What was Learned from Super Tuesday

Everbody wants a chance to beat Obama. The trouble is, they are attacking each other in videos that will be used by Obama in the fall. They are writing his campaign material for him.

Obama and Hillary were particularly nasty to one another too. There's nothing in this primary being revealed that Obama wasn't going to use anyway. By the time he gets a chance to use it, it will all be old news.

What we need is a candidate who sees we are about to run off the economic cliff caused by deficit spending.

What we need is a candidate who is willing to surrender in the War on Drugs.

What we need is a candidate who will keep us out of unneccessary and foolish wars.

What we need is a candidate who will actually defend the Constitution, after swearing to do so when being inaugurated.

And who might this be? Dr. Ron Paul, the only one who can make a difference. However, his unwillingness to lie to the electorate spells defeat for him.

We get the leaders we deserve.

For the GOPers who just want Obama out, Super Tuesday may turn out to be not unlike Punxsutawney Phil emerging from his hole to see his shadow, forecasting more cold and dreary days ahead.

Romney will be the eventual nominee, but until Gingrich and Santorum concede, the beatings of the eventual GOP hopeful will continue unabated. It hasn't been since Bob Dole in '96 that a plurality of Americans did not like the GOP candidate.

But according to Neil King at the Wall Street Journal (a conservative rag by the way), 40% of Americans disapprove of Romney, and only 28% approve.

Meanwhile, lost amidst the GOP kerfuffle is the fact that in Ohio, Obama got more votes than anybody (Obama = 547,588; Romeny = 456,205).

http://vote.sos.state.oh.us/pls/enrpublic/f?p=130:MYRESULTS:0

This not good news of you are dissatisfied with the previous three+ years...as many of us seem to be...

John, just to discuss your points

"What we need is a candidate who sees we are about to run off the economic cliff caused by deficit spending."

We have been deficit spending since the beginning of this country why is only a problem now?

"What we need is a candidate who is willing to surrender in the War on Drugs."

It's not even a real war so why would anyone even have to surrender? I do agree with your finer point that the War on Drugs is not working and is wasting resources and money. However, simply ending the War on Drugs does not make a good president, or even candidate.

"What we need is a candidate who will actually defend the Constitution, after swearing to do so when being inaugurated."

Outside of the horrific things that have been granted to Obama under Homeland Security can you actually point to anything that Obama has actually done to not defend the Constitution? Anything?

Either you have not been paying attention or just flat out ignoring him but Paul has lied on several occasions to the American public. Most recently he lied about knowing or not knowing what we being printed in his own paper that he was the editor of.

Is it not his "unwillingness" to lie that has made him an unpopular candidate it is the fact that when given the chance to expand on his ideas he often passes. This is my own opinion but I am pretty sure that the majority of the people that support Paul don't actually know what he supports and what he stands for, they have just heard him come out against war and that is good enough for them.

I disagree hometown everything being said in the primaries now is excellent fodder for the president and it won't be old news by the time the general election comes around. They are attacking each other over policy beliefs and Obama will/should use all of it for the election.

Romney is completely ripe for this considering his being for Obamacare before being against and actually running the program that Obamacare was based off of when he was governor. Even during the debate surrounding the health care debate he was still in favor of it.

That's just one.

This isn't aimed at anyone, so don't get paranoid. Just a song I'm learning to play. I know I'm off subject.

"My guard stood hard when abstract threats, too noble to neglect, deceived me into thinking I had something to protect." In a soldier's stance, I aimed my hand at the mongrel dogs who teach, Fearing not that I'd become my enemy In the instant that I preach. Bob Dylan lyrics.

I think we all could learn something here, don't get lost in the

ideals you stand for, and if you do, don't be foolish enough to think your right all the time. This is the way I perceived these lyrics, of course I could be wrong. And yes I know, it was a protest song but him and John Prine have in my opinion no equals when it comes to songwriting lyrics.

Dylan is awesome. John Prine is the man. Can we put Steve Earle in there too? He's got a great protest song...

"Bobby had an eagle and a flag tattooed on his arm

Red white and blue to the bone when he landed in Kandahar

Left behind a pretty young wife and a baby girl

A stack of overdue bills and went off to save the world

Been a year now and he's still there

Chasin' ghosts in the thin dry air

Meanwhile back at home the finance company took his car

Just another poor boy off to fight a rich man's war"

Check out the video if you want to...

http://www.cmt.com/videos/steve-earle/42461/rich-mans-war.jhtml

"Obama not defending the Constitution? Anything?"

Michael, do you really think running 3,000 guns into Mexico illegally is within the Constitutional powers of the federal government?

http://www.examiner.com/conservative-in-national/fast-and-furious-100-congressme...

Oh, right, I'll bet you think Obama and his buddy Holder didn't know anything about it. As if the people at BATFE would do anything this wild and crazy (or Fast & Furious) without some real authority from the White House. It was done to promote more gun control here and to justify White House propoganda that 90% of the guns used in the Mexican drug war came from the U.S. Oops, a border control agent got killed by one of those guns! Do you wonder how his wife feels? NOBODY, NOT ONE PERSON HAS LOST THEIR JOB OVER THIS.

ObamaCare is definitely in violation of the Constitution, unless you don't think the old piece of paper places ANY limits on the federal government. We will be forced to buy insurance. The Supreme Court will take a look at that issue. 72% of the population thinks it is unconstitutional!

http://www.forbes.com/sites/merrillmatthews/2012/03/01/the-constitutional-issue-...

Does the Constitution allow US citizens to be killed with a bomb dropped from a drone, without a hearing, without a trial, without charges being brought and the citizen allowed to defend himself? Obama applauded the action! So you can't say he didn't know about it. http://articles.cnn.com/2011-09-30/politics/politics_targeting-us-citizens_1_al-...

The Constitution requires that CONGRESS declare war, before we go to war. We have not had an official Declaration of War since WWII! How is it that we have been at war nearly every year since 1945, without such a declaration? Korea, Viet Nam, Iraq 1, Afghanistan, Iraq 2, were the biggest ones.

I know Obama did not start these. But what's Obama been doing in Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Egypt, Somalia, Nigeria, and Uganda (just since 2010)? He's not playing patty-cake with the locals.

I was in the Army once, long ago. Here is the Oath of Enlistment:

"I, (NAME), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God."

What do you do if the President orders you to kill a US citizen, in clear violation of the Constitution that he also swore to defend? Without a hearing, trial, or anything...hmm.

Could the Preident decide he doesn't like the way Michael Hendricks is criticising his policies and ...BANG!? All we know for sure is that Awlaki was critical of US policy. Was he guilty of something actually against the law? How will we ever know?

My intent was not to focus on protest songs, it was that I believe they are both great lyrics writers. Yes, I have most of Steave Earle's cd's and he is good. He has had a rough life with being a heroin addict and five wives, this is the reason Nashville has shunned him for all these years. I have seen him in quite a few movies and made for tv shows, he is easy to spot, heavy, balding and long hair. But the best is Dwight Yoakam playing the bad guy in Sling Blade with Billy Bob Thornton.

"I hate you Doyle"

"I hate you too you little p***k"

Good Movie

"We have been deficit spending since the beginning of this country why is only a problem now?"

Well now, Michael. It's been a problem for a long time, and you surely know it. You seem bright enough.

The projected official federal deficit this year is $1.3 trillion. Just like 2009, 2010 and 2011--it's a trend, friend.

I have a Franklin half dollar from 1963. It was worth 50 cents back when it was minted. Today online it will sell for about $13.

http://www.mjpm.com/silver.cfm

These are "junk silver" circulated coins, beat up coins, not collectibles. $13 less $.50 equals $12.50 of inflation. In other words the dollar has lost 12/13ths of its value since 1963...92% in the past 49 years.

That half dollar would buy you a hamburger, fries and a shake back then. 4,000 of them, or $2,000 bought you a new car. A house cost $10,000 or 20,000 of them. (20,000 of them at $13 is worth $260,000 today, and it will still buy you a house.)

I was living then, and I remember.

That's why it matters to me. Does it matter to you?

"My intent was not to focus on protest songs..."

The opinions of those we respect can certainly get uncomfortable..but why not focus on protest songs? Why not compile a list of the 10 best protest songs and a defense as to why they belong where they do? I bet that conversation would be 100 times more interesting and important than whatever JohnGalt is writing about above.

http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/tomjones/shesalady.html

This isn't a protest song but was my 2nd favorite song before I was 6.

http://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/Resurrection-Shuffle-lyrics-Tom-Jones/772...

My Favorite song by Tom Jones.

Still love both songs today.

Wallis

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_7C0QGkiVo

Benevolus, in a few more years of deficits like we have now, you will likely be more interested in finding enough food to fill your belly, than in the top 10 protest songs.

"Hey buddy, can you spare a dime?" gets my vote.

http://www.metrolyrics.com/brother-buddy-can-you-spare-a-dime-lyrics-peter-paul-...

But I have plenty of food right now, John, and I have a king-hell computer with an incredible amount of bandwidth s I can watch Surivorman, and Man vs Wild, and Dual Survival, ad naeuseum. So lists it is in my finite spare time...here is a funny one that I took a picture of in the Beadle Center outside of a biology professor's office just a few hours ago.

Note: For the record, I am sharing the list because I am not sure if it is a better commentary on the absurdity of academia or religion...but I bet you all will have some opinions...

The Top 15 Reasons God Did Not get a PhD

1. He had only one major publication.

2. It was in Hebrew.

3. It had no references.

4. It wasn't published in a refereed journal.

5. Some even doubt he wrote it by himself.

6. It may be true that he created the world, but since then do we have any idea what work he has done?

7. His cooperative efforts have been quite limited.

8. The scientific community has had a hard time replicating his results.

9. He never applied to the ethics board for permission to use human subjects.

10. When subjects didn't behave as predicted, he deleted them from the sample.

11. When one experiment went awry he tried to cover it by drowning his subjects.

12. He rarely taught class, he just told students to read the book.

13. Some say he had his son teach his classes more often than he did.

14. He expelled his first two students for wanting to learn.

15. Although there are only 10 requirements, he designed his tests so that most students would fail.

Ahh, the combination of cleverness and time...okay, I am ready for you to tell me how evil I am...

I sincerely hope you always have plenty of food.

Great list, too.

Since God already knows it all, a PhD is unlikely to be of help.

:)

John, I notice that your trend for the deficit doesn't go out to the projections for 2012-2014 which actually show the deficit shrinking, if the Republicans will keep their hands of the programs already running and that will start running in the next few years.

Of course I wouldn't expect you to mention that considering that it blows a huge hole in whatever argument it is that you are pushing.

I have no clue what your junk metal argument was about, to be honest.

Benevolus,

I would think items 12 and 13 from the list you posted would support God's PhD candidacy not oppose it.

Michael, we just had the highest deficit ever for the month of February, and you actually believe the deficit is shrinking for 2012, let alone for 2013 and 2014?

A beat up 50 cent piece from 1963 is now worth $13, and you claim you haven't got a clue why that matters? HINT: while the paper dollars from 1963 are still worth just ONE dollar; the 90% silver halves are selling at 26 times face value. It's because silver is now worth $34 per ounce, when priced in terms of our depreciating currency.

I have no argument, just presenting the hard, cold facts. Ignore them if you wish.

Most people ignore the important and pay rapt attention to the unimportant; thus, the popularity of American Idol. Just put me on "ignore", Dawg. Really, it's OK. I am totally unaffected by whether you get it or not.

SWNebr,

Yeah I can see your point there. Touche.

I've only watched American Idle once for about 2 min I got a headache AND a nosebleed.

"Just put me on "ignore", Dawg"

Not making fun but this line reminded me of the line:DON'T TASE ME BRO"

If you don't know what this is Google it and watch the video it's hilarious.

Another good one; this time a bumper sticker...

"Obama is not a foreign-born, brown-skinned, anti-war socialist who wants to give away free healthcare...you are thinking of Jesus."

Benevolus,

That has to be about the worst bumper sticker of all time

Oh I don't know, I have seen some pretty bad ones.

Benevolus,

I mean seriously, how close would someone need to be to read all of that? That bumper sticker completely defeats the purpose of a pithy comment that tells the world behind you how you feel.

I'm surprised it hasn't caused accidents by people trying to read it all.

Apparently you don't live in Lincoln...lights here last FOREVER. I read that bumper sticker and half of Karl Marx's manifesto waiting for green lights along 9th Street on my way to my useless/socialist/impractical job on east campus this morning.

Interesting that you carry a copy of Marx's manifesto with you. I figured you for a city campus worker, I thought it was pretty much ag on east campus.

I've seen a few bumper stickers that maybe both sides can laugh at. Ist one, a picture of Obama with the caption, "Does this *** make my truck look big." 2nd one was during the Bush administration, "Somewhere in Texas there missing a town idiot." 3rd one," We can put a man on the moon but we can't put a man on Rosy O'Donnell."

SWNebr,

As a member of the geography department, my office is on east campus. I take the new thoroughfare Salt Creek Rd. to east campus.

http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=nlk&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:...

Big government is awesome, thank our lord Obama for his wonderous stimulus...this route saves like 5 minutes.

Sorry this is the right link..sweet new way across town... http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=nlk&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:...

Dang it...this is it...sorry... http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=nlk&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:...

This is getting ridiculous...

http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=EIQ&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:...

By the way SWNebr,

I also carry Adam Smith's: The Wealth of Nations...you know to stay centered.

Another good one SWNebr, this time one of those pithy (nice word by the way) posters you see on Facebook...

Preposterous: Its good ole capitalism when you spend trillions on killing....but spending on health and healing is evil communism.

"Preposterous: Its good ole capitalism when you spend trillions on killing....but spending on health and healing is evil communism."

If you think health care is expensive now, wait until it's free under ObamaCare. New Congressional Budget Office estimates have doubled the expected cost in the next 10 years. And remember these are just estimates. http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/03/14/cbo-health-law-estimate-shows-much-hi...

Communism is evil because it destroys the lives of its citizens everywhere. Stalin starved 5 million to death in the Ukrain alone. Obey or starve. Pnom Phen in Cambodia, Mao Zedung in China, and Kim II-sung in North Korea all committed unimaginable attrocities during the purges in the nations they ruled. Call it socialism, communism or fascism--the end result is disastrous everywhere. Top-down government controlled economies destroy freedom and create slaves.

Intellectuals beware--they're the first to be executed.

I agree that war is stupid in general. Very rarely necessary, except to the leaders. Please don't confuse capitalism with fascism. Capitalism has raised the standard of living all over the western world. But true capitalism is in decline, being replaced by fascism, as evidenced by the bailouts of businesses.

Couple things John,

You may want to google the definition of fascism so as to not sound so...oh you know__________ (insert 'i' word).

Also, for as long as either one of has been alive, America has never been purely capitalistic or purely anything else for that matter. One could easily (and correctly) argue that the nation was made strong by capitalism and moral by regulation of capitalism. Child labor laws, standardized work week, equal pay for equal work, overtime, consumer protections laws....etc. The system works the way it does because America has done a relatively decent job of balancing government imposition upon the free-market. The exceptions being, of course, the near catastrophic failure of capitalism in 1929 when American laissez-faire economics was 'roaring' along with the rest of the 20's.

It should not come as any surprise that Clinton relaxed government regulation throughout the 1990's, especially with the repeal of Glass-Steagal, and then the next decade the bottom nearly falls out again.

Anyone who is surprised by the fact that an unchecked free-market is bound to fail is a fascist. :)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_of_1873

Please read this and the next few.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_of_1893

First was 1873. This is 1893.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_of_1907

This is 1907.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wall_Street_Crash_of_1929

The crash of 1929.

http://advisorperspectives.com/dshort/charts/markets/bear-recoveries.html?bears-...

Please study this link. It has tabs with all bear markets since 1956.

If you study all of this "History" about financial crisis in the United States going back 150 years you will notice common themes. There is over building due to easy credit. Bankruptcy's occur and most of the time currency "easing" of some sort occurs.

If you are a student of the markets you can learn from the past that all booms are followed by busts. And all busts are followed by booms.

You can always buy low and sell high if you are a long term market participant. When credit gets easy trouble is around the bend. Bankruptcy's happen and are good because the weak hands or "johnny come lately's" are forced out.

The 1995-2000 run in the market was nauseating. The Tech bubble was painful to watch. Stocks had PE ratio's >80. Internet stocks were insane.

My brother traded the high flyers from 1996-1998. Bought momentum and trailed with stops. Got out of Tech all together and started buying oil stocks in 1999 after oil had collapsed and all the mergers started happening.

I bought oil service stocks in this era. I stayed away from Tech totally.

Just as a side note. AAPL (apple) is trading at a very high price but it's PE ratio is around 10. When CSCO and MSFT and DELL and JDSU and AMZN were the high flyers they were trading at >50 PE's. Many of the high flyers from those days aren't even around anymore. My point is nothing is new. It has all happened before. If you study history you see that the same things happen every 10-30 years.

Wallis

http://www.deptofnumbers.com/asking-prices/

We may have found a bottom is housing.

My indicators tell me we have. Housing bottoms 18 months after unemployment peaks.

The wild card is the about 5 million folks aren't being counted in the employment report anymore. Thereby lowering the unemployment rate. However, I am going to say the data is the data and housing has bottomed. Time to start shopping.

Wallis

Excellent insight, Wallismarsh, on how the economy operates. Why the boom/bust cycle is always a part of it. Until our fools in DC understand that, we will not have a recovery. They have been trying to prevent the bust part of the cycle, using taxpayer funds, of course. It doesn't work like that.

The run up to the subprime mess was led by government housing policy, pushing home ownership for people with no money down at the end. That's fascism, not market economics. After the whole govt sponsored mess failed, guess who wrote the legislation that added huge amounts of regulation on the banks and S&Ls but not Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac?

Barney Frank and Chris Dodd. Two of the leaders in creating the debacle.

Sure the lenders played a part, but they were encouraged by the govt to make those loans, and the govt bought the loans up so there was no risk. Without the govt agencies supporting the stupidity, it never would have occurred.

There are still millions of nonperforming home loans that have not been foreclosed yet. The loans are sitting on the bank books at full value though, because the banks would still be underwater otherwise. They aren't strong enough to take the balance sheet hit just yet, even after tremendous injections of capital by the taxpayers.

Wallis, I think you are right that some RE markets have bottomed. Others are still falling and probably will for another decade. I don't see Detroit real estate coming back for a while, as there are no buyers at any price.

Fascism = government combining with business to screw everybody else. Hitler did it. Musolini did it. The US government is doing it.

The mainstream media always abets the powers that be. They are rarely independent. They are businessmen first and journalists last, and they cozy up to whoever is in power.

Wallis,

You have to remember a few things about the history of the world's financial systems in order to understand the present (and the need to control the free-market). The first bubble/bust cycle, as recounted by Niall Ferguson (professor at Harvard; Research Fellow at Jesus College, Oxford, and Senior fellow at the very conservative Hoover Institute), begins in France in 1708 when John Law of Edinburgh comes up with a brand of financial alchemy that changes the financial landscape forever: public note-issuing banks.

Before this point, the bubble/bust cycle was not an inevitability of capitalism. What existed before the 18th century was nothing much other than a systematic keeping of receipts and disbursements. Inflation, foreign debt, and war bond defaults were all very powerful contributors to swings in national economies from Argentina to Italy to Japan. You can trace these facts all the way back to the Medici banchieri (who, as the name suggest, basically invented the account ledger/banking) in the 15th century.

Law, in 18th century France however, devised a system of financial gambling which he tested on the French economy by purposefully injecting a surplus of banknotes (a new concept at the time) and thus created a bubble in order to bring the French economy out of recession. It worked.

The problem, is not that busts must inevitably follow bubbles per se. It is that a part of human frailty is not knowing when to stop in the face of a good thing.

By 1720, Law's meddling with share prices for France's largest corporations, in particular by banning the production/importing/exporting of gold and silver so as to make banknotes more attractive than coins, had come to a head. There was a 94% increase in publicly held banknotes, and meanwhile France's largest corporation (Company of the West) dropped from trading 9000 livres to 5000. Desperate to avert a total meltdown, Law completely devalued banknotes, bringing the entire nation near to revolution. Law was eventually run out of town, admitting that he had "made great mistakes...because I am only human."

All of Europe fell into financial disarray, and what emerges is the beginning of legislating external control over the markets. The Bubble Act gets passed in Britain in 1720, which made it illegal to establish new companies without statutory authority, it also curbed existing companies by not allowing them to conduct financial actives not detailed in their charters.

The point, Wallis, is that you are not quite right about booms and busts being inevitable. While a look at history demonstrates your point, one can find just as easily find many examples of smart regulation and restriction minimizing the swings inherent in a totally free-market.

This is the lesson, John, that our leaders need to learn. Reducing restrictions on the market causes booming and busting to be much worse than it needs to be.

Also...

Fascism is a philosophy of government that has historically placed the values of nationalism and often race above the rights of the individual; also, fascist regimes can be characterized by their autocratic leadership headed by a dictatorial leader with unlimited power.

You cannot, with any honesty, reason, or logic, refer to the American form of government as fascist, no matter much you dislike the current president.

I would buy, however, that America is a lot more plutocratic than it is democratic, and this is clear in your example about bank (I would add auto/airline) bailouts. But this is what happens when giant private companies are allowed to run our government via lobbies, special interests, and more recently, campaign contributions. This is also why a powerful central government is needed to check corporate power...I fear that our current (and historic) plutocratic bent may be intractable though, because the government has already been bought and paid for many times over by our giant corporations.

Benevolus - I will put my track record against yours any day.

I have been investing in markets and studying markets for the last 30 years.

Email me your email address at wmarsh@extex.net and I will email you my presentation that I give to MBA classes. You might learn something as the proof is in the pudding.

If anyone else is interested you can email me as well.

Wallis Marsh

http://price.ou.edu/newsletterfall2011/article4.asp

Picture 15 and 16.

Wallis

Wallis,

I'm not inviting you to a ******* contest. Nor am I questioning your clearly impressive knowledge and experience; however long my learning curve may be in relation to where you are now, I can assure you that I do not espouse a position with regard to economic matters without a satisfactory amount of study and research.

I will email you for that presentation and I will learn much, I am sure. I ask in return that you read "The Ascent of Money". Deal?

I have read the book and watched the special. It is a good piece and talks about booms and busts.

Wallis

I am a student of W.D. Gann. There is a chance that a significant Gann move is about to be made in oil. The projected number could be $161 and the overshot number could be $180. This campaign could begin in 7 days with April being the pivotal month.

This is not a prediction. This is just a set up that is very close to being realized. This kind of set up has only happened 3 times in my lifetime. The first being in 1973, 1979 and the last being 2008.

Wallis

S&P 1425 is very close to being realized. That has been a nice 25%-30% run.

Wallis

So is a nominee by April 10th a long time?

BTW Clinton dropped out June 6, 2008. I still find that primary interesting. Clinton won several big states but due to the caucus' Obama actually won more delegates than Clinton in some of the states that Clinton won.

I never got that vote twice deal.

Wallis