OBAMA IS A PIKER
Last week's Humor File was Nixon Was A Piker compared to Barrack Milhous Zero. Like all good humor, it's funny because it's true: Nixon was no piker in the scandal and mendacity department, but Zero is far worse. Yet, at this particular conflation of events, as we simultaneously rage at Zero's awfulness and revel in its ongoing exposure, it's useful to step back and regard what's going on in America today in the context of history and economic reality. We'll start with the case for Nixon being more destructive of our economy and freedoms than Zero, then on to the worse case regarding FDR. For the lesson is: it's hard to keep America down. We go through crises and dangers, and then bounce back. No matter how much FDR's Reds tried to support the Soviet Union, we thrived in the 1950s - and eventually got rid of the Soviet Union itself. We can see this happening right before our eyes as we suffer the Curse of Zero. It's not just that we all have tingles of joy running up our legs over Zero being up to his jug ears in one scandal after another. It's that, no matter how hard Zero has tried to hamstring and suffocate the American economy, he has failed. And we can take such advantage of his failure.
DON’T FORGET YOUR PLAN A
It's good to have a back-up plan, or a Plan B, especially in uncertain times; but it's also important to remember that this is only for when your plan A is threatened. Often the best thing you can do is to fully commit to your primary vision; sometimes the best defense is a good offense. It's excellent to have a plan that you can fall back on if things don't work out; but today I want to talk about some elements of committing to your plan A that can be easily neglected... because we take them for granted. If you're thinking of moving away from your home, be it out of state or out of the country, before you do so, consider what you will be leaving behind. Be very careful before you abandon your Plan A.
OBAMA LEFT THEM BEHIND
It was drummed into us in boot camp that "Marines go back for their wounded. Marines go back for their dead. We leave no one behind." I found the same ethos in the Army Special Forces when I joined them later. During the Vietnam war, the Air Force went to extraordinary lengths to rescue downed pilots. But on 9/11/2012, Americans at our consulate in Benghazi were left behind. It may well be true, as Defense Secretary Leon Panetta claimed, that military help couldn't be sent because it was unavailable. But if that is true, somebody screwed the pooch, big time. Was it the POTUS?
HOW LOW WILL GOLD GO?
The curse of hedging that blighted gold in the 1990s is making a comeback, and threatens to loom over the market like Banquo's ghost. London-listed gold producer Petropavlovsk has said it will pre-sell 55pc of its future output planned for the second quarter of 2014, at an average price of $1,408 an ounce. This is the first time that a big producer has hedged more than half its future sales. "We have a huge investment program and thought a little price protection in the short-term will let us sleep better at night," said chairman Peter Hambro. Tyler Broda from Nomura said this may signal the return of "structural hedging" across the industry, with other companies scrambling to lock in forward contracts. "This could increase the pressure on the spot gold price over the coming years," he said. The risk is a vicious circle as hedging leads to lower prices, leading to more hedging.
THE ARAB COLLAPSE
The Arab Spring has unleashed the Arab Collapse. Everybody still standing in the region is picking the flesh of the helpless. The Islamist cancer proved more virulent than Arabs themselves expected, while dying regimes behave with unrestrained ruthlessness. And our diplomats still think everyone can be cajoled into harmony. We're witnessing a titanic event, the crack-up of a long-tottering civilization. Arab societies grew so corrupt and stagnant that violent upheaval became inevitable. That's what we're seeing in Syria and Iraq - two names, one struggle - and will find elsewhere tomorrow. We can't stop it, we can't fix it, and we don't understand it. But we can stay out of it. Here's how we can and why we should.
THE IRS: END IT BECAUSE YOU CANNOT MEND IT
Every few years, at least from the time of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, there is a scandal involving abuse of power at the Internal Revenue Service. We are again in the midst of one of these periodic abuse scandals, with many solemn promises that the problems will be corrected and will not happen again. As always, the rhetoric is far from the reality for two basic reasons. The first is the nature of the income tax, which, by definition, is subjective in its interpretation of the definition of "income" and thus subject to abuse. The second is the type of person that the IRS attracts as an employee. In the former, the agency is corrupt in the Orwellian sense. When the federal government's General Services Administration or the IRS takes a number of its employees to Las Vegas for a conference, is this a taxable benefit (income) or not? The answer is this case is "no" because this is the type of benefit the political class enjoys. In the latter, because the IRS is feared, loathed and resented, it attracts all too many workers who are insensitive to the needs and problems of others, and some even enjoy being bullies. These flaws of the IRS cannot be mended -- thus the only real solution is to put an end to the IRS itself.
HALF-FULL REPORT 05/17/13
Agent Sadusky (Harvey Keitel): "And what about you?" Ben Gates (Nicolas Cage): "I'd really love not to go to prison. I can't even describe how much I would love not to go to prison." Agent Sadusky: "Someone's got to go to prison, son." ---National Treasure (2004) "My question isn't about who's going to resign -- my question is who is going to jail over this scandal?" ---House Speaker John Boehner, May 15, 2013 "A few more days like this, and Obama's going to claim he was born in Kenya." --- comedian Dennis Miller Now, I know you all think that this week, the HFR glass is as overflowing as much as the glass in Ronald Reagan's favorite Irish joke. However, after we've yelled Bunga! Bunga! a few dozen times watching the news and mooned Zero every time we see his disgusting face on the screen, let's see if we can't discuss what's happening with a smidgeon of sobriety. I admit it won't be easy.
A HAT TRICK OF SCANDALS
Though arguably the least significant of three burgeoning scandals that have made this the worst fortnight ever for the presidency of Barack Hussein Obama, the Justice Department's covert seizure of the telephone records of Associated Press reporters may cause him the most grief. Journalists unmoved by evidence his Justice Department ran guns to Mexican drug cartels and promoted vote fraud are very, very upset. Some Democrats who faithfully parroted administration talking points on Benghazi jumped ship after the Internal Revenue Service admitted targeting Tea Party groups. The FBI has now launched a criminal probe. Fewer have been willing to parrot the party line on Benghazi since the number two guy in our embassy in Libya testified that during the attack on 9/11/2012, he told Secretary of State Hillary Clinton it was the work of terrorists affiliated with al Qaeda. All told, this is a Hat Trick of Scandals.
NO FEAR OF FLU
Here we go again. A new bird-flu virus in China, the H7N9 strain, is spreading alarm. It has infected about 130 people and killed more than 30. Every time this happens, some journalists compete to foment fear, ably assisted by cautious but worried scientists, and then tell the world to keep calm. We need a new way to talk about the risk of a flu pandemic, because the overwhelming probability is that this virus will kill people, yes, but not in vast numbers. In recent years flu has always proved vastly less perilous than feared. In 1976 more people may have died from bad reactions to swine-flu vaccine than from swine flu. Since 2005, H5N1 bird flu has killed 374 people, not the two million to 7.4 million deemed possible by the World Health Organization. In 2009, H1N1 Mexican swine flu proved to be a normal flu episode despite apocalyptic forecasts. No doubt some TTPers will remind me that, in the story of the boy who cried "Wolf!", there eventually was a wolf. And that in 1918 maybe 50 million people died of influenza world-wide. So we should always worry a bit. But perhaps it's not just luck that has made every flu pandemic since then mild. It may be evolutionary logic.
TOO LATE FOR SYRIA
To borrow the climactic line from Easy Rider, "We blew it." Or, to be fully accurate, President Obama blew an unprecedented chance to aid Syria's then-moderate opposition back in 2011. We could have helped end the monstrous Assad regime, gaining good will and practical advantage in a hopeful new state. Now it's too late. And Obama may be ready to act at last. The result could be disastrous. Strategy isn't only about doing the right thing, but about doing the right thing at the right time. Doing what appears to be the "right thing" too late often makes things worse. How did the window for aiding the Syrian rebels close?