Michelle Bachman won the Iowa straw poll today but the big news for the Republicans is that Rick Perry is now officially in. I see Bachman, Perry, Romney and Paul to be still in the race in the next 8 months or so. Everybody else will have dropped out and I don't think Sarah Palin will throw her hat in the ring. If Perry doesn't make any big errors, he will be the choice of the conservatives because they don't think that Palin and Bachman are electable. I like Paul the best among the Republicans but there is no chance for him to be the nominee although he will stay in because of his followers are passionate. So ultimately it will be Romney vs Perry for the nomination at the end.
It is a good possibility that if Perry is a good campaigner, he will beat Romney. I don't think Republicans are sold on Romney. They think he is a flip-flop and will be more liberal if he gets elected. In a general election, I think Romney has a much greater chance to beat Obama than Perry. Let's face it there are certain states, mostly in the south, that if Charles Manson is the Republican nominee he would carry them. So it does not matter if Romney or Perry is the nominee in those states. But Romney is sure to put Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Michigan into play. These were Obama's states that can very well go to Romney but not likely to Perry. Perry will win by a bigger margin in southern states than Romney but that does not matter to the total electoral votes.
So I think the Obama camp is still worrying about Romney the most right now. But I think they are glad that the road to the nomination just got harder for Romney. He will have to lean more right to hold off Perry and that will make him more difficult to win over independents in the general election.
Saturday, August 13, 2011
Saturday, August 06, 2011
Once again I wrote a comment on the previous blog and again it got erased. So I am starting a new blog by commenting on the last one. First I want to say that even though I think the Republicans won the debt ceiling round, I don't agree with some people who say that Obama and the Democrats caved. When negotiating each side has to decide what would be the outcome if a deal fails. In the case of the Democrats failure to make a deal is a catastrophe. For some Republicans, it is what they want secretly or not so secretly. So it was the Democrats who were more desperate and thus have to give more. There are no new revenues as Obama wanted but given the polls show that most people want both cuts and raise revenue, I think it would be difficult for the Republicans to argue against letting the Bush tax cut expired at end of next year.
Unfortunately, I do not share the optimism of LBOAYM from the previous comment about the super committee. Dick Durbin was on Jon Stewart Thursday. Durbin was on the Simpson/Bowles commission. He said they worked for 10 months and came up with several proposals that would have helped. Durbin was also part of the Gang of Six that also came up with bipartisan proposals. The Gang of Six worked for 17 months. Neither one of these groups got anything passed in Congress. They didn't even get voted on. The super committee have 10 weeks! I am going to call them the 12 angry men. I am confident that they are men because the leaders, especially Republicans, already indicated that they are not looking for people who would compromise. Since women legislators are more likely to compromise, I don't think any woman would be selected. Given this situation, unlike the original 12 angry men who had come up with an unanimous decision at the end, I don't think these 12 angry men will come up with any consensus. And if they do, the Congress will vote it down anyways. By the way, if a woman is selected, we can call them the dirty dozen.
Now for the news from yesterday: S@P downgrade the U.S. As I have said before, these rating services are worthless and they are doing the country a disservice. S@P said they have 5 main criteria use to judge a country. I can't recall exactly how the spokesman put it, but it seems to me 4 of the 5 were subjective. The 5th has to do with debt to GDP ratio. S@P admitted, after the treasury pointed it out, that they made a 2 trillion dollar mistake in that calculation. They said it didn't make a difference. Does this make it like this whole process is scientific that the only criterium that is objective is calculated incorrectly? Given that the rating services gave the highest ratings to bankrupt companies right before their demise, nobody should have any faith in their ratings. Of course the Republicans will use this in their campaign against Obama. But it is interesting they would not mention that S@P say the whole debt debate was one reason that cause the down grade. S@P also thinks revenue should be raised. Of course the Republicans will say that S@P's opinions are flawed here!
Unfortunately, I do not share the optimism of LBOAYM from the previous comment about the super committee. Dick Durbin was on Jon Stewart Thursday. Durbin was on the Simpson/Bowles commission. He said they worked for 10 months and came up with several proposals that would have helped. Durbin was also part of the Gang of Six that also came up with bipartisan proposals. The Gang of Six worked for 17 months. Neither one of these groups got anything passed in Congress. They didn't even get voted on. The super committee have 10 weeks! I am going to call them the 12 angry men. I am confident that they are men because the leaders, especially Republicans, already indicated that they are not looking for people who would compromise. Since women legislators are more likely to compromise, I don't think any woman would be selected. Given this situation, unlike the original 12 angry men who had come up with an unanimous decision at the end, I don't think these 12 angry men will come up with any consensus. And if they do, the Congress will vote it down anyways. By the way, if a woman is selected, we can call them the dirty dozen.
Now for the news from yesterday: S@P downgrade the U.S. As I have said before, these rating services are worthless and they are doing the country a disservice. S@P said they have 5 main criteria use to judge a country. I can't recall exactly how the spokesman put it, but it seems to me 4 of the 5 were subjective. The 5th has to do with debt to GDP ratio. S@P admitted, after the treasury pointed it out, that they made a 2 trillion dollar mistake in that calculation. They said it didn't make a difference. Does this make it like this whole process is scientific that the only criterium that is objective is calculated incorrectly? Given that the rating services gave the highest ratings to bankrupt companies right before their demise, nobody should have any faith in their ratings. Of course the Republicans will use this in their campaign against Obama. But it is interesting they would not mention that S@P say the whole debt debate was one reason that cause the down grade. S@P also thinks revenue should be raised. Of course the Republicans will say that S@P's opinions are flawed here!
Tuesday, August 02, 2011
I wrote a comment on the previous blog last night but somehow it disappeared. So instead of writing the comment again I may as well write a new blog. Regarding the question about drug companies in trouble because several patents on profitable drugs are due to expire soon and generics will be available, I agree that the drug companies will take a hit now. But don't feel too sorry for them. They have done very well recently with these drugs. If they don't have drugs in the pipeline then it is their own fault since they know this day is coming. I hope this spurs them into finding drugs for less common diseases as we have many choices now for things like diabetes and hypertension. I think it maybe better to try to corner a small market (uncommon disease) than to try to win a big share of a large market (common disease).
Having gone over the main points of the debt deal, I still think that the Republicans won this round. There are only two ways to cut a deficit: decrease spending or increase taxes. It is no compromise when one way is not considered. I don't like to pay more taxes either but it is nonsense to say increase taxes always decrease jobs. We had a tax cut during the Bush era, how well did that worked? Nobody really understands economy so I believe that if things are going bad, just do the opposite as what you are doing now. You see, economy is all about confidence. If you have inflation, increase interest rate. If you have recession, decrease interest rate. Does it work? Who knows? But the fact you did the opposite the rest of the world thinks that the U.S. knows what it is doing. When you are in a recession, you are arguing about debt limit and no tax increase when you had tax decrease at this time? That does not instill confidence in the world which means worse economy for the world and for us.
Another way you can see the Republicans won is that 68% of Republicans voted for the bill but only 50% of Democrats voted for it. Boehner and McCopnnell looked a lot happier than Reid and Pelosi! The super committee of 6 Republicans and Democrats will not work anything out. And if they did the Congress will not support it. We had the Simpson and Bowles Commission which had some very good ideas but that didn't get anywhere. They should have the courage to adopt Simpson/Bowles and we would be better off. I had said after the 2010 election that nothing is going to be done in the next two years. This debt deal is worse than nothing done. It was a crisis that was self-made. Nothing is going to be done with this super committee and nothing good will come out of this Congress next year either.
Having gone over the main points of the debt deal, I still think that the Republicans won this round. There are only two ways to cut a deficit: decrease spending or increase taxes. It is no compromise when one way is not considered. I don't like to pay more taxes either but it is nonsense to say increase taxes always decrease jobs. We had a tax cut during the Bush era, how well did that worked? Nobody really understands economy so I believe that if things are going bad, just do the opposite as what you are doing now. You see, economy is all about confidence. If you have inflation, increase interest rate. If you have recession, decrease interest rate. Does it work? Who knows? But the fact you did the opposite the rest of the world thinks that the U.S. knows what it is doing. When you are in a recession, you are arguing about debt limit and no tax increase when you had tax decrease at this time? That does not instill confidence in the world which means worse economy for the world and for us.
Another way you can see the Republicans won is that 68% of Republicans voted for the bill but only 50% of Democrats voted for it. Boehner and McCopnnell looked a lot happier than Reid and Pelosi! The super committee of 6 Republicans and Democrats will not work anything out. And if they did the Congress will not support it. We had the Simpson and Bowles Commission which had some very good ideas but that didn't get anywhere. They should have the courage to adopt Simpson/Bowles and we would be better off. I had said after the 2010 election that nothing is going to be done in the next two years. This debt deal is worse than nothing done. It was a crisis that was self-made. Nothing is going to be done with this super committee and nothing good will come out of this Congress next year either.