HALF-FULL REPORT 03/06/15
The House of Representatives passed a "clean" bill funding the Department of Homeland Security (a complete capitulation to the Democrats) Tuesday (3/3), even though more than two thirds of Republicans voted against it. I don't see how Speaker John Boehner can survive a defection of that magnitude. Bibi Netanyahu gave a boffo speech to a joint session of Congress Tuesday (3/3). Thanks to Zero's ham fisted efforts to stop it, Bibi's speech became a much bigger deal than it otherwise would have been. The "Hands Up, Don't Shoot" narrative of those protesting the shooting of Michael Brown is true - except for the "hands up, don't shoot" parts. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments Wednesday on King v. Burwell, the lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of paying Obamacare subsidies to people who purchased policies on the federal exchange. The tenor of the questions he asked inclined observers left and right to think swing Justice Anthony Kennedy is likely to support the administration's position. Kennedy was giving the libs a head fake, David Catron thinks. Did you know that eating three meals a day is racist? Neither did I. With the revelation Monday that Hillary Clinton used a private email account on an insecure server located in her Chappaqua home -- which, experts say, almost certainly has been hacked by hostile foreign intelligence services -- to conduct most of her official business as secretary of state, she's stepped in a pile of doo doo so deep and smelly not even the Lying Swine may be able to save her. Panicking Democrats would like to go elsewhere, but there bench is too thin - so thin some are talking about bringing back Al Gore.
WILL CHINA JUMP OFF A FISCAL CLIFF?
Nobody can fault China's leaders for lack of bravery. The Politburo has kept its nerve as the world's most giddy experiment in credit-driven growth faces assault on three major fronts at once. Real interest rates have rocketed. The trade-weighted rise in the yuan over the past two years has been spectacular. Fiscal policy is about to tighten drastically as the authorities clamp down on big-spending local governments. Put together, China is pursuing the most contractionary mix of economic policies in the G20, relative to the status quo ante. Collateral damage is already visible in the sliding global prices of iron ore, copper, nickel, lead and zinc over recent months, as well as thermal coal, oil, corn and even sugar. Zhiwei Zhang, from Deutsche Bank, says China faces a "fiscal cliff" this year as Beijing attempts to rein in spending. "This year, China will likely face the worst fiscal challenge since 1981. This is not well recognized in the market," he said. Another indicator: China is no longer buying US Treasuries and global bonds. It has become a net seller, stepping in to offset accelerating outflows of capital. The capital deficit reached a record $91bn in the fourth quarter.
THE CHURCHILL OF OUR TIME
Normally what politicians say matters much less than what they do. But sometimes at a critical moment in history, a great speech by a great leader can bolster resolve to do what must be done.
“Our policy… “is to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime,” said Winston Churchill on May 13,1940, three days after he’d replaced Neville Chamberlain as prime minister.
“We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender,” he said June 4. After the war, in 1946 Sir Winston warned that “from Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across (Europe).”
Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to a joint session of Congress Tuesday (3/3) was Churchillian. He is the Churchill of our time. The contrast between Bibi and Obama could not be more stark.MASS DEFAULT ONLY SOLUTION TO WORLD DEBT ADDICTION
In a valedictory speech last weekend of characteristically Latin American duration - a mind-numbing three hours - the Argentine president, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, claimed that her country was the only one in the world to have reduced its national debt over recent years. Only Kirchner could think this a matter of national pride - for reduction in the national debt via the mechanism of default is anything to boast of. Nonetheless, where Argentina treads, others will surely soon be following. The world is sinking under a sea of debt, private as well as public, and it is increasingly hard to see how this might end, except in some form of mass default. This most certainly includes China, by the way. China's total indebtedness has quadrupled since 2007 to $28 trillion, according to estimates by McKinsey. At 282% of GDP, China's debt burden is now bigger, relative to output, than the US.
OBAMA AGREES WITH IRAN: “DEATH TO AMERICA!”
Tiger Leaping Gorge, Yunnan, China. I am thousands of miles away from my country feeling like Obi-wan Kenobi in the original Star Wars movie. He suddenly feels faint and has to sit down, as he senses a "massive disruption in the Force" with millions of lives snuffed out somewhere in the galaxy. Darth Vader's Death Star has just obliterated an entire planet with everyone on it. I am feeling like Obi-wan right now as I just learned the Boehner House passed full funding for DHS yesterday (3/03) 257-167. Every single Dem voted yes, along with 75 Rinos. In completely and totally caving to Zero's Executive Amnesty, it was a Death Star vote, a vote to kill America. Phyllis Schlafly, my friend of decades, is precisely correct when she says, Democrats Plan to Win Elections with Illegal Votes. This is Zero's game plan to establish rule Democrat Fascist rule and kill freedom in America. It is ironic in the extreme that hours after Boehner's Death Star vote yesterday, Bibi Netanyahu gave a brilliantly heroic speech to Congress. The link is the complete text of his speech, an absolute Must-Read. The horrible irony, the hideous truth, is that Zero wants desperately to make a deal with Iran because his and Iran's goal is the same: Death to America!
THE LIBERAL CIRCUS
Lately liberalism has gone from psychodrama to farce. Take Barack Obama. He has gone from mild displeasure with Israel to downright antipathy. Who would have believed that Iranian leaders who just ordered bombing runs on a mock U.S. carrier could be treated with more deference than the prime minister of Israel? Hillary Clinton likewise has gone from a rather run-of-the-mill liberal grandee to a political grafter. The problem with Hillary's scandals are not just that they reveal a lack of character, but that they are illiberal to the core on hallmark progressive issues of concern for equality, transparency and feminism. Attorney General Eric Holder came into office alleging racism and calling the American people cowards, and six years later is exiting, still blaming racism for his own self-inflicted failures. He leaves office as a caricature of incompetence and racial divisiveness. Conspiracists once warned us that the government was buying up ammo to prevent private gun owners from purchasing it; now we learn that Obama by executive order may ban the most popular type of sporting ammunition. So - why this descent into travesty?
A SAMPLE OF THE WORLD A YEAR FROM NOW
The world is a mess, but what will it look like a year from now? No one knows with certainty, but informed guesses can be made, in part, based on the direction of the economies in conflicted areas of the world. Global debt (including that of the United States) is now a higher percentage of global gross domestic product than it was before the Great Recession that began in December 2007, making the world increasingly vulnerable to a new financial crisis. Here is a sample of countries that are facing economic problems and foreign policy conflicts, with the exception of Switzerland - which is included as a benchmark for good government, and economic and personal liberty. What will they be like in 12 months?
HALF-FULL REPORT 02/27/15
Details leaked this week of the deal President Obama wants to make with the mullahs in Iran. The U.S. military no longer can fight two wars at the same time. Normally, what politicians say matters a whole lot less than what they do (or don't do). But there are times when a great speech by a great leader can bring clarity to the confused, hope to the despairing, bolster the resolve of a people to do what must be done at a critical moment in history. 2014 was the biggest year for terror in 45 years. The Conservative Political Action Conference began Thursday. The most popular speaker so far has been Scott Walker. Now that he's clearly the frontrunner, the Lying Swine have been going after him hammer and tongs.
THE WAGES OF WHITE GUILT
Mandalay, Burma. This is a country struggling to enter the 21st century after being stuck in the 19th for the last half of the 20th. One of the results is an Internet that barely functions. I have heard little of what is going on in the US and the world save for headlines, which are so irretrievably awful that I'm glad I'm isolated here or else my head would explode. I'll keep this short. Everything you are seeing right now with America coming apart at the seams at the hands of this Affirmative Action President has one and only one cause: they are the wages of white guilt. The one and only reason this evil, contemptible America-hating fascist has not been impeached for treason, the only reason anyone paid any attention to him whatever such that he was accepted to Harvard, made Editor of the Harvard Law Review, allowed to teach a course at Columbia, ran for Illinois State Senator, ran for Illinois US Senator, ran for the Dem presidential nomination, excused for attending a racist church for 20 years that prayed for God to damn America, got elected president, and re-elected president is the color of his skin. Absolutely none of this whatever would have happened if his skin were white.
TIME TO SHUT DOWN ISLAMISM’S FINANCIAL NETWORK
How would you feel if you had to have bodyguards anytime you moved about — not because you were a voluntary celebrity, such as a presidential candidate or movie star, but merely because you exercised your free speech right by publishing cartoons that some found offensive? Danish journalist Flemming Rose published cartoons of Muhammad in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten back in 2006, which led to many violent riots by Moslems around the world. He has written a book, “The Tyranny of Silence: How One Cartoon Ignited a Global Debate on the Future of Free Speech” (the English edition was just published by the Cato Institute Press). Mr. Rose, rather than hiding, even though a fatwa has been leveled against him calling for his death, has traveled and spoken widely in his unrelenting advocacy of free speech and against the tyranny of silence. He has argued that “the lesson from the Cold War is: If you give in to totalitarian impulses once, new demands follow. The time is now to shut down Islamic Terrorism's financial network.