Two must reads from Gerard Vanderleun:
- The Declaration of Non-Dependence: In Which America Announces It’s Going on Sabbatical
- When Push Comes to Nuke
Victor David Hanson-Decline Is in the Mind
Yet all this is optional. For a number of years, I have written x-number of columns explaining that decline is a choice, not a destiny. Decline compared to what? China with its warped demography and rendezvous with environmental cleanup and social disorder? Europe and Japan with fossilized populations and statist economies? India with insidious layers of the old caste system and 1940s socialism still to be displaced? The kleptocratic, shrinking state of Russia? The Arab world — with endemic tribalism, gender apartheid, religious intolerance and suspicion of science and its repercussions?
The tragedy, reader, is that any of us in 2-3 minutes can see how it could all be reversed — a full-fledged effort to develop all our energy resources, from nuclear to natural gas, radical cuts in public spending, closed borders, fiscal sanity and pay-as-you-go legislation, a return to merit instead of situational pleading. Given our wealth and talent, in four years we could balance the budget, slash energy imports, and make schools work far better with fewer dollars.
Bahraini Troops Open Fire on Protesters
As Djibouti Prepares To Topple Next, Should One Go Long A Girl’s Best Friend?
As what is rapidly becoming the biggest wave of revolutionary discontent since 1989 Eastern Europe spreads to every less than wealthy country and region, the next regime to topple may be that of smallish Ethiopia and Somalia neighbor Djibouti. The tiny country, with a population of less than a million, known only for being situated at the horn of Africa, has just seen a major (relatively speaking) protest, calling for President Ismael Omar Guelleh to step down. And while the country is completely insignificant geopolitically, it is merely a stepping stone as the African dominoes spread south: are Ethiopia and Somalia next to go? And after them all of central, and then southern Africa? So here’s a thought – should the unrest reach Congo, and eventually South Africa, what will happen to the price of diamonds?
More SmartDiplomacy™ in action-Obama Calls Former US Ally Mubarak After Pushing Him From Office… Mubarak Won’t Answer
Obama tried to call former US ally Hosni Mubarak after pushing him from office. Mubarak won’t answer. Would you?
Houston, This Is Blythe, I Have A Problem
And silver surges on margin hike news, taking out $32, and fresh 31 year highs. Something is very wrong. Our only question: how long before the American taxpayer has to repeat the AIG experience, and bail out JP Morgan over its billions in silver shorts. For our non tinfoil heat wearing friends in the various operating subsidiaries of the FT, we have one comment: “We have sold everything we can produce in silver and have demand for at least twice that volume,” said David Madge, head of bullion sales at the Royal Canadian Mint, which produces the silver Maple Leaf coin. Silver coin sales at the US Mint and the Austrian Mint also hit record levels in January”
Silver At Escape Velocity, As Another ECB Intervention Desperately Needed
Silver is now above $32.70 as the unleashed squeeze is claiming victims left and right, and the metal is up 7% from yesterday’s low. Jamie: it may be time to shelve those dividend plans for a year or two but at least you got your bonus you sly dog, you. As a reminder, margin calls in silver, and they will be, ahem, sizable, commence at 3pm Eastern.
And Now The 10 Year Is Surging
After the USD has confirmed it is no longer a flight to safety currency, and stocks can only go up (91 days until we pass the all time highs at the current rate of no volume HFT-inspired, Primary Dealer facilitated and Fed funded levitation), suddenly we see a dramatic pick up in bond buying, for no reason, aside from the fact that full blown war may join the revolutions in the Middle East. And since nobody will ever sell one share of stock (if they did there will be an immediate congressional hearing to establish whether selling should be, in fact, made illegal) the only way to protect capital is to jump into the 10 Year.
Reagan inherited a nation morally and financially gutted during the Carter years and turned it back into not just a shining city on a hill, but a gleaming country atop the summit of history. He rebuilt our economy, our military and our morale.
Obama is crippling our economy, misusing our military, and telling us we’re bad people who appreciate neither the glories of Islam, the virtues of squandering trillions, or the boo-hoo-hoo, oh-so-awful difficulties of being president (“Mommy…it’s too hard!”).
Reagan understood that our nation’s borders stood for something. Obama thinks we should be ashamed of them. Reagan fought illegal drugs. Obama enjoyed them. Reagan took a bullet and shrugged it off as part of the job. Obama can’t take hard questions from reporters.
In news about other economic savants in the White House, Obama’s new Press Secretary claimed today that money borrowed to pay interest on old debt isn’t new debt. Come again?
Congress Finally Earns Its Pay
And about time. The Democrats’ style of management—on ObamaCare, cap and trade, financial regulation, stimulus—was to secretly craft bills and ram through a vote, denying members a chance to read, to debate, to amend. They learned this from former Majority Leader Tom DeLay, who infamously micro- managed his GOP majority from 2003-2005. The House had become a place where the leadership called all the shots and the majority saluted.
But this week the country witnessed the House coming together to argue over and exercise its foremost responsibility: power over the purse. And from the look of the amendments, both sides were eager to use that funding authority to put the Obama policy machine on notice.
House votes to overthrow ‘czars’
“These unappointed, unaccountable people who are literally running a shadow government, heading up these little fiefdoms that nobody can really seem to identify where they are or what they’re doing,” Scalise said Thursday. “But we do know that they’re wielding vast amounts of power.”
Obama Policy Czars Defunded in Spending Bill
UPDATE: Also on the chopping block: Last night, in another bipartisan vote (though with only two Democrats), the House voted to forbid the FCC from using any funds to implement its December net neutrality order.
FCC issued the order in December even though Congress rejected net neutrality legislation and the DC Circuit Court of Appeals already rejected previous FCC net neutrality rules. It was typical Obama Administration end run around the Constitution.
How Obama’s Big Labor Pals Warp the System
In fact, Obama’s entire administration is geared to increase regulations, not eliminate them. He’s put union hacks in nearly every office of the Department of Labor. It is doubtful that any of them will be much interested in cutting jobs-killing regulations.
Someone call the WAAAAHbulance for them…Social Security Honcho Warns Workers May Have to Take Furloughs if The GOP Meanies Get Their Way
Media Showing Itself As Financial Catastrophe Denialists
While the media is eager to expose what it believes is erroneous thinking that hurts the liberal cause, they have no desire at all to cure erroneous thinking that helps the liberal cause.
Obama “Friends” Technocrats at Cozy Dinner
Obama’s “technocrat friends” worked with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, I wonder if they are behind this? Lead Lawyer Challenging Obamacare Under Cyber Attack
Perhaps the most amazing aspect of this episode is the complete disregard of this attack by the mainstream media and left-wing civil liberties groups. Imagine, for example, a similar attack on the website of the plaintiffs in the challenge to California’s Proposition 8, which struck down same-sex marriage in the state. Imagine the outrage, finger-pointing, and howls of indignation that would follow. The media, as well as the ACLU and others, would be quick to condemn conservatives, and many prominent conservatives, no doubt, would disassociate themselves from the cyber-attack. And rightly so—conservatives don’t need to cheat or break the law to win the war of ideas.
Rivkin’s sober and scholarly advocacy in favor of Americans’ fundamental rights is clearly a threat to someone, and they have decided to attack him for it. Even on the Internet, thugs shouldn’t get a “heckler’s veto” over speech with which they disagree. One would think that’s a point on which conservatives and left-leaning civil libertarians could agree. But all we’ve heard so far from the left is silence.
Apparently the Obama regime does not understand what the word “Unconstitutional” means…Administration asks judge to tell the states that healthcare law isn’t optional
U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson ruled that the law’s requirement for individuals to purchase insurance is unconstitutional, and therefore, the rest of the law is unconstitutional because the provision is too central to making the law function. The administration points out that the so-called individual mandate does not go into effect until 2014, while other parts of the law have already gone into effect.
Obama Administration Tries to Mislead Judge Vinson and Scattered Legal Updates
Rocket Scientist Sheila Jackson-Lee Explains Why ObamaCare Penalty Is Not a Penalty
Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-TX) may have the IQ of a heifer, but when she opens her mouth, she sounds more like a duck. The other day she explained to the House Judiciary Committee why the penalty imposed under ObamaCare on those who don’t buy health insurance is not a penalty.
The Destruction of Human Capital
What’s happening to the long term unemployed is tragic. Not only are they becoming less employable as time wears on; they’re also losing the economic and social capital that comes from holding a job in our society.
Another rat leaving the sinking ship…Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) To Retire
Apocalypse Now: Wisconsin vs. Big Labor; Plus: More out-of-state union recruiting & another teacher speaks up for Walker; police order for AWOL Dems
WI Union Protesters Threaten WI Governor With Death, GOP Senators Afraid For Their Families
“Sic semper tyrannis is a Latin phrase meaning ‘thus always to tyrants.’ It is sometimes mistranslated as ‘death to tyrants’ or ‘down with the tyrant.’ The phrase is said to have originated with Marcus Junius Brutus during the assassination of Julius Caesar. It was later shouted by John Wilkes Booth during his assassination of Abraham Lincoln.”
FYI-John Wilkes Booth was a Democrat.
More Thugocracy from the Obama/Democrat/LLP troika:
- Obama & Democrats Are Behind Anti-Budget Cut Rallies in Ohio & Indiana Too
- Group targets Speaker Boehner’s (small-h) house
- Obama’s Organizing for America Behind Wisconsin Chaos
In the clear choice between pathologically greedy teachers unions on one side, and the children who are going untaught and their bled-dry taxpaying parents on the other, where did you expect Comrade Obama to come down? In addition to whatever backroom machinations are taking place, the Manchurian Moonbat publicly splashed gasoline on the flames by denouncing Governor Walker’s acknowledgment of fiscal reality as “an assault on unions.” Elect a man whose only real political experience is as a “community organizer” (i.e., Marxist rabble-rouser), and you would be a fool to expect anything else.
The best way to check Obama’s ambitions is to identify and expose his broader strategy . At any rate, as the country divides into opposing movements, most of us could soon be forced to choose up sides. Obama may succeed in putting some distance between his good-cop persona and his bad-cop friends. Yet the more likely outcome is that his radical intentions and alliances will be clarified over time. It’s happening now in Wisconsin. Years of widening political polarization may have been mere a dress rehearsal for what we’re about to experience. That is what our Organizer-in-Chief has been planning all along.
Wisconsin Gov orders State Patrol to escort Dems back to Capital
Walker: I’m Sending Out The Cops
LOLOLOLOLOLOL!-Wisconsin Democrat Escape Vehicle
Boehner supports Gov. Walker for “daring to speak the truth about his state’s fiscal challenges”
“According to news reports, the White House has even unleashed the Democratic National Committee to spread disinformation and confusion in Wisconsin regarding the governor’s courageous actions. I urge the president to order the DNC to suspend these tactics. This is not the way you begin an ‘adult conversation’ in America about solutions to the fiscal challenges that are destroying jobs in our country.
“Rather than shouting down those in office who speak honestly about the challenges we face, the president and his advisors should lead. Until they do, they are not focusing on jobs, and they are not listening to the American people who put them in power.”
Wis. governor: GOP won’t be ‘bullied’ by union bill protesters
“If anything, I think it’s made the Republicans in the Assembly and the Senate stronger,” he told Fox News’s Greta Van Susteren in an interview Thursday night. “They’re not going to be bullied. They’re not going to be intimidated.”
Walker also fired back at President Obama, who sided with the public employees, saying on Fox News Friday, “We are focused on balancing our budget. It would be wise for the government and others in Washington to focus on balancing their budgets, which they are a long way off from doing.”
The Wisconsin Senate needs a quorum for a budget vote and they are one short. Anyone willing to pull a Dark Knight out there and bring one of the chicken littles back? Is there anything in the WI Constitution that would allow the Governor to declare the seats vacant within a specified time? Is anyone even going through the WI Constitution for a solution to the subversion? Exit question: Will the Democratic Party continue to calls itself that after this episode shows it to be an oxymoron? Exit question #2: since the Democrats going on the lam is a legislative rather than a legal issue, does the WI Senate need that quorum to rule that what the Democrats are doing to be illegal and call for the seats to be vacated after a time?
Union Thugs Turn Wisconsin into Greece as the Freeloaders Protest
Wisconsin Liberals Starve Children
Tea Party Counterdemonstration in Madison
The Tea Party may not have the Executive Branch of the federal government behind it, like the communist hooligans throwing their extended tantrum in Madison, but that doesn’t mean it can’t turn out a crowd.
I agree…Wisconsin: Reason Number 4,085 to Homeschool
I have long advocated for the privatization of schools. Dump the Department of Education, the local school boards, over-paid administrators, principals who make more money than the average attorney or doctor, and let the cream rise to the top. Quit stealing money from taxpayers to fund a failed system that turns out functional illiterates.
As for the teachers marching around in Wisconsin protesting? Fire them. Immediately.
Tennessee, the next Wisconsin?
While uncivil Democratic teachers whooped and hollered in Wisconsin’s state capitol on Thursday over the bid to stop “collective bargaining” — a mechanism for Democratic politicians to pay back their union supporters without a legislative vote — the Tennessee legislature advanced a bill that would end “collective bargaining” in Tennessee.
Fox News Highlights Nazi Signs in Wisconsin Pension Debate, Networks Skip Controversy
As this story continues to grow, will the same journalists who condemned the Tea Party for violent and hateful signs do the same for liberal, pro-union protesters?
Culture of contempt: Interior Department spanked yet again
This is becoming a weekly feature.
How long are Americans going to tolerate the determined disregard of the Obama administration’s job-killing, rule-of-law-defying environmental corruptocrats?
Federal judge to Salazar: Stop stalling drilling permits
To the government’s excuse that regulation became more complicated and time-consuming in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, Feldman was equally unmoved:
“Perhaps it is reasonable for permit applicants to wait more than two weeks in a necessarily more closely regulated environment. Delays of four months and more in the permitting process, however, are unreasonable, unacceptable, and unjustified by the evidence before the Court,” he said.
Feldman also ordered the government to report back to his court concerning its compliance with the preliminary injuction he issued in the case.
From the “Where there is smoke, there is fire” department-Research why the Supreme Court is compelled to hold a new hearing on Obama’s eligibility to hold the presidency
There are myriad very messy constitutional and legal issues that arise from the fact the current US President has engaged in an orchestrated conspiracy to hide his long form birth certificate and actual legal name. THAT is why so much money and energy has been lavished on the efforts to keep his secret.
I wonder if the efforts underway in ten states (and counting) to require the production of an original long form birth certificate for presidential candidates to appear on the 2012 ballots has anything to do with the Supreme Court’s sudden interest in holding a conference on Obama’s eligibility.
Are You Now or Have You Ever Been a Member of the ‘Obama Wasn’t Born in the US’ Party?
This lends a whole new meaning to the adage “Take one for the team”…Breaking: State-Run Media Ran Interference for Obama By Spiking Logan Assault Story
The state-run media ran interference for President Obama by spiking the Lara Logan Tahrir Square assault story. They knew it would damage Obama who helped push American ally Hosni Mubarak from office.
NRC Censors Flub Opportunity to Move Yucca Debate Forward
The problem with this assessment is that it does not respect the context of the Yucca Mountain issue. Given the controversial nature of the debate, the billions of dollars spent on Yucca Mountain, and the project’s importance to the nation’s energy future, the NRC should have figured out a way to give the public access to the staff’s conclusions. Not doing so forces policymakers, the public, and other stakeholders to form opinions based on an incomplete data set. And while the staff conclusions may not represent a final SER, much less commission policy, they would have gone a long way to inform the public debate over Yucca.
And ultimately, that is why the decision to redact the most critical parts of the SER is so disappointing. Despite what Senator Harry Reid (D–NV), Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, or President Obama say, the debate over Yucca is not over, and keeping information out of public view does not change that.
