More random thoughts

One of the things that bothers me about Newt Gingrich is his wife’s hair. That is, I am presuming that the woman who is always next to him in every shot is his wife. Have you noticed that it (her hair) never moves? It looks like a blonde helmet.

Would someone explain to me why Newt is considered to be a conservative?

Also please explain to me why a photo ID is discriminatory. Seems to me that it is only discriminatory against vampires.

A democratic PAC is running an ad saying that Obama policies have led to a decrease in the US’ dependence on foreign oil. Really? What policy is that other than high prices? They didn’t say but the truth is that the percentage of oil imports has declined since 2005. Anyway only 18% of our oil comes from the Persian Gulf and that could be eliminated if we fully utilized our own resources and opened the Keystone pipeline.

Rick Santorum is the only presidential candidate who hasn’t bought into global warming. Ron Paul has alternated on calling it a hoax and then saying it had some valid points. On how to prevent it, he has said by decreasing foreign oil imports, not going to war over oil, and yet not subsidizing alternative fuels. And this is a presidential candidate?

Ben Bernanke just testified before the Senate Budget Committee and said that we should transition into changes in taxes – naming the phasing out of the Bush tax cuts and the forthcoming Obama proposal to increase taxes on the “wealthy”. So tell me why Bernanke – rather than Tim Geithner - is testifying before the Budget committee? Did the senate decide that since he apparently knows so little about the deleterious effect of discretionary monetary policy that he might know something about taxes?

Speaking of monetary policy, what would monetary policy be under a gold standard? Gingrich has called for establishing a commission to study the gold standard. Romney appears to be against it arguing that any standard would be ineffective so long as congress would have the right to alter the conversion rate between the dollar and gold (on this he is correct). And of course Ron Paul simply wants to get rid of the Fed and denationalize money (go read your Friedrich von Hayek).

Speaking of the gold standard, you probably know that India is now buying oil from Iran using gold rather than dollars. This not because of the decrease in the value of the dollar but rather due to the sanctions imposed on Iran that do not allow transactions in dollars. China is making noises of doing the same thing. If you want to make Bernanke and the Fed get religion and stop their debasing of dollars, then you should want more countries leaving the dollar and for Russia to come through on its musings about making the ruble gold based. Now if India, Brazil, China and Korea did the same, then we would finally see some monetary discipline from the Fed.