Random Thoughts

1. Banks v. Government
I have heard the argument a lot lately that we should be blaming the government not the banks for the economic mess because the government allowed the bailouts and the banks would not have been saved except for the bailouts.  While this is factually true, the argument fails for one reason in particular: it absolves the banks of any responsibility for their practices prior to, during and after the bailouts.  I agree that the government is ultimately responsible for allowing the banks to act recklessly and to save them when their reckless acts kill the economy.  However, we have to realize that the banks are running the government.  These things don't just happen.  Wall Street has hijacked our political process.  Our government is literally bought.  Our Presidents for the past 30 years, Democrat and Republican, have done the bidding of financial institutions.  Our Congress sells their constituents down the river as they bathe in the rivers of campaign cash that flow from Wall Street.  Our Supreme Court has wrapped bribery in the cloak of the Constitution to benefit their well heeled friends.  Yes, it is the government's fault, but we mustn't ignore the source of the corruption and that is the banks.

2. The Charlatan U.S.

The latest on the "People's Candidate" Herman Cain.  It seems old Herman has gotten himself into quite a pickle.  Not only are the affects of his 9-9-9 plan coming under greater and greater criticism from all sides, but it appears that he is enriching himself by running for President.  It came out this week that his campaign has spent campaign contributions to purchase 100,000 copies of Cain's book.  How many of you out there who may have contributed to Cain's campaign figured that your hard earned cash would be going to line Herman's pockets.  I guess he sees the Presidency as another entrepreneurial opportunity.  Of course, it would stand to reason that a former Chairman of the Kansas City Federal Reserve Board would know well how to fleece the American taxpayer for his own benefit.

3. The Mess Known As the Big East

No word yet about whether Missouri will bolt the Big XII for the SEC.  However, if they do it will be the last nail in the coffin of the Big East football conference.  The Big XII has made no secret of the fact that if this happens they will be taking two Big East teams (Louisville and either West Virginia or Cincinnati) along with BYU to get back to twelve teams.  This will bring the Big East down to 5 permanent football schools and nix the expansion plans to add 6 teams from C-USA and the Mountain West.  It will also pretty much torpedo any extension of the automatic qualifier for the conference in the BCS beyond 2013 and may in fact end it prior to then.  If the Big East had any pride left at all (which they don't) they would fire their commissioner and vote to end the football conference after this year allowing the remaining hostages to negotiate their own conference alignment and salvage any hope of having a future for football at their respective institutions.

4. More Big East Stupidity

The person who has been put in charge of the Big East's expansion efforts is the Athletic Director at Notre Dame.  Notre Dame, with its independent status in football and their own television contract, has it in their best interest for the Big East to be as weak as possible in football so that they don't compete with Notre Dame.  Who the hell is running this mess?

5. Syracuse 49 West Virginia 23

There's nothing else really to add to this, it just makes me smile.

6. Obama's Empty Promises

I will have more to say about this in an upcoming full length post.  However, expect the Obama campaign through its bought and sold institutional liberal lackeys MoveOn.org and others to try to make a big deal of the fact that he is supposedly removing all troops from Iraq by the end of the year.  Besides the fact that it is 36 months later than he said when he was campaigning and 18 months later than the delayed deadline that he imposed on himself after taking office, this does not mean that Obama has re-found his populist liberal persona that got him elected.  The recent "uncovered plot" involving a ridiculous plan of an Iranian used car dealer to assassinate the Saudi and Israeli Ambassadors to the U.S. indicates that this is just a preliminary to Obama using U.S. forces against Iran.  First off, I don't believe the facts of this story for a minute (if you're going to institute a believable "false flag" terrorist plot, you have to go through with the actual attack, otherwise it just sounds stupid).  Secondly, the vehemence with which the entire Obama foreign policy team went after this story seems to be setting the stage for a move on Iran.

7.  Don't Knock the Use of Drones

There's been a lot of criticism on the left (and some on the right) about the use of U.S. drones to attack those accused by the U.S. of being terrorists.  This criticism has been especially ramped up after the killing of U.S. citizens in Yemen who allegedly acted against the U.S. through terrorist organizations to organize and sponsor attacks against U.S. citizens and interests.  To my friends on the left, open your minds to the implications of this action.  We all know that folks like Jamie Dimon, Lloyd Blankfein, Ben Bernanke and Timothy Geithner have been acting as financial terrorists against U.S. citizens and U.S. interests.  I'm just sayin'...