First there was Joe Six Pack and now there is Joe the Plumber. Never mind that his first name is not really Joe and he is not a licensed plumber. The way McCain and Obama were using this Joe's name I think there may be more use of other Joes before the election.

McCain has used another Joe before: Joe Lieberman. He can rename him Joe Independent and take him along to rallies.

I know smoking is politically incorrect now a days but with the use of Joes by the Republicans, Obama may start smoking again and try to look cool and act like Joe Camel.

Bill Clinton claims that he will be out on the trail for Obama. With his history of womanizing and now living in New York, I would not be surprised if he claims to be Broadway Joe.

Obama will try to use his youth as an advantage against McCain by claiming that he is Joe Athlete.

McCain who cannot be an athlete himself at his age, will sing the Simon and Garfunkle song "Mrs. Robinson" which has the following lyric: Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio, a country turns its lonely eyes to you. This may help with old people like me.

Both candidates will seek out Joe Montana to help with a certain state bordering Cannada.

Both candidates will pretend to be Average Joe even though they are not. That may backfire as we already have an Average Joe in the White House right now.

Starbuck will be going out of business and both candidates will say it is an outrage that we cannot afford a cup of Joe.

In an effort to get the Hispanic vote one of the candidate will use the following tactics:
1. Accuse the other being so blind to reality that he called him the Jose Feliciano of politics.
2. Exclaimed "no way Jose" when informed of the opponent's economic plans.
3. Claims that his opponent is so lost that he does not know the way to San Jose.

When finally the election is over, one of the candidate will be informed by someone that he had lost. The losing candidate will say sadly: Say it ain't so, Joe.

Paul Krugman wins the Nobel Prize. So since 2000 an American has won or share the Nobel Prize for economics every year. So with all these great minds, why is our economy in such trouble? Maybe economics is not a science at all. It certainly is not an exact science like chemistry and physics. Despite the smart people at places like MIT who build all these mathematical models to predict the direction of the financial world, we are still in the Dark Ages when it comes to economics.

To begin with I think the whole financial system is a reverse Ponzi scheme. A Ponzi scheme depends on the confidence of the people at the bottom that someone else will come along and pay them eventually. Our financial system begins with the Central banks of each country printing out money, not backed by anything valuable like gold usually. The largest banks get the money and loans them out to the smaller banks who loans to other banks and businesses. This eventually trickles down to the peasants who work for a living. People are supposed to pay taxes which gets back to the Central banks. But if things breakdown along the way the Central banks have to intervene, like they are doing throughout the world right now. Of course the government will usually run a deficit under normal conditions. But in a situation we are in now the deficit is going to be much worse. It is only the confidence of the people at the middle and bottom that the government will solve problems that the whole system will work. I am not an economist but this seems like a reverse Ponzi scheme to me and eventually it will fall apart. It won't fall apart during this crisis but who knows in the future?

Another reason not to trust economics is because it is heavily influenced by politics. There are liberal and conservative economists whose views are tremendously different. Chemists and physicsts may be liberals or conservatives but when they run an experiement the results will be the same. In economics this is different. Krugman, for example, is very liberal and he attacks the Bush policy every chance he gets. But the liberals have not come out with anything that is impressive in trying to get us out of this crisis. Obama, for example, has the same idea as McCain of allowing people to take some money out of their pension or IRA without penalty. This does not seem like a good idea to me as this will weaken the stock market as more people will cash out. These people will have to sell more shares as the price of each share is much lower than before. This will hurt them in the long run. As I said before, the best the president can do is inspire more confidence. He will not have any great idesa. Whoever he is.

Congress passed a worse bailout bill one week after rejecting the original. It passed after another $100 billion of pork was added. I am not a supporter of this bailout but I can understand why it was proposed--try to inject confidence by doing something. But if you voted against it in the first place why would you vote for it when the additions made it a worse bill? Some citizens may have changed their mind when they realized the effect of the crisis on their investments. Some people may have been faked out by the change of the word bailout to rescue. But isn't it the role of the Congressman to sort out the right or wrong of a bill regardless of political pressure at home? Some may have been persuaded by the pork going to his district and some may have been persuaded by the change in pressure from his constituents. But in any case, anyone who changed from a no to a yes vote should not have been a Congressman in the first place.

I thought the vp debate was poor. Gwen Iffle didn't do a good job because she was afraid that people are going to say she is biased toward Obama. She didn't ask any follow-up questions. This made it easy for Palin to say whatever she wanted without answering the question in the first place. With 3 days to prepare and no follow-ups to trip her, it is no wonder that Palin did all right. I don't think the Joe 6 pack comment helped her as most people are tired of the current Joe 6 pack in the White House. There was no change in the dynamic of the race as a result of this debate.

I had suggested couple of blogs ago that Obama and McCain should act like FDR and reassure the American people even though they had no good ideas to solve the crisis. FDR did not endorse Hoover's desperate program toward the end of Hoover's term. He knew that the people had no confidence in Hoover's programs. So he created his own program. With Obama in the lead I can see why he would not propose anything new on his own but keep on blaming Bush, just to try to run out the clock. McCain, however, should have tried FDR's approach which is to denounce the bailout and offer something radical of his own. By voting the same as Obama McCain has not distinguished himself. Instead of bailout he should call for creating a jobs program to repair the infrastructure as FDR did. So money would go to the states to create jobs instead of to the banks. This may not pass but it would at least show that McCain is a mavrick like he claims. Now he is no different than Obama but is tied to the Bush administration.

It looked for a moment McCain took my advice and declared that he was going back to D.C. to help with the bailout plan. I had suggested that either McCain or Obama should show leadership by trying to work on the plan and inspire confidence. But I did not advise McCain to announce that he is suspending his campaign, skip out on Letterman but did not go to D.C. till the next day. By doing these things he made the trip back to D.C. look like a political ploy, which obviously it was. Once he got back he just sat there and said almost nothing, inspiring no confidence at all.

The debate went as I expected. Obama did better in economics and I think it was a draw on foreign policy. I am bias toward Obama but I thought he looked more presidential and won overall by a small margin. But there was no knockout blows from either side.

Obama is ahead again in the polls because of the economy trumping the supposedly strength of McCain in foreign policies. I am happy to see Obama ahead but to me he is better in foreign policies than McCain but does not have any better ideas for the economy than McCain. I think the economy will eventually turn around with either one as president. But I think with Obama there is a chance to repair America's image abroad and have more allies in the future. McCain still thinks Iraq was a good idea. In fact he believes still that Vietnam was a right war to fight! "Bomb, bomb Iran" may have been a joke but the greater chance of McCain getting us into another unncesssary war is no laughing matter.

Go away for less than 1 week and the whole financial market is in meltdown! Henry Paulson wants to take over and is asking the nation to give total authority and $7oo billion to start with. Some people are saying that it is going to take over $1 trillion. If I make $100 per second, it will take me over 300 years to make a trillion. Of course the deficit is now over 12 trillion so what is another trillion? Of course both McCain and Obama are promising tax cuts and more programs which along with two wars at the same time and our children and grandchildren will be burdened with debt before they are born.

As I wrote before, didn't we learned from the S@L scandal? That was only 220 billion, chump change compare with what we have now. McCain of all people should have known better, being part of the Keating 5. But he continued to want deregulation until this meltdown. Ronald Regan liked to say that "Government is not the solution, it is the problem". I guess to the Republicans, government is not the solution when it comes to welfare but it is the solution when it comes to corporate welfare. Well, I like to say "Capitalism without regulation is just chaos". I don't think Obama has any great ideas but I certainly don't think that after all these years, McCain has learned anything.

Henry Paulson is a smart guy. An Ivy Leaguer who was a big CEO before he became Sec. of Treasury. But he also had been saying that fundamentally the economy is strong for the past year while things are collapsing. I think McCain copied his saying about the fundamental of the economy. This certainly does not give people confidence. (Bush, by hiding most of the time in this crisis shows what a coward he is). I am no economist but I don't think it is the amount or how the bailout is done that is the most important. The most important thing is for a leader to come forward and inspire confidence. I don't think Paulson or Bernake can do this no matter how high IQ they have. Paulson cannot be the one running this bailout program unchallenged. We need an FDR. If Obama or McCain can bring Paulson, Bernake, Pelosi and Reed together and put up a plan and sound convincing on t.v., it may work. It will also win the presidency for the man who can do this. I don't believe there is a good solution, there is only a workable solution if there is leadership.

Sarah Palin's first interview with Charles Gibson went as expected. She was aggressive, stayed with her messages and avoided controversies. One minor stumble was not knowing the Bush Doctrine. I don't fault her much on that since I don't think the term is widely adopted. I don't think Bush knows the term himself! Unless an independent previously had not known her position on social issues such as abortion and her flip-flops on earmarks, I don't think the interview changed many minds.

The one thing that bothers me the most is the answer to Russia's aggression into Georgia. I think most Americans are weary of Russia and thus may not be bothered by her answer that if Georgia is in NATO, then perhaps we may have to fight the Russians. Other than the fact that an all out of war with Russia may mean the end of civilization, her response to the situation show a lack of understanding of the world and history. Unfortunately her understanding and view are not that different from most of our politicians, including McCain. Even Obama and Biden's stand on this is unclear but I think they would have given a more thoughtful answer than Palin did.

Palin said definitively that Georgia should be admitted into NATO. It seems that anyone in the Warsaw Pact wanting to get into NATO is welcomed by the U.S. This is a dangerous and stupid policy for us. What would adding countries like Georgia do for us? Bush likes it because Georgia and Poland sent troops to Iraq. But they are doing that just to get us to like them. They are weak countries that won't contribute anything to the defense of Europe but will need aid from western countries. Their admission in NATO will make Russia angry and harder to deal with. Can you imagine Russia forming alliances with Mexico and other Central American countries right at the doorsteps of the U.S.?

But the biggest problem is what Palin alluded to. Once Georgia and others are in NATO, we would be obligated to fight with them if they are attacked. Everyone remembers that WWI started with the assassination of Archduke Ferdinad, the heir of the Austrian throne. What people tend to forget is that it was all the alliances that made the war spread to all of Europe. Austria asked German support to crush Serbia. Serbia asked Slavic brother Russia to help. But France and Britain who really don't care much about Serbia had entered alliances with Russia. So all the dynamites were in place, only the spark of assassination was needed. At least Russia was a big country and the French thought that Russia can be of help if Germany became too powerful. In our case here, Georgia, Poland and all other former Eastern bloc countries are of no help to us. Unless we want to restart the Cold War there is no reason to add them to NATO.

As I wrote last month I think this move into Georgia is Russia's way of flexing its muscles in response to our approval of Kosovo breaking away from Serbia. Russia is feeling stronger these days because they are making a lot of money from oil. Other than that their basic economy and technology are behind the West. They know that they can't occupy Georgia without losing a lot so they won't stay there for long. Thus there is no need for us to keep poking their eye by inviting countries to join NATO. We should tell these countries that we will support their change to democracy but we will not support stupid acts such as going into South Ossetia. Our main concern should be the Georgia in our country.

Unemployment is rising, the government has to bail out Fannie and Freddy, commanders in Afghanistan are saying that we are not able to hold back the insurgency there. All these are the big news in the last few days. Yet the media and the Republicans are talking about lipsticks on a pig as if this expression have not been used by McCain and Cheney before. People are admiring Tina Fey, I mean Sarah Palin, while ignoring what is really important for our country and the world. Hey, what happened to country first?

The government has now bailed out Bear Stearns, Indymac, and Fannie and Freddie. There are proposals in the works to give auto companies low interest loans. I won't call that a bailout but it will cost the taxpayers. Every time the government and Wall Street tell us that this institution is too important to let fail completely you can be sure they are reaching into our wallets. Well, as I said before with the S@L debacle people never learned from their mistakes if the government is willing to bail them out. They learned that if you get big enough the country will guarantee that you won't die.

Economists point out that investors, many of them foreign, believe that F and F are government enterprises and are backed by the credit of the U.S. So if we let them fail, the confidence in the U.S. will deteriorate and lead to disaster in the financial market. As I wrote in my previous blog, this U.S. deficit is a matter of national security. We are at a point where we have to worry about the sophistication of the foreign investor. Actually I believe overwhelming number of them know that F and F are private companies but they also know that the U.S. will not let them fail. So that's why they invest in them. But the problem is that if the U.S. abandon F and F, the fear is that the foreigners will pull out of the T-bills and T-bond markets leaving us broke. So despite the incompetence of F and F executives, greedy mortgage brokers and home buyers, the taxpayers are the ones left holding the bag.

F and F should never have been government agencies. Their existence have enabled more people to buy houses, sure. But the result is that prices of homes are artificially high as more credits are available because the government is guarnteeing mortgages which private companies will not. They also provide more capitals to banks to loan out, keeping mortgage rate artifically low. It puts people who are not financially stable into homes that are higher prices than they should be. It also help speculators flip more houses. Thus this create hotter markets than possible by true capitalism. Now they are going to decrease the power of F and F when the market stablizes, (who knows when that will be?) Some people are already complaining about this loss of power, particularly Democrat lawmakers like Barney Frank. Well, to me, good riddance, let the market find the right prices and the right numbers of homes purchase without this artifical help from the government.

How are we going to do all these bailouts and still give tax cuts as both candidates claim? Our deficit is 10 trillion. It seems everyone is still wanting to get a tax cut. Remember the rebate we had this summer? That's essentially a tax cut. Did it do anything for the economy? So to believe that a tax cut will solve our problem is nonsense. We may get out of this depression eventually but this deficit is going hurt our long term economy, it will be passed on to our children and grandchildren, and it will hurt our national security. Still not too late for all you "country first" folks to sign on my plan to reduce our deficit. (See previous blog)

I have a proposition to make to those waving signs of "country first" at the Republican convention. Unless you or a member of your family is seving in the military, how exactly are you putting your country first? Or is it just empty rhetoric? I propose all of us, Democrats, Republicans and independents who have assets of over 1 million dollars (this includes yours truly), put up 10% of this year's gross income for our country. So if you make $100,000 this year give $10,000 in addition to your taxes. If you make 10 million, you give 1 million. If you or your son or daughter is on active duty in the military, you are exempt. Ten percent is a lot. But many of you are tithing to your church. If you don't match that, you are essentially saying your religion comes before your country!

You may say that the government is wasting our tax dollars and that's why you want to lower the taxes. This extra 10% will be used in non-controversial areas such as getting rid of the deficit and increase funding for veterans care. Regardless of your political position, you must agree that having a huge deficit which means countries like China and Saudi Arabia are owning large sums of our treasury bills and bonds are dangerous to our national security. So let's get rid of it. This is what you can do for your country if you truly believe in country first. I am not that much over the one million level so most of you who qualify will be a lot richer than me. Your standard of living certainly will not be affected. So if you are not willing to help your country in this small way, then whatever patriotic slogans you shout will be just empty rhetoric.

Observations from the GOP convention with one more day left:

Tina Fey, I mean Sarah Palin, did a very good job of delivering her speech tonight. She was poised and I don't think it will be easy for Biden to make her look bad. Despite her lack of experience she won't make a mistake like Gerald Ford did in his debate when he said that Poland was not under the control of the USSR. You can't underestimate her. Also, if you attack her, the GOP will cry sexism even though Palin herself once said Hillary Clinton should stop whinning about sexism.

With her daughter pregnant and her membership in the NRA, are we going to have a shotgun wedding in the White House? Will we have a vp shooting contest between Cheney and Palin? The Republicans are saying the pregnancy is a private matter and denounce the media for bringing it up. But they themselves announced it on Monday. Now the girl's fiancee is on the stage with the family, how much privacy are they trying to have? As a person who advocate abstinence only to prevent teen pregancy, I guess Palin has a first hand look at how well that works. Jon Stewart showed Bill O'Reilly saying how this is a private family matter, then Stewart showed a clip of O'Reilly torching Britney Spears' parents for being unresponsible parents because of their younger daughter's pregnancy. Talk about double standards.

Speaking of family value, convention speakers Fred Thompson and Rudy Guiliani both got rid of older wives for younger versions. Of course that is the case of John McCain himself.

I have no problem with Joe Lieberman endorsing McCain. He should go with whomever he thinks is the best candidate. Even speaking at the GOP convention is fine. But trashing Obama is uncalled for especially since Obama campaigned for him in the past. In fact Lieberman praised Obama in the past of being a great rising star. But worst of all is that the praise he lavished on Palin. I am sure he had no idea who she was before last week. There was no way he could have known her well enough to say all those things about her. It just makes all the good things he said about McCain less believable.

Last night's theme was "country first". It reminds me of Mao's call for sacrificing for the motherland. Turn in your neighbors if you don't think he is patriotic. If you don't believe in the Cultural Revolution, you are unpatriotic. It is sort of like the liberals accusing you of being politically incorrect. In this case the conservatives are saying if you don't believe like we do, you are unpatriotic. Recently there was a poll that about 38% of the people think that Obama is unpatriotic. Since I am sure the blacks in the sample do not think Obama is unpatriotic, it means near 50% of whites think that about him. Obama is born in this country and has done nothing unpatriotic. If there is that many people think that about him, racism is got to be alive and well. Imagine an immigrant like me running for office, I would not want to think what percentage of people think that I am unpatriotic.

On June 10, 2008 on this blog I wrote about entertainers who may end up being politicians. Well, I turned out the tv today and saw John McCain picked Tina Fey, one of my 10 choices, to be his running mate. Turned out she was not Tina Fey but Sarah Palin, governor of Alaska. I must admit I don't know anything about her. The only thing I know is that she is less experienced and younger than Obama so I don't know how McCain can claim that Obama is not ready to be president and then name a running mate who is even less ready. I saw a Republican on tv tried to turn the question around by saying Obama is inexperienced so Democrats can't challenge Palin's inexperience. That is perverse logic because it was McCain who claimed Obama is not ready first, so he is the one who has to answer to this experience business.

Anyway, I don't think the vp choice is going to make a big difference. Geraldine Ferraro didn't help Mondale at all with women voters. The inexperience bit won't make a difference either. Dan Quayle was as inexperience and incompetent as there was in a vp and he didn't cost George Bush the election. I just don't see how an extreme conservative is going to help McCain with the independent voters.