Sword and Sextant

Cult of personality.

Everyone likes the guy, but his policies are slipping a bit. Ratings are slipping in the economy department over time, and he’s trending downward on foreign affairs, and the budget deficit is in the red. Ruh roh.

I’m hopeful that his performance on these issues will become his barometer in the near future. Looks like its happening slowly.

In other news, Sarah Palin is firing a few mortars herself, and this is extremely important for her if she wants to be relevant again. Although the MSM and the Dems (no difference) tear down every potential challenger before they get off the ground, they do the GOP a huge favor in so doing. Only the strong survive the media/liberal culling of the flock, and it usually results in us having resilient candidates for office. If Palin rebuilds her energetic base after this inoculation from the filth of the opposition, she’ll be a powerful challenger very soon for President, most likely. Its clear she recognizes this is a weak moment for Obama, on the heels of greater job losses and decreasing faith in Obama’s policies so far.

Jindal has a similar road to travel if he wants the glory in 2012. I think he’ll build his street cred in LA for a while longer, though. At one point, his policies had the state as the only in the union with job growth. He’s lifted over 10k jobs from WI, as I hear the news lament over and over here in Milwaukee.

Recent election results certainly paint the picture.

I’m happy that the socialists have been beaten back in the EU to some measure, but two things tarnish this great striking down:

1) Some of the replacements are openly racist candidates, which isn’t good.

2) As the world awakes from their slumber, the US is marching headlong into a death spiral with the corrupting and foolish socialist policies that Europe will try to shake off a bit in the next few years.

What a depressing time to be an American. We’re going to kick his butt in 2012, or at least wrest power from the loonies.

What a new twist this is!

On first reading, this seems to be a huge win for what used to be secured debtholders during bankruptcy proceedings. Its no secret that both the GM and Chrysler restructuring plans gave a pretty cold shoulder to lenders protected under the law, according to The Economist.

I’m a bit surprised this sentiment has come from Ginsburg, of all justices, but its the right move. Running roughshod over secured creditors is a great way to discourage future secure creditors, and corporate lending in general. Needless to say, its bad practice. (Its also bad practice to excoriate private citizens who happen to be bank execs, but I digress…)

This is also a potential blow to Obama, who clearly just wants this bad dream to go away. I don’t really blame him, although I personally feel he handled it about as poorly as he could have (I have little evidence my way could save the companies, but it would have saved taxpayers money, as in no bailouts at all, and certainly no nationalization). Now his car nightmare is going get a lot messier for an administration that orchestrated the deals for speed over legality. Sen. Dodd has said he wants to look into it, although he also says he did nothing wrong in the Countrywide Ins. scandal, so take it with a grain of NaCl.

Not only could it completely rupture the fragile sale to Fiat, but it may spill into Congress actually doing their jobs. When a President gets called out for something like this where public opinion is less than stellar about an issue, opportunistic politicians rise up and lead the charge to investigate. We shall see if that occurs, as such a movement would have to have backing on the Dem side to gain serious momentum.

I do fear that any disruption of the Fiat deal will lead to us nationalizing Chrysler, as well. I guess that’s the way Obama is gonna play ball, and I can’t stop him for the moment. I can only hope he’s judged on his results and not how historic his election was.

For now, I cautiously cheer Justice Ginsburg and her defense of our laws.