THE REAL DANGER IN THE DEBT CEILING KABUKI DANCE ISN’T DEFAULT
GUADALCANAL IN AMERICA
Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands. Idyllic, isn't it? Everybody's dream of a South Seas island paradise. But it wasn't in 1943. On a moonless night back then, an American PT boat was tracking a Japanese convoy. All ships were "running dark" with no lights. Suddenly, a Japanese destroyer was on top of the PT boat, ramming it before the crew could get their boat out of the way. Their boat sunk, the crew swam to this island, and were subsequently rescued. An insignificant tale, save for the fact that the PT boat was numbered 109 and captained by Navy Lieutenant John F. Kennedy, who 17 years later would become President of the United States. That's why the name of the island is Kennedy Island. (The original native name is Kisolo.) One can only imagine the rage, disgust, and contempt he would feel over his successor's treatment of his fellow World War II veterans by physically preventing them from visiting the memorials that honor them in Washington. You have to think he'd say it's time for a Battle of Guadacanal to liberate America.
GOVERNMENT WORKERS SHOULD NOT BE A PRIVILEGED CLASS
Should government employees have privileges and legal immunities that the rest of us do not have? The government shutdown battle is, in part, a dispute about the extra subsidies members of Congress and their staffs are slated to get from Obamacare. Civilian government employees often whine about the lack of respect they receive from their fellow Americans. Part of the antipathy many feel toward the government class is because they, on average, are paid more, receive more benefits, are almost impossible to fire, and are rarely penalized for abusive, rude and even illegal conduct that would get civilian workers fired, fined and, in some cases, sent to jail. It can be argued that it is unfair to paint all government workers with a charge that they are impertinent slackers when, in fact, many government employees work very hard and take many risks to help their fellow Americans. If civilian government employees were put on a more level playing field, where the real slackers and abusers were either fired or forced to shape up, the respect for all government employees would grow. So what can be done to achieve this?
THE MUSIC HAS STOPPED FOR BRAZIL, RUSSIA, INDIA, CHINA, AND THE EURO
The International Monetary Fund has thrown in the towel on emerging markets. After years of talking up the BRICS club of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, it now admits that these countries have either exhausted their catch-up growth models, or run into the time-honored problems of supply bottlenecks and bad government. Yes, China too. The Fund has cut its forecast for the developing economies by 0.5% to 4.5% this year in its latest World Economic Outlook, and by 0.4% to 5.1% next year. The 2013 estimates have been slashed by 1.8% for India, for Mexico by 1.7%, and 1% in Russia, compared to forecasts made in April. Similar damage is expected for Turkey, Indonesia, Ukraine, and others with big trade deficits as details are fleshed out. In what amounts to a mea culpa, the IMF hinted that it had for long been blind to festering problems in the BRICS and mini-BRICs. It said the economies of Brazil, China, and India will be 8% to 14% smaller in 2016 than had been assumed just two years ago, a revision that calls into question some of the giddiest claims that the newcomers will soon surge past the decaying West. But the West, especially Europe's eurozone, is rapidly decaying just the same.
IT’S TIME TO CRUSH CLIMATE ALARMISTS
With the release of its Fifth Assessment Report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has proved beyond reasonable doubt that it cannot be taken seriously. A sample of reasons why: IPCC lead author Dr Richard Lindzen has accused it of having "sunk to a level of hilarious incoherence." *Paul Matthews has found a very silly graph; Steve McIntyre has exposed how the IPCC appears deliberately to have tried to obfuscate the unhelpful discrepancy between its models and the real world data; and this latest from Christopher Booker. Now, of course, I fully appreciate how the climate alarmists are going to respond to these criticisms: same way they always do - with a barrage of lies, ad homs, cover-ups, rank-closings, blustering threats, straw men, and delusion-bubble conferences like the one they've just staged at the Royal Society in which one warmist pseudo-scientist after another mounts the podium to reassure his amen corner that everything's going just fine and that those evil denialists couldn't be more wrong. There is more than enough solid evidence now to demonstrate to any neutral party that the doomsday prognostications the warmist establishment has been trying to frighten us with these last two decades are nonsense. The man-made global warming scare story has not a shred of scientific credibility. It's over. And while I don't expect the alarmists to admit this any time soon, I do think the rest of us should stop indulging them in their poisonous fantasy. It's time to crush them instead.
OUR PETULANT, STUPID, SPITEFUL THUG OF A PRESIDENT
The presidency is a "bully pulpit," said Teddy Roosevelt. "For Roosevelt, ‘bully' was an adjective meaning ‘excellent' or ‘first-rate' -- not the noun ‘bully' (‘a blustering browbeating person') that's so common today," the Merriam-Webster dictionary explains. For Barack Hussein Obama, "bully" has the more common meaning. To make the reality of the "shut-down" comport with his apocalyptic rhetoric, Mr. Obama is inflicting as much pain as he can on ordinary Americans. He's ordered all national parks closed -- including more than 100 privately staffed parks which make money for the government. Mr. Obama's choices make it clear he's acting out of petulant spite.
HALF-FULL REPORT 10/04/13
The Obamacare rollout was FUBAR. That's the acronym for F(ouled) Up Beyond All Recognition. * * * * Tom Clancy, "the military's Boswell," died Tuesday night at Johns Hopkins University hospital in Baltimore. He was 66. * * * * Last week, Republicans were at each other's throats. This week, Republicans watched in delighted amazement as Democrats made blunder after blunder. * * * * Things are looking up for the GOP candidates for the Senate in New Jersey and for governor in Virginia. * * * * Capitol police shot to death Thursday an apparently deranged woman from Connecticut when she tried to drive her black Infinity sports coupe into the Hart Senate Office building. * * * * Dingy Harry declared Sen.Ted Cruz, R-Tex, joint Speaker of the House. That's mostly nonsense, but in one way it's true, because Cruz deserves credit for the excellent idea for the House to send to the Senate bill after bill to fund parts of the government * * * * The CIA's effort to train "moderate" rebels in Syria is, ah, a government program. Max Boot sums up the strategy - imposed upon the Company by the White House - as "Go out and risk your lives for a stalemate."
WHO’S AFRAID OF THE BIG BAD SHUTDOWN?
This is the 18th time since 1977 the federal government has been "shut down," which suggests Democrats and journalists exaggerate the harm they do. Democrats are so confident this "shut-down" will end as that one did, they're refusing to negotiate with Republicans. But even if Republicans lose this battle, they're poised to win the war. Few Americans are hurt by the "shut-down." All essential services go on. Checks go out for Social Security and other entitlement programs. Mainly impacted are the roughly 800,000 (of 2.1 million) federal employees deemed "non-essential," who are put on unpaid leave. Democrats get most of their campaign funds from public employee unions, so don't expect Republicans to shed tears for furloughed workers.
HOORAY FOR THE SHUTDOWN! IT’S ATLAS SHRUGGED IN REVERSE
Bad news, everyone: the panda cam at Washington zoo has fallen victim to the US government shutdown. Where before, US taxpayers (everyone else too: thanks US taxpayers!) were free any time of day or night to watch the pandas do exciting things like pacing around, sleeping and chewing bamboo on special government-funded spy cameras, now all they see is a black screen and an error message. Sad, isn't it? But I don't mean sad as in "Oh no you can't see the pandas." I mean sad that Western civilization has reached such a pitch of decadence that we consider it normal, acceptable even, for the government to confiscate our earnings through the tax system and squander it on fripperies like panda-viewing web cams. Thus one of the most delicious ironies of this latest shutdown is that it's a curious inversion of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged.
SHUTDOWN: THERE IS NO DOWNSIDE FOR THE TED CRUZ REPUBLICANS
The Republican Party of John McCain and Mitt Romney lost two presidential elections, the second to a weak candidate in a weak economy. Left to its own devices, it will lose the next presidential election and all the following ones. By picking a fight on Obama's least popular position, namely health care, the conservative wing of the party led by Ted Cruz galvanized the party base and forced the House leadership into a fight. In a recent poll, the Gallup organization found that just 22% of Americans expected Obamacare to improve their family's health situation, while 47% expected it to make it worse. As my old partner Jude Wanniski used to say, the electorate is like a diamond, waiting to be cut at exactly the right spot. Ted Cruz pointed the chisel correctly. It well may be true that shutting down the government hurts the Republicans in the short run. That is immaterial; there is no way to get from here to there except by making a stand against Obamacare. There is no downside, for the Republican Party as presently configured already is a guaranteed loser. A reinvigorated conservative leadership has a chance of leading the party to victory.