OGenocide Update With A Triple Backflip

clipped from gatewaypundit.blogspot.com "Preventing a potential genocide in Iraq isn't a good enough reason to keep U.S. forces there." Barack Obama Sunapee, N.H. June 20, 2007 "The international community has an obligation, even when it's inconvenient, to act when genocide is occurring." Barack Obama Dresden, Germany June 5, 2009

A Hockey Stick We Can Believe In

clipped from michaelscomments.wordpress.com In any case, here is the new number for May: 9.4%, which is 0.2% higher than we had shown in the chart from a few days ago:* I recall in 2002-2004, during the “jobless recovery”, whenever claims filed would drop, that was treated as a bad thing by the MSM, because they decreed, ipse dixit, that that was because disspirited workers had just given up looking for work. Ditto for the productivity index. An increase in that was spun as no big deal, since so few people are working, blah blah blah. Now, not so much. Suddenly, this drop in claims is heralded as something good by the MSM. Finally–a hockey stick we can believe in.

Welcome To The 30 Year Lost Decade

clipped from www.qando.net In reality it all comes down to power, or the illusion of power, and politics. Short-term politics with no real eye on the future impact of actions taken today. And these actions are based in a false premise that the market is not self-correcting and that it must be both controlled and tweaked by government. Japan bought into that premise, and so has the US: The principle of creative destruction—the economic mutation that continuously breaks down old forms and creates newer, more productive and efficient ones—was ignored in the hope that legacy corporations could somehow save Japan. From Wall Street to Detroit, under both George W. Bush and Barack Obama, the American government has been equally unwilling to let once-formidable companies fail. And that, in my opinion, will see us repeat the Japanese experience

Frankly Government Motors

clipped from www.qando.net Politics and special interests now run General Motors - a company which should be making business decisions based on what is best for the company and its future and not what is best for some politician: Rep Barney Frank (D-Mass.) won a stay of execution on Thursday for a General Motors plant in his district that the automaker had announced it would close. No other lawmaker has managed to halt the GM ax. As chairman of the House Financial Services Committee Frank oversees the government’s bailout program, known as TARP. Frank’s staff said the lawmaker spokes with GM CEO Fritz Henderson on Wednesday and convinced him to keep the Norton, Mass. plant open for at least 14 months. Because what happens in about 14 months boys and girls? The 2010 midterms. And who controls all the bailout programs? Why the guy who was able to change Government Motors mind on the plant in his district.

COTD: Hayek On The Missing Bourgeoisie

clipped from www.qando.net It is a common mistake to regard National Socialism as a mere revolt against reason, an irrational movement without intellectual background. If that were so, the movement would be much less dangerous than it is. But nothing could be further from the truth or more misleading. The doctrines of National Socialism are the culmination of a long evolution of thought, a process in which thinkers who have had great influence far beyond the confines of Germany have taken part. It was not merely the defeat, the suffering, and the wave of nationalism which led to their success. Still less was the cause, as so many people wish to believe, a capitalist reaction against the advance of socialism. On the contrary, the support which brought these ideas to power came precisely from the socialist camp. It was certainly not through the bourgeoisie, but rather through the absence of a strong bourgeoisie, that they were helped to power.

The Splendor Of Control

clipped from www.qando.net The primary concept behind ownership is that of exclusivity, such that if I own real property, for example, I can by right exclude all others. Without the ability to exclude, my “ownership” is something less than complete and the use, enjoyment and alienation (a fancy word for selling, trading or giving away) of property is limited. To illustrate the idea, consider that you own a piece of real property (Blackacre) which is rich with gold and silver mines, oil, and an abundance of flora and fauna. In short, it is a little slice of heaven and it is all yours. Or at least it would be if were not for the fact that the flora are mostly designated as protected, the fauna are all listed as endangered, and the mineral deposits are tightly regulated, all to the extent that you cannot make any real use of your land except to look at it from a neighbor’s yard in humble admiration for its splendor. In short, you may own Blackacre in title, but you have very little, if any, control.

Bush Again

clipped from www.usatoday.com The recession is driving the safety net of government benefits to a historic high, as one of every six dollars of Americans' income is now coming in the form of a federal or state check or voucher. Benefits, such as Social Security, food stamps, unemployment insurance and health care, accounted for 16.2% of personal income in the first quarter of 2009, the Bureau of Economic Analysis reports. That's the highest percentage since the government began compiling records in 1929. In all, government spending on benefits will top $2 trillion in 2009 — an average of $17,000 provided to each U.S. household, federal data show. Benefits rose at a 19% annual rate in the first quarter compared to the last three months of 2008. The recession caused about half of the increase, according to the report. Unemployment insurance nearly tripled in the past year. The other half is the result of policies enacted during President George W. Bush's first term. spending soared to pay for the Medicare drug benefit

Do You Speak Mandarin? Sayonara

clipped from www.bloomberg.com June 3 (Bloomberg) -- Microsoft Corp. Chief Executive Officer Steven Ballmer said the world’s largest software company would move some employees offshore if Congress enacts President Barack Obama’s plans to impose higher taxes on U.S. companies’ foreign profits. “It makes U.S. jobs more expensive,” Ballmer said in an interview. “We’re better off taking lots of people and moving them out of the U.S. as opposed to keeping them inside the U.S.” Ballmer estimated that higher taxes under the proposal would reduce profits for companies that comprise the Dow Jones Industrial Average by between 10 and 15 percentage points. “It’s just a question of how much will the Dow come down,” Ballmer said. “It’s not about companies anyway; we’re talking about shareholders.”

Awake

clipped from www.bloomberg.com There’s evidence, though, that Buffett is awake to America’s problems. He says there will be no quick rebound in consumer spending, the economy has “fallen off a cliff,” and we are now “fighting a war.” Berkshire Hathaway Inc.’s real- estate arm just estimated that the backlog of unsold houses is double the official figures. Buffett doesn’t enjoy watching Berkshire labor under the burden of U.S. regulations and litigiousness, pay taxes that fund expensive military commitments overseas, and struggle against the financial quicksand of the health-care system. Recently, Berkshire’s profits have been hurt by a U.S. economy with too few jobs and over-reliance on debt-driven consumer spending.

Accoutrements

clipped from www.reason.com As budget analyst Fred Silva told Capitol Weekly, solving California’s budget woes is not as simple as turning back the budget clock to 2004, largely because of locked-in—and crippling—pension and health care spending obligations. Certain cuts in health care, for example, would lead to the loss of federal revenue. And unions and state employees have no intention of making the state's solvency any easier. State contributions to the government pension fund have, as Reason Foundation Policy Analyst Adam Summers notes, “jumped from $321 million in 2000-01 to $7.3 billion last year." It costs California nearly twice as much to house a prisoner per year as it costs Florida. Contemplating those facts, it’s obvious that the basic survival of the accoutrements of civilized living are not at stake in California’s fiscal crisis.

Teleprompter Redux

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OTaqiyya

clipped from gatewaypundit.blogspot.com During the 2008 Campaign Barack Obama's website claimed that Obama's father was an agnostic or atheist: “Barack” is the candidate’s Kenyan father’s name; Obama’s middle name, “Hussein,” is his grandfather’s name. Obama has described his father as atheist or agnostic. Today we find out his father Barack Obama Senior was indeed a Muslim. Jake Tapper reported: During a conference call in preparation for President Obama's trip to Cairo, Egypt, where he will address the Muslim world, deputy National Security Adviser for Strategic Communications Denis McDonough said "the President himself experienced Islam on three continents before he was able to -- or before he's been able to visit, really, the heart of the Islamic world -- you know, growing up in Indonesia, having a Muslim father -- obviously Muslim Americans (are) a key part of Illinois and Chicago." But, this past month we learned that this "Christian" grandmother is going to attend The Hajj.

Sanctified HypOcrisy

clipped from pajamasmedia.com Le Monde is reporting that Barack Obama told France’s Canal + Tuesday that “les Etats-Unis sont l’un des plus grands pays musulmans“. My French is not as good as it used to be, but I sure know what that means without recourse to a dictionary or Google: The United States is one of the largest Muslim countries on the planet. Is that the USA of the 57 states? I guess it depends on what your definition of “one of” is. According to Wikipedia, the US ranks thirty-eighth with a Muslim population of some 4.5 million Islam, which is, in his words, a religion that has always “evolved along with progress.” I suppose that’s true if you disregard women’s rights, gay rights and the basic democratic need for the primacy of state law for all citizens, not to mention a host of other values we could group under the rubric of the Enlightenment. We also know what dhimmi law is… and taqqiya. The WikiIslam defines it as “sanctified hypocrisy.” That is Barak Obama to a T.

Because It Would Impede The Brainwashing Program

clipped from jeffreygoldberg.theatlantic.com The eight a.m. NPR news update today included word of the fatal shooting of one soldier and the wounding of another outside an army recruiting station in Arkansas. The news reader, Nora Raum, outlined the incident and stated that the shooting appeared to have "religious motivations." She did not name the suspect, Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, or tell NPR listeners what those religious motivations might be. In other words, it could have been a radical Unitarian who gunned down the soldiers, or possibly a violent Presbyterian. Why the shyness? Why not tell people what is actually happening in the world? The extremist Christian beliefs of George Tiller's alleged murderer are certainly relevant to that case, and no one in my profession is hesitant to discuss them. Why the hesitancy to talk about the motivations of the man who allegedly killed Pvt. William Long?

Aggravation

clipped from www.ft.com Unconventional monetary policies being pursued by the world’s main central banks could aggravate rather than ease the economic crisis, Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor, suggested on Tuesday. Her surprisingly strong attack on the US Federal Reserve, the Bank of England and the European Central Bank was remarkable coming from a leader who had so far scrupulously adhered to her country’s tradition of never commenting on monetary policy. “What other central banks have been doing must be reversed. I am very sceptical about the extent of the Fed’s actions and the way the Bank of England has carved its own little line in Europe,” she told a conference in Berlin. “Even the European Central Bank has somewhat bowed to international pressure with its purchase of covered bonds.” She added: “We must return to independent and sensible monetary policies, otherwise we will be back to where we are now in 10 years’ time.”

Laughter Reprise

clipped from www.fool.com When Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner told a group of students in China on Monday that their country's U.S. dollar holdings are "very safe," the crowd broke into laughter. Holding more than $1 trillion in U.S. debt, China's concerns are justified. In March, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao admitted he too was "concerned about the safety of our assets." In stark terms, a former Chinese central bank advisor warned Monday that "another financial crisis triggered by a dollar crisis could be inevitable" if the U.S. fails to reduce deficits and increase savings. Hou Huimin of the China Gold Association relates the discussion back to gold: "the US dollar … may retreat from being the international reserve currency. If that happens, whoever holds gold will be at an advantage." Precious metals analysts see China's accumulation signaling a "broader shift in central banks' attitude towards gold," potentially "re-igniting gold's relevance as a monetary asset."

The One Car Endorsed By President Obama

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Loud Laughter

clipped from www.reuters.com China is the biggest foreign owner of U.S. Treasury bonds. U.S. data shows that it held $768 billion in Treasuries as of March, but some analysts believe China's total U.S. dollar-denominated investments could be twice as high. "Chinese assets are very safe," Geithner said in response to a question after a speech at Peking University, where he studied Chinese as a student in the 1980s. His answer drew loud laughter from his student audience, reflecting scepticism in China about the wisdom of a developing country accumulating a vast stockpile of foreign reserves instead of spending the money to raise living standards at home.

More Communist Than China (Part 3,595)

clipped from www.ft.com This is easier said than done. If China stops financing the US deficit or US consumers stop spending too rapidly, the crisis will enter a new, darker chapter. In the longer term, making China less parsimonious and the US less voracious means re-engineering both economies. Re-establishing habits of thrift in America will be painful; no one wants to cut consumption. Chinese demand is limited by workers’ income, which is a mere 40 per cent of national output. Demand also suffers because, lacking a robust social security system, Chinese consumers save up as insurance against illness and unemployment. Building a social safety net and redistributing money from Chinese corporations to workers would mark a generational shift with serious consequences for the elite.

Bet you didn't know why the Chinese saved so much, eh?

Have you ever even considered the fact that Social Security is just yet another moral hazard working against savings? And by logical extension, investment?

Under New Management

clipped from www.realclearpolitics.com What could such statements possibly mean-- in any context-- other than the new and fashionable racism of our time, rather than the old-fashioned racism of earlier times? Racism has never done this country any good, and it needs to be fought against, not put under new management for different groups. The very idea that a judge's "life experiences" should influence judicial decisions is as absurd as it is dangerous. It is dangerous because citizens are supposed to obey the law, which means they must know what the law is in advance-- and nobody can know in advance what the "life experiences" of whatever judge they might appear before will happen to be. It is absurd because it flies in the face of the facts. It was a fellow Puerto Rican judge on the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals-- Jose Cabranes-- who rebuked his judicial colleagues for the cavalier way they dismissed the white firefighters' case. Laws are made for the benefit of the citizens, not for the self-indulgences of judges.

Remind Me Again...

clipped from www.washingtonpost.com LONDON -- President Barack Obama suggested that Iran may have some right to nuclear energy _ provided it proves by the end of the year that its aspirations are peaceful. In a BBC interview broadcast Tuesday, he also restated plans to pursue direct diplomacy with Tehran to encourage it set aside any ambitions for nuclear weapons it might harbor. Iran has insisted its nuclear program is aimed at generating electricity. But the U.S. and other Western governments accuse Tehran of seeking atomic weapons. "What I do believe is that Iran has legitimate energy concerns, legitimate aspirations," Obama said, adding that the international community also "has a very real interest" in preventing a nuclear arms race.

...why nuclear power is legitimate for Iran (and France although we need to keep that top secret) but not for the U.S.?

Du'O

clipped from www.politico.com The impressive fundraising Obama demonstrated in 2007 was largely a result of the usual high-dollar contributors – not the small-dollar donors the campaign liked to hold up to the press. “It wasn’t the Internet,” admitted Penny Pritzker, Obama’s national finance chair.

Gramsci -- A Periodic Reminder

clipped from www.jacksonville.com Gramsci thought that Western traditions and values were simply too strongly engrained in the Italian people, and the people of other Western nations, to be overcome by armed revolution. Gramsci advocated a long-term approach instead. He thought the only way to conquer the West was to destroy the West's political and religious values through moral subversion and reinterpret Western history in such a way that makes it look evil and corrupt. Gramsci knew this was a long term goal, since those people of his own generation were exposed to Western values and would be unwilling to give them up. Gramsci knew though that future generations could be influenced IF there was a way of exposing them to the proper propaganda. Gramsci, in a shrewd mix of Machiavelli, Marx and Proverbs 22:6, advocated attacking the children through the schools in order to - Pied Piper-like - lead them into communism.

Feeling Better

clipped from www.washingtonpost.com The cat-and-mouse game does not end there. As detentions at Bagram and traditional renditions have come under increasing legal and political scrutiny, the Bush and Obama administrations have relied more on other tactics. They have secured foreign intelligence services to do all the work -- capture, incarceration and interrogation -- for all but the highest-level detainees. And they have increasingly employed targeted killings, a tactic that eliminates the need to interrogate or incarcerate terrorists but at the cost of killing or maiming suspected terrorists and innocent civilians alike without notice or due process. The government, however, sees the terrorist threat every day When one of its approaches to terrorist incapacitation becomes too costly legally or politically, it shifts to others that raise fewer legal and political problems. This doesn't increase our safety or help the terrorists. But it does make us feel better about ourselves.

You Know Things Are Bad When...

clipped from www.breitbart.com The proximate cause of the bankruptcy was supposed to be the inability of GM and the government's auto task force to reach an accommodation with GM's bondholders. But late last week, the bondholder problem was moving toward rapid resolution, and was clearly resolvable. Why then are GM and its multibillion government financier proceeding with bankruptcy? The bankruptcy and the GM restructuring plan are the product of a secretive, unaccountable, Wall Street-minded government task force that assumed power because of a Congressional abdication of historic magnitude. By all rights, the restructuring plan should have been submitted to Congress for deliberative review and decision.

... not only do I find myself in agreement with the Russians and Chinese criticizing O Duce's lunatic plunge into Marxism, but I can find more than one paragraph in anything Ralph Nader says that I'm even within a parsec of agreeing with. Good Lord.

Insanity On Stilts

clipped from gatewaypundit.blogspot.com The New York Times made this stunning admission today: It is not every 31-year-old who, in a first government job, finds himself dismantling General Motors and rewriting the rules of American capitalism. But that, in short, is the job description for Brian Deese, a not-quite graduate of Yale Law School who had never set foot in an automotive assembly plant until he took on his nearly unseen role in remaking the American automotive industry. Nor, for that matter, had he given much thought to what ailed an industry that had been in decline ever since he was born. A bit laconic and looking every bit the just-out-of-graduate-school student adjusting to life in the West Wing — “he’s got this beard that appears and disappears,” says Steven Rattner, one of the leaders of President Obama’s automotive task force — Mr. Deese was thrown into the auto industry’s maelstrom as soon the election-night parties ended.

Into History

clipped from online.wsj.com The Trabant originally derived from a well regarded West German car (the DKW) made by Audi, which today produces some of the most prestigious cars in the world. In the hands of the East German government, the unfortunate DKW became a farce of a car. The bureaucrats and the union that ran the Trabant factory made the car smaller and boxier, to give it a more proletarian look. Automobile manufacturing and government do not mix in capitalist countries either. In 1945, the British voters, tired of four years of war, kicked out Winston Churchill and elected a leftist parliament led by Labour's Clement Attlee. Attlee nationalized the automobile, trucking and coal industries, as well as communication facilities, civil aviation, electricity and steel. Britain was already saddled by crushing war debts. Now it was sapped of economic vigor. The old empire quickly passed into history. It would take decades until Margaret Thatcher's privatization reforms restored Britain's place

RTWT.

If It's Not An Aluminum Can, Skip It

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Collectivism As A Cargo Cult

clipped from en.wikipedia.org A cargo cult is a type of religious practice that may appear in tribal societies in the wake of interaction with technologically advanced, non-native cultures. The cults are focused on obtaining the material wealth of the advanced culture through magical thinking, religious rituals and practices, believing that the wealth was intended for them by their deities and ancestors. Members, leaders, and prophets of cargo cults maintain that the manufactured goods ("cargo") of the non-native culture have been created by spiritual means, such as through their deities and ancestors, and are intended for the local indigenous people, but that, unfairly, the foreigners have gained control of these objects through attraction of these material goods to themselves by malice or mistake[citation needed]. Thus, a characteristic feature of cargo cults is the belief that spiritual agents will, at some future time, give much valuable cargo and desirable manufactured products to the cult members

Ya Think?

clipped from www.reuters.com An obvious culprit for the move in bond yields is the country's record fiscal deficit, which will generate a massive amount of new government issuance.

Brutal ... But He Looks Nice So It's OK

clipped from www.powerlineblog.com One of the most striking features of the young Obama administration is that whatever personal popularity the President enjoys has not carried over to his policies. Obama is currently enjoying a bounce due to greater approval by Hispanics--the result of the Sotomayor nomination--but once again, that bounce fails to be reflected in the realm of policy. Rasmussen finds today that by a 67 percent to 21 percent margin, voters "oppose a plan for the federal government to give General Motors an additional $50 billion to buy 70% of the company." Only 18 percent say the government will do a good job of running GM. (It would be interesting to know how many of those 18 percent are union members.) These are absolutely brutal numbers.

Bi-Party Sin

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And they both just love the Federal Reserve. Can you say "Sugar Daddy"?

The Worse It All Becomes

clipped from articles.moneycentral.msn.com This week I'd like to update readers on the funding crisis. That's the third in the three-baseball-game analogy that I dreamed up last fall (read "Economy sinks as we save bankers") as a way to think through the enormous problems we faced. The first and second games (crises) -- the credit meltdown and the economic downturn -- have been pretty easy for folks to understand, as they were front and center in the news. Essentially, the financial crisis now lies behind us But therein lay the seeds for the funding crisis -- which, as I noted in my daily column at FleckensteinCapital.com on May 21, appears to have started. Because if the dollar is called into question (as now appears to have begun) and if the Federal Reserve's monetization cannot lower interest rates (and in fact causes them to rise, due to the consequences of printing so much money), then the Fed is trapped. The more it tries to solve the problem by printing more money, the worse it all becomes.

Bright Beacons

clipped from www.washingtonpost.com Despite the car manufacturers' critical state, the United Auto Workers are resisting concrete steps to help the industry that has provided their livelihood for 70 years. Instead, they look to the government for subsidies Shades of the U.S. maritime industry, which began its death spiral in the 1970s, a time when it was massively subsidized by the federal government and when laws guaranteed that U.S.-flag vessels would carry all government-related cargo. Yet even with these subsidies and guarantees, the dozen or more U.S. companies -- including such once well-known names as American Export Lines, Grace Lines and Pacific Far East Lines -- failed, one after another, in the face of competition from more efficient carriers as more and more countries entered the international shipping market. the most efficient providers of goods or services that are similar in price or quality will succeed The parallels between the auto industry and our departed maritime industry are bright beacons.

Taxing The Stupid

clipped from www.davidwarrenonline.com The figure of $1.4 million, for the amount of the taxpayers' money that will be spent on saving each job at General Motors and Chrysler, has now appeared in the media. I have no idea whether it is accurate; more fundamentally, no idea how anyone could arrive at a plausible final reckoning, at the bottom of a sheet of wildly expensive variables. What began as a $4-billion bailout, and was defended at that level by a prime minister who wrote and reasoned so eloquently against corporate bailouts when he was running the National Citizens Coalition, has blossomed within weeks into a $13.5-billion bailout. One of the proofs that Canadians are indeed rather stupid, is that we will stand for this sort of thing: that people who themselves face penury in old age, will agree to have their pockets picked to cover $70-an-hour auto-workers. And then actually vote at the next election for the politicians who robbed them. (For not all Canadians are basically conservative.)

Changing America

clipped from www.davidwarrenonline.com For Obama as candidate, as for Obama as president, one of the most important political tasks has been neutralizing that Catholic constituency. The selection of Joe Biden as running mate was an astute manoeuvre to this end. But the speech at Notre Dame was a master-stroke. But I watched the speech itself -- given the kind of live mass coverage that commencement speeches seldom receive -- with a kind of admiring horror. In a few short minutes of sophistical artistry, Obama had changed the issue from whether we should allow the killing of babies, to whether we should tolerate the sort of people who are against such things. And then, by declaring that we should, indeed, tolerate such people, he harvested the general applause. Here is a man who will in fact change America. I flinch at what it will become.

Amusing Ourselves To Death: More On Pedagogy

clipped from www.davidwarrenonline.com Let me say I thoroughly enjoyed, sensually, reading the papers in print-form again, including those in languages I less than half understand. And let me now add my key point. I had suspected before that people do not retain what they read on computer screens as well as what they read in print. After my five-week experiment, I am quite sure of this. Partly for the wealth of physical associations in print reading, and partly from other causes, our memories favour the tangible. We confirm this point instinctively, every time we print out a long article. This is a serious matter, for as any competent pedagogue could assure us, what is not retained was never adequately processed in the first place. So while the Internet provides a festival of information, it also subverts the comprehension of all things humane.

Joiners

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