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Strategies & Market Trends : Waiting for the big Kahuna -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: rogermci® who wrote (91281)	11/8/2009 9:11:29 PM
From: ayn rand	Respond to of 94695

i had a great weekend. i hope you did too. let's try and make some money. good luck to us all!

To: rogermci® who wrote (91281)	11/9/2009 4:31:03 AM
From: puborectalis	Respond to of 94695

Paul Krugman Paranoia Runs Deep On Thursday there was a rally outside the U.S. Capitol to protest pending health care legislation, featuring the kind of thing we’ve grown accustomed to, including signs showing piles of bodies at Dachau with the caption “National Socialist Healthcare.” It was grotesque — and it was also ominous. For what we may be seeing is America being Californiafied. The key thing to understand about that rally is that it wasn’t a fringe event. It was sponsored by the House Republican leadership. Senior lawmakers were there and apparently had no problem with the tone of the proceedings. What this shows is that the G.O.P. has been taken over by the people it used to exploit. With the rise of Ronald Reagan, Republicans began to win elections in part by catering to the passions of the angry right. Until recently, however, that catering mostly took the form of empty symbolism. Once elections were won, the issues that fired up the base took a back seat to the economic concerns of the elite. But something snapped last year. Conservatives had long believed history was on their side, so the G.O.P. establishment could, in effect, urge hard-right activists to wait a little longer. After the Democratic sweep, however, the extremists could no longer be fobbed off with promises of future glory. Furthermore, the loss of Congress and the White House left a power vacuum in the party. At this point Newt Gingrich is what passes for a G.O.P. elder statesman. Real power in the party rests instead with the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin. Because these people aren’t interested in actually governing, they feed the base’s frenzy instead of trying to curb or channel it. So all the old restraints are gone. In the short run, this may help Democrats. But maybe not: elections aren’t necessarily won by the candidate with the most rational argument. They’re often determined, instead, by events and economic conditions. In fact, the party of Limbaugh and Palin could well make major gains in the midterm elections. The Obama administration’s jobcreation efforts have fallen short, so unemployment is likely to stay disastrously high. The bailout of Wall Street has angered voters, and might even let Republicans claim the mantle of economic populism. Conservatives may not have better ideas, but voters might support them out of sheer frustration. And if Tea Party Republicans do win big next year, what has happened in California could happen at the national level. In California, the G.O.P. has essentially shrunk to a rump party with no interest in actually governing — but that rump remains big enough to prevent anyone else from dealing with the state’s fiscal crisis. If this happens to America as a whole, the country could become effectively ungovernable in the midst of an economic disaster. The point is that the takeover of the Republican Party by the irrational right is no laughing matter. Something unprecedented is happening here — and it’s very bad for A