Ernest Hemingway said once that to live and thrive in the world, one needs a "finely honed crap detector." When this was said years ago, if may have seemed overly blunt, but certainly on target. Today this device is an absolute necessity, especially when listening to Barack H. Obama. His recent attack speech on Wall Street may have been useful in a short term political sense, but it further illustrates why this president has a large and growing credibility gap.
By implying all Wall Street until now has been "bilking" America is a lie to say the least. Obviously, people lose money in markets. Obviously, people lie and commit fraud in this and other markets. When the SEC isn't ogling porn, they catch them and send them to jail. If Obama doesn't like the fact we have fraud in some markets, perhaps we should just abolish markets and have [drum roll please] communism. Perhaps I should take this back since he's already to taken this suggestion far too seriously.
Obviously, a man like Obama with such a limited understanding of capital markets really only embraces Will Rogers investing: "Only buy stocks that go up." To ideologue Obama, losing money is fraud, somebody betting against you dishonest, and people making more money you is not "fair." Funny, didn't JFK, the last decent Democratic president have something to say on this point? His quote was: "life is not fair." People lie and commit fraud all the time with little or no consequence. Ball players like Alex Rodriguez, David Ortiz, Miguel Tejada etc. lied and committed fraud and never went to jail or forfeited one dime. And they continue to ply their trade (though with Ortiz, who knows how much longer). Back to politics, Barack Obama said he wouldn't take private money for his campaign, but then he did. And lo and behold, the fraud was elected president. Barack Obama raised cigarette taxes which raised taxes on those making less than $150,000 a year. Yes, politicians break promises all the time, but Obama has lied about breaking this promise ever since. One standard seems to apply to Democrats and another to everyone else.
Article comments
1 - Ruvy
So, Mr. Ellis? These fat cats all stink from the same manure. It doesn't matter what political party they belong to (or which tea they drink).
The problem with the Obamanation boys is that they still think they have frayed wool to pull over people's eyes. Glenn Contrarion will be around soon to make some kind of tortured bullshit defense of all the wonderful things the Obama administration has done for ungrateful whiners like you who actually smell bullshit, and have the guts to call bullshit.
Send him my regards.
2 - Ruvy
By the way, in case anybody is wondering why I keep throwing rocks of every kind at the first immigrant president of the United States after I supported the SOB.
I wanted a Jew-hater in the White House so that my fellow Israelis would learn, bit by bit who their real enemies are. And the SOB is coming through - from the article:
Mordechai Dahman, head of the Dead Sea Regional Council, told Dalia Mazori of Maariv that kibbutz representatives had met with Barak several times in an attempt to resolve the issue, to no avail. “I told him, we honor the law and we won't play around, but please leave the foundations alone. He stood his ground,” Dahman recalled.
Contact from Takam
"The claim we heard from him was that Obama wanted to see that construction is being demolished everywhere it takes place and not just in the settlements,” he said. He explained afterwards to Israel National News that he meant that Obama wants to see all construction work destroyed, and not only that which began after the freeze was announced.
If Obama is going to be a Jew-hater, I will throw rocks of every kind at the SOB - because he is actualizing that hatred and hurting us here. And I'll continue to sing in your ears what kind of a bastard you really have for a president.
It's the truth, and that is all that counts.
3 - zingzing
dock--do some digging into wall street and republican campaign finance. or enron and campaign finance, especially in the gerrymandering case in texas. the dirt on campaign finance is endless. you could bury every elected official in the world in it and still have six feet on top.
and do you really think mae and mac are being run the same way they were before? no, you don't. but you don't mention that... why?
4 - zingzing
ruvy, what does this have to do with israel?
and we all know why you hate obama. because he's a stinking arab who hates the jews and would love to see israel erased from the map just because it's a personal hobby of his. we get it. ok?
there are ways to get your point across without being an annoying troll, which is what you've become. write a fucking article or something. just stop filling up everyone else's articles with off-topic, repetitive nonsense. if you're going to troll everyone around here, i'm going to troll you. i'll show you how annoying you are. it's only fair.
5 - roger nowosielski
Well, at least he's doing that on Doc's site, so he's just piling up crap on crap. No harm done.
But Ruvy does need a good trashing now and then to keep him from getting out of hand.
6 - John Wilson
Dock Ellis seems scornful of Obamas knowedge of finance, but how qualified is Ellis to judge? Has he, for example, ever signed a "Sophisticated Investor" statement, a NDA, a PPO, etc?
7 - Ruvy
zing,
You'll have your opportunity to be the troll you usually are on one of my articles. We'll see if any comment you make on my comment thread rises high enough from the manure to rate an answer. I doubt it....
8 - Les Slater
It's just getting harder to govern. The firestorm will follow whomever is in office. Dock's pointing at Obama is just boring.
9 - Glenn Contrarian
Dock -
y creating a $50 billion dollar bailout fund, some might be further encouraged to make risky investments and again have the government clean up the mess. Also, chew on this: the first bailout of AIG was over $80 billion. That was just the initial bailout. So this bailout fund will be like fighting a house fire with a garden hose -next to useless. Right now, the government is already on the hook for Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae to the tune of over $400 Billion. Sad to say, but in bailout terms $50 billion is chump change.
What you are NOT getting is that the VAST majority of banks that DID fail would have been EASILY handled by the $50B fund which is NOT a bailout fund. The law specifically states that the fund is not to be used to 'bail out' banks, but to help them close down and end operations in such a way that they will NOT damage the nation's economy.
Next time, please do something different and get your 'facts' straight. You could start by listening to somebody other than Fox News.
10 - Joanne Huspek
It doesn't matter if they are Republican or Democrat. They ALL are just as complicit. Which made watching the dog and pony show of yesterday rather laughable. Like the Democrats didn't know?
The true Fat Cats are within the Beltway, and those who run Wall Street know it.
11 - Glenn Contrarian
Joanne -
The true Fat Cats are the ones running Wall Street, for they are BUYING those within the Beltway.
Why do you think that the Republicans voted en masse to reject even a DISCUSSION of financial reform? They didn't vote down financial reform - they voted down the DISCUSSION of financial reform.
How anyone in their right mind could support the Republicans, I don't know.