Is Obama’s election making the economy worse?

Of course Obama’s election is making the economy worse.

Just before Bill Clinton assumed power in 1993, on Dec. 31, 1992, investors took hundreds of billions of dollars from the economy, anticipating his tax increases. They knew he would make his tax increases retroactive to Jan. 1, 1993, even though he took office on Jan. 20.

Ex post facto laws are unconstitutional. Here’s Article 1, Section 9: “No bill of attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.” But, hey, who cares about the Constitution anymore?

I can’t remember his name, but one of the guys cashing in his US investments was a rich donor to Clinton who, however, knew the inside scoop and didn’t want to pay the Clinton taxes.

People now remember the Clinton regime as that of the dot-com boom, followed by the dot-com bust.  That was Clinton’s second term.

Remember Clinton’s first term

In the first term, the economy stagnated. There’s a scene in Bob Woodward’s book, “The Agenda,” in which Clinton is talking with VP Al Gore in 1993. Because of his policies — although he doesn’t admit that, or acknowledge it — bond rates are going up, as well as the interest on the U.S. debt. Clinton rages:

You mean to tell me that the success of the economic program and my re-election hinges on the Federal Reserve and a bunch of [expletive deleted] bond traders?

Actually, it was the bond traders who were responding to his policies, not the other way around.

Then, in 1996, he and the new Republican Congress agreed on a capital gains tax cut — and the economy took off, assuring Clinton’s re-election.

In 2008, investors are anticipating the worst of what will happen under Obama. This is a good thing because it might force him, once he becomes Intergalactic Overlord, to curb his Marxist assault on business and the middle class.

So, Investors Business Daily is right to bemoan Obama’s affect on the economy:

In their new book, “The End of Prosperity,” Art Laffer, Steve Moore and Peter Tanous argue that the threat of this tax tsunami is already destabilizing our financial markets and causing capital flight from America.

They write, “Hot capital is escaping over the borders out of the United States and flowing into China, India, Europe, and even Japan. . . Starting in late 2007, foreigners started pulling their money out of the United States, and Americans started investing more abroad. Global investors are losing confidence in the U.S.”

Right.

Except Investors Business Daily has been a full-time booster of Bush and Bush’s Iraq War. And it is the war-caused inflation, deficits, and debt that are the real sparks of the economic meltdown — and the real cause, of course, of why Americans are mad at the Republicans and will dump them from power big time next week. When the economy began crashing in early September, McCain actually was slightly ahead in the polls. So Obama’s election was not then a known thing, as it is today.

It’s like a man who drinks a quart of Old Headache Moonshine, then complains the next morning that he’s out of aspirin for his migrane.

Sorry, but you shouldn’t have drunk that swill — or supported the Iraq War — in the first place.

Neocons are deserting GOP ship they sank

Say what you will about the Neo”conservatives” — who aren’t real conservatives, but Trotskyites — they predictably are disloyal. After they destroy you, they desert you.

As Ron Paul warned a year ago, the Neocons’ Iraq War would destroy the GOP. That has happened. Even out here in John Wayne County (Orange County), local Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, elected for 20 years in a formerly safe district, now is running the race of his life against a local leftist Democrat. Dana, alas, supported Bush’s Neocon wars, and now is paying the price.

None of that bothers the Neocons, who are migrating to Obama. Contrary to popular belief, Obama is not a peacenik, but just another warmonger like Bush, Cheney, or McCain.

In a piece in Sunday’s Neocon Washington Post, ultra-Neocon David Frum begins with a pro-forma trashing of Sarah Palin, something all the Neocons do nowadays. Except that the Palin pick brought McCain the only spike in the polls of his dismal candidacy, briefly putting him ahead of Obama for the only time. McCain didn’t sustain it because he “suspended” his campaign as the financial crisis worsened, then backed, with Obama, the bipartisan $700,000,000,000.00 bailout ripoff of Main Street to benefit Wall Street.

McCain, as I noted at the time, should have led the grassroots opposition to the bailout. When he didn’t, that was the end of his campaign. Ignorant of economics, he didn’t understand that the bailout made the economy worse, benefiting Obama even more.

Frum-flam

Frum:

In these last days before the vote, Republicans need to face some strategic realities. Our resources are limited, and our message is failing. We cannot fight on all fronts. We are cannibalizing races that we must win and probably can win in order to help a national campaign that is almost certainly lost. In these final 10 days, our goal should be: senators first.

Yes, the message — the Neocon message — is failing because it brought us the Iraq War quagmire, followed by the inflation to pay for it, followed by the economic crash.

First, with the financial meltdown, the federal government is now acquiring a huge ownership stake in the nation’s financial system.

No, Frum, the feds are not “acquiring” that — you Neocons are handing it over to them!

It will be immensely tempting to officeholders in Washington to use that stake for political ends — to reward friends and punish enemies. One-party government, of course, will intensify those temptations. And as the federal government succumbs, officeholders will become more and more comfortable holding that stake. The current urgency to liquidate the government’s position will subside. The United States needs Republicans and conservatives to monitor the way Democrats wield this extraordinary and dangerous new power — and to pressure them to surrender it as rapidly as feasible.

Why should Democrats surrender powers they crave, and which the Neoconized Republicans cravenly gave them?

Second, the political culture of the Democratic Party has changed over the past decade. There’s a fierce new anger among many liberal Democrats, a more militant style and an angry intolerance of dissent and criticism. This is the culture of the left-wing blogosphere and MSNBC‘s evening line-up — and soon, it will be the culture of important political institutions in Washington.

The Frum fatwa

Actually, the Democrats are only mimicking the “angry intolerance of dissent and criticism” of the Neocons, who have purged from the GOP and the conservative “movement” anyone who disagreed with them. Frum himself is the most notorious henchman. On the day Bush launched Iraq War, March 19, 2003 — a day that will live in infamy — Frum put on National Review Online a fatwa against a host of longtime loyal conservatives and libertarians who opposed the war. Its title: “Unpatriotic Conservatives: A war against America.” These included Lew Rockwell, Pat Buchanan, Thomas Fleming, Robert Novak, and many more.

“Unpatriotic” he branded these patriots. It was especially disgusting because Frum is a left-wing Canadian who has spent more than two decades in America yet only got his U.S. citizenship papers when he became a speechwriter for Bush, and it was embarrassing to have a foreigner stuffing words into the mouth of the Great Leader. In that job, Frum came up with the “Axis of Evil” phrase that has caused so much mischief.  (His original version was “Axis of Hate.”) Frum is only good at purges of real conservatives, which he actually began as an undergraduate at Yale.

At the end of yesterday’s advice for the GOP, Frum said to Republicans that “the only argument we have left” to voters is that divided government — keeping some Republicans — would provide a slight check on Democratic Party excesses in using all those new powers the government has.

Powers which the Republicans, guided by Frum and other Neocons, have greatly expanded, not just in the past month but for 8 years. Let’s not forget the anti-patriotic “Patriot Act” that shreded our liberties, torture, legalized spying on anyone without a warrant — and so on.

As with everything Frum and the rest of the Neocons recommend, the opposite tack should be taken.

Good riddance to leftist Neocons

This election is over. But after the big losses next week, if Republicans want to survive, they should attack the Neocons, Bush, the Iraq War, and the whole central government apparatus of tyranny. Send Frum back to Canada, and the rest of the Neocons back to the Democratic Party from whence they slithered 30 years ago.

Embrace Ron Paul, whose attack on the murderous, profligate, bankrupt, robber U.S. government is the only way the GOP can revive itself.

L.A. Times launches bigoted hate attack on the Catholic Church

Several weeks ago I signed up to get the Los Angeles Times’ Sunday paper delivered to my doorstep. The second one arrived yesterday morning with a hateful, bigoted attack on the Catholic Church. Just before I headed off to Mass.

Columnist Steve Lopez, who identifies himself as an “agnostic,” wrote a column headlined, “Gay priest is true to his faith, at odds with his church.” It’s about Fr. Geoffrey Farrow of Fresno, who was fired after he openly opposed Proposition 8. Prop. 8 would overturn the California government’s tyrannical imposition on us of the absurdity of same-sex “marriage.”

Except that, if you’re a Catholic, your faith is that of your church.  And one of the tenets of your faith is that, as derived from the Bible and Church dogma, homosexuality is a sin. Also, Church law stipulates that homosexuals — even non-practicing ones — are banned from becoming priests. So Farrow violated his vows before even taking them.

Lopez contemptuously refers to the Catholic Church as Farrow’s “employer,” as if Farrow were a barista in a coffee shop.

Lopez:

Farrow conceded that he has considered church teachings “monstrous,” especially given the history of violence and suicide victimizing gays.

Actually, Church teachings on homosexuality are loving: That homosexual temptations are to be resisted, but if acted upon, are a sin. However, that this sin can be forgiven by God if one goes to confession. And that the sin is wiped away forever, giving one a chance at a new life. (Such is true for all sins, not just this one.)

In fact, it is the anti-Catholic Lopez’s beliefs which are “monstrous”: that it is quite OK for someone to become mired in homosexuality, with no chance of repentance and forgiveness.

Lopez:

I wondered again how anyone could go through such an ordeal and remain committed to a church that considers it a sin for a gay person to act on biological urges.

Biological urges? Does Lopez consider it a sin when a rapist follows his “biological urges”? Or when someone biologically prone to anger kills someone in a rage?

Lopez quotes Farrow:

I think the real scandal is the thousands of gay and lesbian children who feel abandoned by the church of their baptism.

But they’re not abandoned. Quite the opposite. The church offers them two invaluable things: First, the truth, in this case that homosexual acts are wrong. Second, the confessional. The Church exists for sinners.

What does Lopez offer them? The back of his hand and the trashing of their Church.

The L.A. Times/Lopez bigotry is a throwback to the Know Nothing anti-Catholicism of the 19th Century.

No wonder the L.A. Times keeps losing circulation.

I’m canceling my subscription.

Humorless Obama-Biden campaign

Looks like we’re in for 8 years of humorlessness from Obama and Biden. The other night, a Florida TV show asked Biden if Obama’s “spread the wealth” platform is Marxist.

“Are you joking?” asked Biden.

“No,” replied interviewer Barbara West.

Biden should have pulled out a cigar, gone into a Groucho crouch, flashed his eyebrows, and said:

Obama is a big fan of the Marx Brothers. By the way. I can see you standing in front of a stove. But I can’t see the stove.

I have had a perfectly wonderful evening, but this wasn’t it.

I never forget a face, but in your case I’ll be glad to make an exception.

It isn’t necessary to be in Florida in order to be unhappy.

Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.

The secret of politics is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.

There’s one way to find out if a politician is honest – ask him. If he says, “Yes,” you know he is a crook. ”

Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them… well, I have others.

Instead, reported the Orlando Sentinel:

Biden so disliked West’s line of questioning that the Obama campaign canceled a WFTV interview with Jill Biden, the candidate’s wife.

“This cancellation is non-negotiable, and further opportunities for your station to interview with this campaign are unlikely, at best for the duration of the remaining days until the election,” wrote Laura K. McGinnis, Central Florida communications director for the Obama campaign.

It’s going to be another long 8 years in a humorless hell.

To get through it, watch the inauguration of a real leader, President Rufus T. Firefly, from “Duck Soup.” Freedonia is a bankrupt country whose leaders continually push it into pointless wars. Its motto, “Land of the Spree, and the Home of the Knave.” Any resemblance to Freedonia and the America of November 2008 is purely a coincidence.

The Inauguration of the Firefly Administration:

OK. can’t resist it. Here’s the famous “Mirror Scene” from “Duck Soup”:

I’m writing in Ron Paul on Nov. 4

I obviously am not voting for either of the two nearly identical duopoly candidates, John McBama and Barack OCain.

The Libertarian Party’s candidate, Bob Barr, it turns out isn’t so libertarian, and Ron Paul didn’t endorse him, instead favoring Chuck Baldwin.

Voting for Constitution Party candidate Chuck Baldwin would be a decent option in most states. But some shenanigans by the Neocons dumped Baldwin from the party’s ticket out here in the Pyrite State, and put in his place ultra-Neocon Alan Keyes, who opposes the party’s principles: noninterventionism and limited government. Baldwin is an official write-in candidate here.

But Paul himself is now on California’s ticket as an official write-in candidate, which means my vote will be counted.

I voted for Ron in the Republican primary here. He is the only man who can save America from perdition. So I’m sticking with him.

Sarah Palin as Imelda Marcos

Republicans this year are the Gang That Couldn’t Campaign Straight.

The latest major goof: Sarah Palin’s $150,000 wardrobe.

Palin was picked because she’s a frumpy, self-described Hockey Mom, with a folksy style and wardrobe from Wal-Mart. She wasn’t corrupted by Washington power, money, and morals.

Then the geniuses running McCain’s campaign dressed her up for a role in the sequel to the movie “The Devil Wears Prada.” (A female friend of mine dragged me to that move and it turns out it was surprisingly good; especially the part after my popcorn ran out and I nodded off.)

I figure it’s because McCain’s advisers are rich boys from Yale and Princeton and Harvard, whose moms and wives sport $150,000 wardrobes. So they figured that was the way to grab voters’ attention.

Now Palin has become the GOP’s Imelda Marcos. You remember Imelda, the Steel Butterfly. When her dictator-husband, Ferdinand, was thrown out of office and exiled during the 1986 People Power Revolution in the Philippines, it was revealed that Imelda owned a vast wardrobe, including “508 floor-length gowns, 888 handbags and 71 pairs of sunglasses” — and the infamous 1,060 pairs of shoes.

Come to think of it, the GOP election geniuses must be consulting with Imelda, who’s over there still in the Philippines, bravely enduring, and winning, corruption trials. McCain’s boys must figure that, as she and Ferdinand squatted in office 20 years, she must know something about staying in power.

Socialist is NOT “an old code word for black”

I’ve been noting on this site that McCain and Bush are socialists. According to Lewis Diuguid, Kansas City Star Editorial Page columnist, that’s racist. He writes:

The “socialist” label that Sen. John McCain and his GOP presidential running mate Sarah Palin are trying to attach to Sen. Barack Obama actually has long and very ugly historical roots.

J. Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI from 1924 to 1972, used the term liberally to describe African Americans who spent their lives fighting for equality….

McCain and Palin have simply reached back in history to use an old code word for black. It set whites apart from those deemed unAmerican and those who could not be trusted during the communism scare.

Shame on McCain and Palin.

But wait! I’m confused. If it’s racist for McCain and Palin to call Obama a “socialist.” Then it must be racist for me to call McCain a socialist, even though he’s white like me.

Diuguid names several black leaders who were labeled “socialist.” Two are W.E.B. DuBois and Paul Robeson.

And the Lenin Prize goes to…

He has a point, actually. They went beyond mere socialism. In his old age, according to Wikipedia:

in the March 16, 1953 issue of The National Guardian, Du Bois wrote “Joseph Stalin was a great man; few other men of the 20^th century approach his stature.”^[36]…

In 1959, Du Bois received the Lenin Peace Prize. In 1961, at the age of 93, he joined the Communist Party USA…

And Wikipedia says of Robeson — a great singer, by the way:

Robeson became captivated with this new society and its leadership, declaring “that the country was entirely free of racial prejudice and that Afro-American spiritual music resonated to Russian folk traditions. “Here, for the first time in my life … I walk in full human dignity.”

Through his writings and speeches, Robeson went on to defend the foreign and domestic policies of the Soviet Union and Joseph Stalin. During the Soviet purges, Robeson allegedly told a Daily Worker reporter that “from what I have already seen of the workings of the Soviet Government, I can only say that anybody who lifts his hand against it ought to be shot!”^[18] After the formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Robeson proclaimed during a speech at the Paris World Peace Congress in 1949 that “It is unthinkable that American Negroes will go to war on behalf of those who have oppressed us for generations… against a country [the Soviet Union] which in one generation has raised our people to the full dignity of mankind.” Sugar Ray Robinson responded to this by saying that although he did not know Robeson he would “punch him in the mouth” if he met him.^[19] Even while many former left wing supporters of the Soviet Union learned of the atrocities being committed there and began publicly denouncing their former affiliations, Robeson held firm.

During his lifetime, Robeson always denied that he was a Communist Party member. But after his death, at the occasion of his 100th birthday in 1988, the American Communist Party issued a pamphlet “Paul Robeson: An American Communist,” by CP chairman Gus Hall, in which the Party acknowledged that Robeson had been a secret member. Hall wrote: “My own most precious moments with Paul were when I met with him to accept his dues and renew his yearly membership in the CPUSA.”

Robeson’s silence on Stalin’s anti-Semitism

And racism? How about Robeson’s silence during Stalin’s anti-Semitic “Doctors’ Plot” of the late 1940s and early 1950s. If Stalin hadn’t died in 1953, it might have been another Holocaust killing about 6 million Jews. Wikipedia again:

On July 8, 1943, at the largest pro-Soviet rally ever held in the United States, an event organized by the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee and chaired by Albert Einstein, Robeson met Solomon Mikhoels, the popular actor and director of the Moscow State Jewish Theater and the Yiddish poet Itzik Feffer. Mikhoels headed the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee in what was then the Soviet Union; Feffer was his second. After the rally, Robeson and his wife Essie entertained Feffer and Mikhoels.

Six years later, in June 1949, during the 150th anniversary celebration of the birth of Alexander Pushkin, Robeson visited the Soviet Union to sing in concert. Concerned about the welfare of Jewish artists, Robeson insisted to Soviet officials that he meet with Feffer.^[22] Forced to communicate through hand gestures and notes because the room was bugged, Feffer indicated that Mikhoels had been murdered in 1948 by the secret police. Robeson responded publicly during his concert in Tchaikovsky Hall on June 14 by paying tribute to his friends Feffer and Mikhoels and by singing the Vilna Partisan song “Zog Nit Keynmol” in both Russian and Yiddish to honor them.^[23][24] Upon returning to the United States, however, Robeson denied the widespread persecution of Jews stating that he “met Jewish people all over the place… I heard no word about it.”^[25].

You’d think a columnist like Diuguid might check a few facts. It only takes a couple of seconds to do a Google search.

And you’d think that his editors at the Kansas City Star, a paper most famous for giving Hemingway his start as a writer almost a century ago, would employ editors who  check this stuff.

In reality, socialism = racism

Oh, and what about such great, black, anti-socialist writers as Walter Williams and Thomas Sowell?  If they say that DuBois and Robeson are “socialists,” are they “racist,” too? One of Sowell’s best books is “Marxism: Philosophy and Economics,” a refutation of the ideology held so dear by DuBois and Robeson. And Sowell takes apart Obama here.

And one of Williams’ best is “The State Against Blacks,” showing how socialist governments — like that in the USA — actually hurt blacks by maniuplating the government system against those struggling to rise up in the world. Whereas in free markets, blacks are free to compete with anybody else; and if discriminated against, can — if government doesn’t “help” them — succeed anyway by working harder than the competition.

One example from Williams , from a recent column:

Two important surveys of academic economists were reported in two issues of the American Economic Review, May 1979 and May 1992. In one survey, 90 percent, and in the other 80 percent, of economists agreed that increasing the minimum wage causes unemployment among youth and low-skilled workers.

Minimum wages can have a more insidious effect. In research for my book “South Africa’s War Against Capitalism” (1989), I found that during South Africa’s apartheid era, racist unions, who’d never admit blacks, were the major supporters of higher minimum wages for blacks.

Gert Beetge, secretary of South Africa’s avowedly racist Building Worker’s Union, in response to contractors hiring black workers, said, “There is no job reservation left in the building industry, and in the circumstances I support the rate-for-the-job [minimum wages] as the second best way of protecting our white artisans.” Racists recognized the discriminatory effects of mandated minimum wages.

Let’s also remember a great black anti-socialist of the past, George Schuyler, who was published by fabled American journalist H.L. Mencken. Wikipedia notes:

Schuyler believed that socialists were frauds who actually cared very little about negroes. Schuyler’s writing caught the eye of H. L. Mencken who wrote “I am more and more convinced that he [Schuyler] is the most competent editorial writer now in practice in this great free republic.”

In 1931 Schuyler published Black No More, which tells the story of a scientist who makes a machine that turns black people to white, a book that has since been reprinted twice.

That would make a great movie. Too bad Hollywood Leftists won’t touch it.

I read his autobiography, “Black and Conservative,” back in the 1970s. It’s been 30 years, but my memory is that he was dismayed that his fellow blacks so easily were taken in by political hucksters. Of course, there’s no racial distinction there. White Republicans who think Bush and McCain are supporters of the free market are equally deluded.

It’s just beginning

Alas, we’re likely to get more ideological piffle like Diuguid’s when Obama becomes president.

The reality, though, is that Obama — like McCain and Bush — is a socialist. And if he and his supporters can’t stand being called what they are, then they’ll just have to lumpenproletariat.

Don’t worry: Obama will break his promises

Right-wingers are worried that President Obama will bring even more socialism (if that’s possible after Bush) to America and radicalize the whole country. Bill Ayres will become attorney general and Bernardine Dohrn secretary of HHS.

They shouldn’t worry. Presidents always break their promises.

Lyndon Johnson promised peace and a “Great Society” of racial equality. He gave us the Vietnam quagmire and an assault on the black family, whose illegitimacy rate rose from 25% when he took power to 70% today.

Richard Nixon promised to end the Vietnam War and “bring us together.”  The war continued but he did bring us together — against himself over Watergate, for which he was forced to resign.

Gerald Ford promised to “heal” America — it got sicker.

Jimmy Carter asked, “Why not the best?” We got the worst.

Ronald Reagan best kept his promises, dumping Soviet socialism in the “dustbin of history” and restoring economic prosperity. But he also broke two major promises: instead of shrinking government spending, it grew 90% under him. And instead of appointing “strict constructionists” to the Supreme Court, we got one guy like that, Scalia, but also two radical leftist anti-constitutionalists, O’Conner and Kennedy.

George H.W. Bush promised, “Read my lips: No new taxes!!!!!!!!” In office, he increased taxes — which crashed the economy — to pay for the first Iraq War, part of the Bush family’s weird obsession with Iraq, dating back to when Bush’s Zapata Corporation had a contract with Kuwait in 1959.

Bill Clinton promised a “middle-class tax cut.” Never got it. Instead, he loosened lending rules for mortgages, which by 2008 had contributed to the sub-prime mortgage meltdown, a major assault on the middle-class.

George W. Bush promised a “humble” foreign policy and economic growth. We got an strutting, globe-straddling empire that bankrupted America and threw us into a new depression.

Obama is promising “the audacity of hope,” so we’re sure to get the mendacity of despair.

Have a nice election.

They’re all socialists

It’s amusing to hear McCain say Obama is a socialist. Of course Obama is.

So is McCain.

McCain and Obama supported Bush’s $700,000,000,000.00 socialist bailout of Wall Street.

McCain supported Bush’s socialist No Child Left Behind takeover of American schools.

McCain supported Bush’s $40,000,000,000.00 yearly new socialist drug program for retirees, further socializing American medicine.

Among other Republicans, Romney imposed a mandatory socialized medicine on the people of Massachusetts when he was governor.

Huckabee imposed many new socilialist programs and taxes on the people of Arkansas.

And so on.

Only one candidate of either major party is not a socialist: Ron Paul. He also warned for years that socialist schemes would bring about the economic collapse we’re now going through.

Of the third-party candidates, two are socialists: Cynthia McKinney of the Green Party and Ralph Nader.

Two are not socialists: Chuck Baldwin of the Constitution Party and Bob Barr of the Libertarian Party.

That’s the choice this year, if it is a choice.

Marxism-Leninism-Bushism

I never voted for Bush, in 2000 favoring Buchanan. But I remember in 2000 going with some friends to the Republican Party’s big election-night bash at a hotel here in Orange County. I was sort of hoping — sort of, maybe, after I’d packed away a few shots of Dewar’s to ease the pain — that Gore, who was bad enough, would lose, that the Clinton regime would be over, and that Bush at least might restore some capitalism.

We all have our delusions.

As I said, I didn’t vote for him.

Now Bush has become the biggest socialist in American history. Venezuelan boss Hugo Chavez taunted Bush, as reported by Reuters:

Socialist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez mocked George W. Bush as a “comrade” on Wednesday, saying the U.S. president was a hard-line leftist for his government’s intervention of major private banks in the U.S. financial crisis.

Chavez, who calls capitalism an evil and ex-Cuban leader Fidel Castro his mentor, ridiculed Bush for his plan for the federal government to take equity in American banks despite the U.S. right-wing’s criticism of Venezuelan nationalizations.

“Bush is to the left of me now,” Chavez told an audience of international intellectuals debating the benefits of socialism. “Comrade Bush announced he will buy shares in private banks.”

Indeed, it’s true that Comrade Bush is not only a socialist, but a communist, hence my headline for the new ideology: Marxism-Leninism-Bushism.

In his “Communist Manifesto,” Marx wrote up a 10-point plank of communist action, the most important of which was:

5. Centralization of credit in the hands of the State, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.

That’s what Comrade Bush just did with his $700,000,000,000.00 bailout of Wall Street, so he’s a Marxist.

And here’s Lenin, from “The Proletariat and the Party on the Road to October,” meaning the Bolshevik revolution in October 1917  (from “Selected Works” [New York: International Publishers, 1960, Vol. VI, p. 142]; emphasis in original):

We did not propose nor could anybody have proposed, anything  but the immediate establishment of control over the trusts, the banks, trade, the parasites, and over foodstuffs.

So, Comrade Bush is a Leninist, too.

Hence, Marxism-Leninism-Bushism.

Curiously, Comrade Bush’s communist revolution took place in the same month as Lenin’s: October.