From the Mouth of Matuszak: Is That Atlas Shrugging?...

The day after Obama's re-election, the Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted three hundred points. The morning of November 8, 2012, it continued its spiral lower.

The trend actually started late last week, prior to the election. While this demonstrates that the electoral news was not the only factor in the continued drop,  it did impact its continued trend.

The reasons analysts give are varied. In reality it is an aggregate of many factors coming to a head at once.

I want to caveat this by stating I am not an economist. I studied economics and once pursued that degree in college. I understand the basics better than your average citizen. But I am not an expert. This is just my lay analysis based upon what I have observed and what actual experts are saying.

The European economic situation is one of the largest causes. Greece appears even less able to pay off its debts as they report an all time record high unemployment rate. This caused market problems and market timidity with European businesses and European banks. The news fed into American investors who backed off, or attempted to sell short. The market fell more. Many investors around the world still look to the US market. Seeing the DJIA and NASDAQ fall here just increased the trend on the world scale.

Then we had elections on Tuesday, November 6, 2012.

The re-election of Obama alone is not what is affecting the market. Some investors and funds may consider that a large decision to "Go Galt" and liquidate. By and large, though, Obama's re-election, alone, is not the cause.

The electoral outcome resulted in what appears to be a repeat of the past two years. We have a House with a Conservative majority who will seek spending cuts, fiscal responsibility, and a balanced budget. We have a Senate with a socialist majority who will not cut that spending unless it means cutting the one thing the US Constitution mandates federal spending be used to provide: the military and national defense. They will block any spending cuts that will affect those whose votes they purchase by providing government subsidies. The result will be a stalemate.

Since Congress will likely continue in a stalemate, the executive branch (Obama) will issue executive orders directing more and higher regulatory fees in order to garner revenue.

Tax cuts that were made temporary, for some unknown and illogical reason, are set to expire. So Capital Gains and Income taxes are set to automatically increase. This includes the return of the 10% income tax bracket, meaning that many working poor will now face taxes they have not faced since the "Bush Tax Cuts" went into effect. That will make it unprofitable to expand many businesses, thus making GDP predictions reflect little to no growth. If companies aren't going to grow, or are punished for growing, production and prosperity will decline. Why would anybody invest int something that looks like it will lose money?

Then this affects not only your wealthy. Most working Americans in lower-middle-income-brackets and higher have some form of retirement fund. That fund may be a 401k or IRAs or Roth IRAs. These are usually linked to mutual funds, stocks, bonds, futures, and the like. When the market declines do to poor economic forecasts or a lack of market stability, those funds suffer. There goes the nest egg for middle-income-workers.

Also, there goes Social Security. Why? Well, less capital means less jobs and lower paychecks. Lower paychecks means less put into those private retirement funds. It also means less Social Security and Medicare revenue. 14% of $100 is $14. 14% of $50 is $7. See how that works? The less you pay into Social Security, the less you receive once you reach retirement age. So, that nest egg faces uncertainty and hard times as well.

Take all of that together with the poor performance of the European market and industries and you are looking at a bleak future. That bleak future becomes a self-licking ice cream cone and becomes a bad today as many employers begin to downsize their companies and lay off more and more people.

Looking at that picture, many investors are scaling back in order to protect what they have left and wait until the market looks better. In essence, they are removing their resources from the pool. They are "going Galt" to a minor extent. The more who do so, the more the situation aggravates. Atlas starts to shrug.

 Article originally published at P-G Matuszak's Mental Aikido reprinted with permission.

Church of England Selects Next Archbishop

The Right Reverend Justin Welby, Bishop of Durham, has been selected as the next Archbishop of Canterbury, or head of the Church of England.

He will be moving into the position in March 2013, after the current archbishop retires.

Right off the bat he is promoting the acceptance of women bishops, and the General Synod will be voting on it later this month.

Welby is a former oil executive, who retired from that after eleven years, when he felt the call of God to join the ministry.

He moved his way up through the clerical ranks, writing papers on whether companies can sin, until being made bishop in November of 2011 and was also made a member of the House of Lords in January 2012.

A father of six children, his wife and him lost a child to a car accident in 1983.

Since joining the ministry he has setup an annual day for parents who've lost a child, to remember that child, and a book filled with the names of the lost is always on display at the Coventry Cathedral.

Lakewood Police Officer Shot and Killed

Early Friday morning, Lakewood, Colorado police responded to a burglary call on Depew Street between West 19th and 20th Avenues.

Sometime after they responded to the scene, shots were fired, from a near by location.

For the next hour shots were randomly heard, and police called for help in locating them.

Edgewater Police, Denver Police, and Jefferson County Sheriffs joined Lakewood officers in the search.

Eventually the location was found, and that's where real confusion began, resulting in one man dead, and three arrested.

Animal control was called in as there were three pit bulls present inside the home.

Originally, the Lakewood Police department said that the dead man was a suspect.

However, at about 7am MST, it was confirmed that it was a six year veteran officer, aged thirty-five, who had been shot and killed.

To make matters worse, just after 8:30am, it was revealed that the officer may have been hit by crossfire from one of his fellow policemen.

At this point no further information is known, and we will continue to update as it becomes available.

Assad Says There is No Civil War

President Bashar al-Assad once again showed his plain lack of connection with reality, on Friday.

During an interview, aired by Russia Today television, he stated that there is no Syrian Civil War.

Assad then said that the conflict is between him and a good portion of the world, but definitely not the Syrian people.

"The problem is not between me and the people. I do not have a problem with the people because the United States is against me and the West is against me and many other Arab countries, including Turkey, which is not Arab of course, is against me. If the Syrian people are against me, how can I be here?"

He also rejected suggestions that he find a safe haven in another country, to end the conflict, saying he would "live and die in Syria".

Syria's nearly twenty month long conflict has led to the deaths of over thirty-seven thousand people.

Rebel forces continue to slowly gain ground, throughout the country.

Meanwhile, reports out of Turkey said that over the last forty-eight hours, nearly ten thousand people have fled over the border, from Syria.

That number includes a group of twenty-seven Syrian military officers, including two generals and eleven colonels, who defected together.

Estimates place the total number of refugees, in Turkey, at over one hundred and twenty thousand people.

Refugees have escaped Syria, to every neighboring country, except Israel, that they could.

Those Who Do Not Learn From History...Aw, You Know the Rest!

Didn’t someone tell the GOP that bad déjà vu sucks! Don’t get me wrong, I so wanted Romney to win. He wasn’t who many conservatives wanted but they stood with him when he won the Republican nomination for President. To be honest, I don’t think that any of the other candidates would have done any better. Romney is a moderate but he didn’t have a strong enough conservative brand. The Obama campaign did a better job in a way of branding Romney than the Republications. Many found it hard to connect with Romney. I know choosing a candidate because you could see yourself having a beer, etc., with the person doesn’t make that person the best candidate for the job but people do want to believe that the President actually cares about them. President Obama did a great job convincing people that he cares even when his actions didn’t match was being said.

The other issue is that “conservative” needs new branding. There needs to be people that can effectively rebrand what conservative is instead of what people now believe it to mean. If the tape is not changed, conservatism will stay a negative word. Conservatives need to take back the narrative. It is time for it to be owned once again. “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” needs to be the conservative “why”. Why are you a conservative, why is conservatism good for the country, why should conservatives affect the culture around them, etc. The picture of what people believe conservatives are must be changed. The old, crotchety GOP male guard picture needs to go and be replaced with who conservatives really are. Conservatives are like a bouquet, one that has a variety of flowers that come in different colors.

Conservatives need to take a hard look at what they believe, do they want the status quo or is it time to change. If the GOP keeps doing the same thing over and over again, they will get the same results. They “king makers” need to retire. Conservatives need a party where all are welcomed, their voices are heard, their contributions (talents/skills) accepted not pushed aside by others because it is their turn to run things. You’re turn does not mean that the best people are doing the best jobs. Also, there needs to be a shake up on how things are done, policies implemented, their needs to be adaptability in how things are done. Just because something was done one way before, doesn’t mean that it is done the same way forever. If you stay in the same rut, the only thing that grows is the depth of it.

The next thing is vetting potential candidates better. Just because you want to run doesn’t means that you are the right candidate. Conservatives must remember that until the game changes, there will be Rule A for liberals and Rule B for conservatives. Life isn’t fair, but if you can’t play the game as it is, then don’t play. There also needs to be better prep done for new candidates so that they can effectively speak about social issues.

Also, people need to stop, not voting for someone because of one issue. I heard that people wouldn’t vote for Romney because he was a Mormon, or couldn’t vote for someone because they weren’t anti-abortion. Sorry, I would never vote for someone just because the candidate was a Protestant or Catholic or anti-abortion. I am going to vote for the right candidate for the job.

What is the answer? I am not certain as too many people don’t want take the hard road. But conservatives need to have these conversations because if people don’t try, nothing will ever change.

Police Identify Prairie View High School Student Killed in Crash

Police in Brighton, Colorado have identified the victim of a deadly crash, that happened on Tuesday.

Dominique Hernandez, sixteen, was killed when the car she was riding in lost control, rolled multiple times, and eventually landed on the median, where it finally came to a stop.

The driver and two other passengers are still in the hospital.

All four attended Prairie View High School, which has already seen a deadly car accident this year.

Iran Fires on US Drone

On Thursday, the Pentagon announced that one week ago an unarmed drone was fired upon, by Iran, as it flew over international waters.

Two Iranian jets fired twice in attempts to shoot down the drone.

They then chased the drone, but eventually gave up.

The drone was flown to a location where it could land, and be investigated for any harm, none was found.

A spokesman, for the Pentagon, said that, ""We have a wide range of options from diplomatic to military."

He further stressed the location of the drone, at the time of the attack, as being sixteen miles off the coast of Kuwait, several miles over international waters.

Some analysts have been quick to point out that such an incident could be considered an act of war.

Guatemalan Quake Claims 52 Lives

The death toll in Guatemala continues to rise, after the 7.4 earthquake that happened there Wednesday.

Fifty-two are now confirmed dead, and that is expected to rise as dozens are still missing.

More than seventy after shocks were felt in the region, within the first twenty-four hours, some of which were as high as 5.1.

Two thousand army troops joined the thousands of citizens and emergency workers searching the rubble for the missing.

As many as 1.2 million Guatemalans were affected by the quake, with many losing their homes.

Aircraft are being used to bring supplies into cut off areas.

Meningitis Toll Stands at 31 Dead

In what should be the final increase in cases of the meningitis outbreak, numbers have reached 424 sickened, ten of which are with joint infections.

Thirty-one people have died from the fungal meningitis.

These should be the final cases, as it has now been over forty-two days, the time in which it can take for meningitis to show itself, since the recall began.

All of the illnesses and deaths were caused by a contamination in anti inflammatory steroid shots, most of which were given via the spine.

Seventy-six locations, in twenty-three states, were sent the shots, which were given to as many as fourteen thousand people.

New England Compounding Center made the shots, and has complied completely with government officials who are conducting the investigation.

Officials are investigating at least two other drugs, made by NECC, for possibilities that they too may have been contaminated.

Things are only getting worse for the company, and now the government, as evidence comes out that they had been under investigation, for issues in their processing, since 2002.

Their sister company, Ameridose LLC, which has the same owners, voluntarily recalled all of their products.

Veterans Day 2012: Our Veterans Deserve Better Than High Unemployment and A Backlog of Disability Claims

As we prepare to honor US veterans on Sunday, it needs to be acknowledged that under the Obama administration, the backlog of veterans’ disability claims jumped by 179 percent. That translates into 883,949 outstanding claims, according to Veterans Administration (VA) statistics.

This represents a near record high, with 65.8 percent of claims having been backlogged for 125 days or more.

Also tragic is the fact that unemployment among young returning veterans is in the double digits.  It is unconciable that those returning from the front lines are arriving home only to then face unemployment lines.



Outreach to our veterans is also important.  What can you do? The Heritage Foundation has put together a brief list of suggestions:

• Contact means actively reaching out to the veterans and addressing specific needs that they and their families have. This could mean visiting military hospitals or reaching out to local chapters of national veterans’ organizations like the Veterans of Foreign Wars or American Legion.

• Comradeship is a key part of the healing process, since no one understands the needs and thoughts of veterans like other veterans. The volunteer organization Warriors and Quiet Waters addresses this need by taking severely wounded veterans fly fishing in small groups. In these locations and settings, former service members are free to talk about their experiences with other veterans in an informal and relaxed atmosphere.

• Community is something volunteer organizations can’t exist without. Warriors and Quiet Waters is located in Bozeman, Montana, a community of around 40,000 people. With over 400 volunteers and most of its funding coming from individuals and small businesses in the area, Warriors and Quiet Waters demonstrates what a successful community model looks like.

Watch the Following Tribute to Veterans