the Democrats developed a story line that John McCain would be four more years of President Bush, it was not true, but it was a prospect no one really wanted. The Obama campaign picked up on that and was very successful in getting people to believe the story line and it had a lot to do with President Obama getting a significant number of votes from independent voters and conservative Democrats. Here is the link to the article: http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/20091130/pl_politico/29993 Comments on a couple of the story lines: 1. One story line suggests President Obama is over-exposed. Interestingly, President John...

A very interesting story from the NY Times about the crisis looming ahead thanks to the Bush / Obama economic recovery plan. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/23/business/23rates.html?th&emc=th Essentially, the Bush / Obama economic recovery plan is a lot like taking out an adjustable rate mortgage with really low teaser interest rates. When interest rates go up, the Federal government is going to be slammed. The NY Times - not what I'd call a conservative news outlet - article has a quote estimating that interest payments on the money we've borrowed will be as much as $700 billion per year in the future. That is as much as we spent this year on the economic stimulus bill and we will be paying that each year. Now, just to review, what is Bush / Obama economic recovery plan? It involves spending lots and lots of money that the Government does not have including: Economic stimulus - $400 billion under President Bush if I recall correctly, repeated by President Obama at a higher ...