REPUBLICANS RELY ON GOVERNMENT, BAN GUNS
Of all the places to impose a 7-square-mile ban on guns! How weird. Don’t Republicans know guns don’t kill people, people kill people? They should be banning people, not guns, from their convention. The ironies abound.
AND IN RELATED NEWS
This fake video from the Onion News Network is so X-rated I won’t provide the link, just the headline: “Tampa Bay Gay Prostitutes Gearing Up For Flood Of Closeted Republicans.”
MORE FROM THE ECONOMIST
Adding to yesterday’s excerpt:
. . . In theory, Mr Romney has a detailed 59-point economic plan. In practice, it ignores virtually all the difficult or interesting questions . . . A businessman without a credible plan to fix a problem stops being a credible businessman. So does a businessman who tells you one thing at breakfast and the opposite at supper. . . .
WHAT HAS OBAMA DONE?
James Musters: “Here Are 200 Accomplishments. With Citations! Well organized and presented.”
Not included — as it’s not something the Obama Administration has directly done — is the performance of the stock market. But it’s relevant, because the market is a barometer of how investors feel about the future. From the day George W. Bush was inaugurated to the day he left office — eight years of Republican stewardship — the Dow fell 20% and was headed lower fast. It would fall a further 20% to bottom out at 6,500 six weeks later. Investors feared a terrible future. Yet from that bottom just six weeks after President Obama was sworn in, the Dow has doubled.
Doubled.
This suggests investors see a brighter future.
I worry that the market’s no bargain here — especially because there’s a real chance the Republicans may win in November and impose the austerity budget they are so deeply committed to, out-Hoovering Hoover and sending the world economy over the cliff. But right now, after nearly 4 years of the President’s stewardship, investors look into the future with double the optimism they displayed (if the Dow is a measure of investor optimism) just six weeks after he was handed the reins. Given what he was handed, it seems to me that counts as an accomplishment, too.
