Friday, November 9, 2012

Obama Wins



Nobody Messes With Big Bird,
Donald Trump Tweeted What,
And Karl Rove Argued What?


Barack Obama Gets Re-Elected



Barack Obama won the big job, again, to the chagrin of about half of America, who really aren’t losers. They’ll grit their teeth, move forward and benefit with the rest of the nation when leaders in both parties decide to act as adults and start addressing serious national matters, a process which begins soon.

For the good of the nation, there were lots of losers in this campaign, not just Mitt Romney. It will be interesting to see if their wasted efforts produce any tune changes.


Losers

Donald Trump may have succeeded in doing something anatomically impossible when his election night tweets about starting a revolution and marching on Washington, made himself an even bigger ass than he’s been in the past.

Karl Rove looking like a simpering toddler--who just wasted $300 to $400 Million of someone else’s money--whined on Fox News that it was too early to call Ohio for Obama (when there still were at least 14 or so votes yet to be counted).

Poor Karl. Can you please just go away and hope that folks won’t remember your near emotional breakdown or your empty prediction that Romney would get 300 Electoral College votes?

The Koch brothers wasted a lot of money, but they have a lot to waste and they never will be poor or voiceless in DC, as long as there are mercenaries for hire. My only wish here is that President Obama has a good memory and is prepared to go medieval on the people like the K sibs who tried to buy this election for Mitt.

Sheldon Adelson, I care less about, because he is a 150 years old, has orange hair; soon six Elvis impersonators or 4 really strong showgirls will be carrying him by the handles out of a Las Vegas funeral parlor. (Don’t forget it was Adelson who paid for the 30 minute attack video on Bain Capital, with which Newt pummeled Romney in the Primary and the D’s milked for use in the general election. With friends like him….?)

Recalculating their political approaches applies to several major industries and their trade associations. They know very well who they are, as does the Obama Administration.

If you are going to poison the King, you better kill him because payback is a bitch!

Winner!


Besides President Obama and the American people, let me note an unsung hero who many Obama voters should thank for his early contribution which helped produce the Romney defeat, and that’s James Carter IV.

President Jimmy Carter’s grandson was the oppo researcher instrumental in getting Mother Jones reporter Jim Corn together with the individual who had taped Mitt Romney patronizingly dumping on the “47% percent of Americans.”  The people Governor Romney disdainfully said relied on the federal government for their existences and wouldn’t change that status if they could.

Corn’s story--when the video went viral--allowed America to hear Mitt Romney’s actual candid assessment of individuals and families not born wealthy but who earned or needed some of Uncle Sam’s help.

That gibe spoke broadly of the candidate and his party and they reinforced that bias throughout the campaign.

When the GOP Candidate realized that he dissed millions of senior citizens, injured veterans, college students and other voting constituencies, whose support he needed to knock off a sitting president, Romney tried and failed to walk back his remarks.

Thank you Jimmy 4 for helping bell Mitt Romney with the “47%” insult!

You’ve Read and Heard This, But…


In the wake of Romney’s defeat, you still have some prominent R’s claiming no changes are needed in their party, just a better get out the vote effort. They say the party of “no” still has winning ideas and principals, if not principles.

But, I don’t buy it.

Republican and Democrats alike will offer dozens of reasons for the GOP loss, including Romney’s shortcomings, Hurricane Sandy, whackos making idiotic comments about rape and abortion, and much more. And to some extent they all will be right.

But today’s GOP—unless dramatically reconstituted and ”darkened”—will lose lots of future races until it recognizes where the demographics of this country are headed.

It’s no secret, our nation is fast becoming black, brown, and less white and any political party which largely stays white is not going to prevail, except in smaller bits of geography where Caucasian voters might be a majority.

And while Marco Rubio, the GOP’s, great Hispanic hope is a shade darker than most R’s, he is Cuban by heritage, and may not connect with millions of non-Cuban Hispanic families they need to woo. (Sshh, don’t that to Reince Priebus--once named “Klaatu”--who thinks all Hispanics are alike.)

It’s not just “color,” it’s the GOP's institutional appeal. The GOP for generations has stood by the “wealthy” and the “haves.” For it to matter nationally, it has be more ethnically inviting and willing literally and figuratively to spread that wealth in more than just a public relations sense or the Republicans risk achieving "electoral runt" status.

That was true on Tuesday and it will be truer in two years when the Congress and Senate run again. And, it will be truer still in 2016, when Hillary Clinton might decide to grab for the brass ring.

A more moderate GOP doesn’t need to be a Democrat-lite facsimile. It could hold onto historic smaller government and greater entrepreneurial discretion doctrines, which might make each side work harder for the votes they get because the choice wouldn’t be so stark and ideas and principles would matter.

Going into this election the public was hurting with the economic dislocation which President Obama’s polices did not solve for enough people.

Democrat and Republican families were angry, confused and ripe to support whatever was necessary to improve their situations including voting for the Republican presidential candidate.

GOP's $$$$$$=Nothing


The GOP had more money than Midas and a SCOTUS ruling which allowed all of those corporate giants and industry groups to feed major anonymous money to their candidates and their causes, but it produced nada.

After a Primary featuring a variety of Lilliputians, they settled on a multimillionaire, who was willing to take both sides of any issue pretending he never flipped, and a man --despite his best efforts--who could not connect with those most suffering.

His party’s platform didn’t make that task much easier.

The Republicans uttered God’s name—blaspheming, aimed at Democrats--more often than a thousand southern cheer leading squads praying for a big game win.

God answered with “Hurricane Sandy.”

The voter dogs--including millions of GOP voters who had gone to the polls in 2010, but stayed away this week-- just weren’t eating the Republican’s electoral dog food and won’t until the GOP leaders change the flavor, the portions, and the content.

The “Cliff”


I had to laugh—ruefully since my retirement funds took a hit—at the stock market’s Nov. 7 reaction to the Obama win.

The market drops 300 plus points and 100 more the day after, as apologists cited fears of the “fiscal cliff.”

Bull dung!

The fiscal cliff has been around for most of this year—with everyone knowing that a premeditated “after the election” fix was planned--yet the market did pretty well before the election with that resolution just pending.

The loss just was the moneyed interests wetting their collective pants over the President’s win.

Maybe Wall Street just realized the implication of throwing all of that money into GOP coffers and betting big against an Obama second term?

Oh, maybe the specter of Sen. Sherrod Brown D-Ohio) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) as twin voices for financial reform and consumer protection just represents heartache for the big guys, when inevitably those two get to work on the Senate Financial Services Committee.

My Hope for Speaker John Boehner

Don’t worry boys, the fiscal cliff will be avoided, with program/spending cuts and new revenues leavened with the realization that you can’t cut federal spending too much before private investment really kicks in.

Maybe—just maybe—the White House, Senate, and the House crazies (as they have to be labeled for now) will build on that agreement to grapple with some other serious issues facing the nation, including job creation through the private sector and tax reform.

I believe that John Boehner will step up and lead the GOP in doing its necessary share to make sure there are no major cliff casualties.

My advice to both parties is let the Bush tax cuts die at the end of the year and go back to the Simpson-Bowles recommendations for domestic and military cuts.

Who knows what good, minds unburdened from trying to defeat Obama, can do once they cooperate to solve issues which vex Americans in both parties. They may even come up with some good ideas about Fannie Mae.



Maloni, 11-9-2012

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

I thought this was a GSE blog...the last several posts haven't mentioned practically one word to the topic. Historically I would look forward to new posts, but not so much recently. I'm surprised you haven't even discussed the two earnings reports. Disappointed you're using this avenue to express nothing more than political rants.

Bill Maloni said...

Gee Anon, sorry to disappoint you. I'll try and do better with regard to the GSEs.

If I hadn't reported on the election, someone else would have bitched and, often, there isn't enough GSE data to fill a small cavity and don't forget Fannie and Freddie are all about poltiics.

With regard to my political views, I've never hidden them and part of my blog is to share my partisan
reviews of issues, as well as good guys and industries and bad guys and industries.

I've been down on the big banks, but I am not blind to the very important role they have to play in the deliberations on whatever new national secondary mortgage market Congress tries to construct.

BTW, if you go back you'll see that I predicted positive earnings for both Fannie and Freddie before they happened and before the Obama Admin decided to scoop everything they made and I reported why I thought that, too, was a mistake.

Finally, I would very much welcome your opinion of the recent GSE earnings and what--if anything--that portends. That question has been leavened throughout my writings on their possible and now actual return to financial health.

Much of what I think was posted just before the two election blogs.

Hang with me.

Sorry, I just find Karl Rove, "the turd blossom," as George W. Bush nicknamed him, insufferably arrogant.

Anonymous said...

Once again, there will not be a satisfactory, sustained economic recovery until there is a housing recovery.
There will not be a sustained housing recovery until there is a functioning housing finance market.
There will not be a satisfactory housing finance market until there is a more efective secondary market.
It is time to reinvent Fannie and Freddie in some form. Change the names, merge them or whatever but let;s get started.
The Obama Admin has no plan to date to carry out secondary market reforms. They continue to permit DeMarco who is dedicated to erasing any federal presence in the secondary market.
Also DeMarco was sent earlier to the Social Security Administration to implement a plan to turn SS management over to Wall Street.
I was amazed at the WP story about DeMarco which omitted his ideological commitments to AEI.

Bill Maloni said...

Don't know if you are the same "Anon" who wrote initially, but one piece of the F&F profit announcements (which you noted correctly I didn't cover) is that it will get noticed by pragmatists on the Hill, who--as I wrote two weeks ago--likely won't take the easy step of a modest F&F resurrection with an eye toward total "privatization" but something tortured with a punitive element in it. (Sorry, that's just the mindset of some on the R side.)

But the path is so obviously clear and easy, if both sides truly want to get the federal government out of the "conventional" mortgage market.

Anonymous said...

Well,shouldn't the homebuilders, the Realtors, and the mortgage bankers get a bill introduced to reform F &F modestly ASAP so that there is a rallying point for all who support the housing industry. My guess is that the ABA would be forced by thier mortgage lenders to provide at least lukewarm support for it or to propose a worksble alternative. Why let AEI control this debate??.

Bill Maloni said...

I will in the next blog coming out Tomorrow or Friday.

Anonymous said...

It is a good change of pace albeit a little twisted. For a mediocre president to be revered as a minor god is absurd and believe the dems "bought" the election as much as repubs tried. What is esp sickening is this dem myth of a overwhelming mandate like it is a piece of the true cross. There is a divided nation to be healed and it remains to be seen if a bewildered young man from Illinois can develop a clear vision of growth of growth rather than his current delusion of a king on a golden throne making prouncements as if they are the law of the land. As failed as the GOP continues to prove itself as a party dominated by evangelical old white guys on life support machines, the dems will begin to splinter as it tries to satisfy its diverse base when it's racist underpinnings begin to fight over their perceived parts of the election spoils. Hey. Old guys die tomorrow so your family gets something. I actually think everyone should start with nothing/no inheritance - that is true equality.