Mr. Moderate

Suppose you read a story about a criminal gang that broke into a state lottery office and stole a batch of winning tickets. They get caught and punished, but the state gives them their lottery winnings anyway. Would you be outraged at such a set of circumstances?

Well, that is more-or-less what the current “compromise” immigration bill calls for. People who are in this country illegally get a mild punishment, but they still win the lottery and gain legal status within the US labor force. Normal immigrants have to win a real lottery to gain entry visas into the United States. Why should illegal immigrants get to move ahead of all of the folks who have played by the rules?

In my view, the only possible fair treatment of illegal immigrants is to require them to go to the back of the line and start over. That is what we would tell anybody who tried to cut into line, right? So, illegal immigrants, “go to the back of the line!”
Continue reading ‘No To Immigration Bill’ »

It was announced recently that the first quarter of 2007 experienced a further decline in year-over-year housing prices. This was blamed on an unexpectedly-large decline in the month of March. Well now, why could that be? Could it be the housing bubble bursting?

Of course, the announcement was inflated by much optimism in that the quarterly number was less than the reduction in the previous quarter, so the announcement argues that the decline is bottoming-out and recovery (higher prices) should occur in the second half of 2007. Buried deep in the details of the underlying article was the statement that the effects of the collapse of the sub-prime mortgage market were yet to be fully factored into the market, and if that kept buyers away, then further declines might occur. Oh, really? Well, then, I predict further declines!
Continue reading ‘Housing: Whistling Through The Graveyard’ »

One thing I am not a fan of is illegal immigration. In fact, I strongly believe that the total hypocrisy of the Bush administration is on display on our southern border. How can we possibly have a “war on terror” when we will allow any terrorist who can get into Mexico to freely cross into the United States? There is no real “war on terror.” Instead, we have a war on the US middle class! Our wages go down just a tad for every new illegal immigrant who adds to the bottom end of the labor pool and starts competing for jobs under the Law of Supply and Demand. For more on this point, please read my page on Immigration & Wages.
Continue reading ‘Secure Our Borders!’ »

I get so mad listening to President Bush continue to argue for his “stay the course” strategy when it is obvious to the majority of Americans that the ship is drifting ever closer to rocky shoals. In my mind, the 2008 election can’t come quickly enough to get the USA a new hand on the rudder of the ship-of-state.

Osama bin Laden is, to all intents and purposes, stronger than he ever was, in that he has more “combat effectives” at his disposal today than he did on September 11, 2001. This result is due to a totally bungled war effort that sent most of our combat forces off to Iraq, where there were few (if any) actual terrorists, and only a few combat troops off to Afghanistan and the border regions of Pakistan where there remain many terrorists and terrorist sympathizers. Including, of course, one very tall Saudi by the name of Osama bin Laden.
Continue reading ‘Iraq & Terror - What Next?’ »

Wikipedia has an excellent article on the housing bubble in the United States. I can’t recommend it highly enough. (At least, as the article stood as of the date of this post; it could be changed tomorrow for all I know.) As it sits, it aligns perfectly with my own thinking on this subject. If you want more on my own take on the housing bubble, please read my page on Greater Wealth & Fools.

The bottom line here is this: don’t buy a house anytime soon unless you are in a low-inflation market or can’t afford to wait (if, for instance, you’ve sold your old home and have to “roll over” the gain within a fixed amount of time). Plan on the possibility that housing prices may go lower for the next 5 to 10 years. If you can’t withstand that kind of a housing market, with low inflation leading to low wage increases for those who still have jobs, then rent and do not buy. Sub-prime borrowers should avoid buying altogether, as the sharks have circled for a final feast, and you had better believe that they know their bubble is bursting!

Four days ago I wrote this comparison of the Vietnam War with the current Iraq War:

In the Vietnam War, we were fighting only one insurgency, parented by the North Vietnamese. And in Vietnam, we did not have Catholic and Bhuddist militias battling it out with each other and the US forces. In Iraq, we have at least four distinct insurgencies, plus at least one active terrorist organization and dozens of sectarian militias, all seeking to kill Americans and each other on a daily basis. The parents of the insurgencies are: the former Baathist leadership of Iraq, the Syrian government, the Iranian government, and the government of Saudi Arabia. The Saudi government plays its role by supplying Imams trained in its Wahabbi version of Sunni Islam, each of whom comes with readily-available cash to fund militant activities by people who will agree to follow their lead. Both the Syrians and the Iranians are running traditional proxy wars similar to that run by the North Vietnamese government. And the former Iraqi Baathists have billions of dollars left over from the massive looting conducted by Saddam Hussein before he was deposed as President. That massive amount of money allows them to run their own insurgency without a separate “safe haven” nation to operate out of.

Furthermore, the Iraqi people do not want the American and British troops to remain in Iraq. That is the strong result of every public opinion poll ever taken. The only differences of opinion among the Iraqi people are exactly when the troops need to get out of Iraq. Well, from a BBC report, a former British commander is of the opinion that now is the time for an exit:

Insurgents in Iraq are right to try to force US troops out of the country, a former British army commander has said.

Gen Sir Michael Rose also told the BBC’s Newsnight programme that the US and the UK must “admit defeat” and stop fighting “a hopeless war” in Iraq.

Iraqi insurgents would not give in, he said. “I don’t excuse them for some of the terrible things they do, but I do understand why they are resisting.”

Continue reading ‘Redeploy Our Troops In Iraq!’ »

The thing I liked about Colin Powell is that he “got it.” Powell understood the lessons of our tragedy in Vietnam, and the so-called “Powell Doctrine” called for eight essential questions that must be answered affirmatively before the US military is committed to action in a foreign land. Of those eight questions, history has shown that only the 7th, the support of the American people, was true at the time of the invasion. And of course, as time has worn on, the support of the American people has dwindled away. Why? Because it was clear that the answers to the other questions were “no” at the time of the invasion.

We can argue until the cows come home whether or not President Bush and/or his key national security aides knew that one or more of the answers to the eight questions were “no” at the time of the invasion. But today, four years after Bush appeared under that ludicrous banner proclaiming “Mission Accomplished,” Bush refuses to declare victory and get out as quickly as possible.
Continue reading ‘We Never Learn!’ »

I am all for being against terrorism. Particularly religiously-inspired terrorism. But it sure seems to me that our government has seen fit to selectively ignore some terrorists for present or future political gain. For instance, the date picked for triggering the Oklahoma City bombing was the second anniversary of the violent end to the Waco siege. It is clear that the two events were linked. And another disturbing link was the inspiration drawn from The Turner Diaries, a fictional novel that described a similar bombing. There is little doubt in my mind that the Oklahoma City bombing was inspired by anti-Semitic hate groups with a strong religious motivation. Nonetheless, the US government has refused to adequately investigate any links from the immediate perpetrators to the religious hate groups which obviously supported them, and which gave them their inspiration. Why?

And of course, there is the ever-baffling mystery of why President Bush only sent about 15,000 soldiers after Osama bin Laden, the chief perpetrator of the September 11th attacks, while committing ten times that number to sit on the border of Iraq, waiting for orders to invade. The net result is that there were too few US troops to successfully capture Osama bin Laden, and bin Laden remains at large today (April 30, 2007).
Continue reading ‘Bush’s Bogeyman - Osama bin Laden’ »

It is a fact that the Earth is undergoing a period where our climate is getting warmer and warmer. It is also a fact that this is not a new thing, but that the climate on Earth has gotten warmer and colder at various times in the past. No sane person should dispute either of those two statements.

What is disputed by scientists is to what degree human activity contributes to global warming. This scientific dispute makes it impossible to produce a valid cost-benefit analysis of what changes in human activity need to take place, at what cost, and for what benefit.
Continue reading ‘What To Do About Global Warming’ »