AMERICA IS A HORROR TO HER FRIENDS AND LAUGHED AT BY HER ENEMIES
Since Obama took office, he has been abandoning one US ally after another while seeking to curry favor with one US adversary after another. At every turn, America's allies - from Israel to Honduras, to Columbia, South Korea and Japan, to Poland and the Czech Republic - have reacted with disbelief and horror to his treachery. And at every turn, America's adversaries - from Iran to Venezuela to North Korea and Russia - have responded with derision and contempt to his seemingly obsessive attempts to appease them. The horror Obama has instilled in America's friends and the contempt he has evoked from its enemies have not caused him to change course. The fact that his policies throughout the world have already failed to bring a change in the so-called international community's treatment of the US has not led him to reconsider those policies. His stubborn insistence on advancing his feckless foreign policy in the face of its already apparent colossal failure is of a piece with his unswerving commitment to his domestic agenda in spite of its apparent colossal failure.
HAVE YOU NO SHAME? HAVE YOU NO DECENCY?
[This literary, moral, and political masterpiece is the text of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's speech to the UN General Assembly on Sept. 24, 2009] I stand here today as the Prime Minister of Israel, the Jewish state, and I speak to you on behalf of my country and my people. The United Nations was founded after the carnage of World War II and the horrors of the Holocaust. It was charged with preventing the recurrence of such horrendous events. Yesterday the President of Iran stood at this very podium, spewing his latest anti-Semitic rants. Just a few days earlier, he again claimed that the Holocaust is a lie. To those who refused to come here and to those who left this room in protest, I commend you. You stood up for moral clarity and you brought honor to your countries. But to those who gave this Holocaust-denier a hearing, I say on behalf of my people, the Jewish people, and decent people everywhere: Have you no shame? Have you no decency? A mere six decades after the Holocaust, you give legitimacy to a man who denies that the murder of six million Jews took place and pledges to wipe out the Jewish state. What a disgrace! What a mockery of the charter of the United Nations!
THE PRESIDENT OF FRANCE IS MORE PRO-AMERICA THAN THE PRESIDENT OF AMERICA
The contempt with which the president of France regards the president of the United States was displayed in public last week. Nicolas Sarkozy was furious with Barack Hussein Obama for his adolescent warbling about a world without nuclear weapons at a meeting Mr. Obama chaired of the United Nations Security Council last Thursday (9/24). ‘President Obama dreams of a world without weapons...but right in front of us two countries are doing the exact opposite," Mr. Sarkozy said. "Iran since 2005 has flouted five Security Council resolutions, North Korea has been defying Council resolutions since 1993." What kind of world are we living in when the president of France represents America's interests better than the president of America?
HALF-FULL REPORT 9/25/09
Mr. Tough Guy here, Mr. "real Indiana Jones," has a confession. I couldn't get through reading Sarah Palin's speech in Hong Kong without crying like a baby - several times. The contrast of who she is, what she stands for, and what she could do for America as President, compared to who the current president is, what he stands for, and what he is doing to America, was too much to take without emotionally breaking down. Last week we were all on an emotional high, with the historic Million Conservative March in Washington, the ACORN take-down, et al. This week there are too many reminders of the massive, perhaps even mortal, damage being done to America by the man Palin should replace in 2012. The damage mounts by the day. America may not have until November 2012. America may not have until November 2010. An observation and a question encapsulate this quandary.
ECONOMIC MEGATRENDS THAT WILL DRIVE OUR FUTURE
The economic world has changed. There are new trends, megatrends if you will, now at work in our economy. They are "mega" trends because they overarch and impact everything else in the economy and will do so for quite a while. There are other major trends at work as well, but they have been operating as a part of the basic framework of our economy for decades. These megatrends have emerged from the credit cycle because people change their behaviors in response to a crisis, and it would be foolish to assume that everything will just go back to the way things were before. These aren't predictions of the future, because circumstances change. How many economists predicted this crisis? Very, very few. Think of these megatrends more as chalk marks on the playing field that will guide human economic behavior for some years.
THE SPICE ISLANDS
This is a story of hobbits and eggnog, of English heroes and Dutch murderers, of adventure and treachery and astonishing history, of genocidal slaughter and massive corruption, of Communist dictators and of Moslem butchers getting the justice they deserve, a saga that begins over a million years ago and ends with an inspiration - perhaps a quite profitable one. It is the story of 17,000 islands stitched together in a country that nobody thought had a chance a few years ago and now is emerging as a land of the future. This will take a while, so let's settle in with a tankard of ice cold Bir Bintang and a snack of babi kecap, pork in sweet soy sauce. Shall we start with the hobbits?
COMMON SENSE CONSERVATISM
[Text of speech delivered at the CLSA Pacific Markets Conference in Hong Kong on September 23, 2009] You can call me a common-sense conservative. My approach to the issues facing my country and the world, issues that we'll discuss today, are rooted in this common-sense conservatism... Common sense conservatism deals with the reality of the world as it is. Complicated and beautiful, tragic and hopeful, we believe in the rights and the responsibilities and the inherent dignity of the individual. The opposite of a common-sense conservative is a liberalism that holds that there is no human problem that government can't fix if only the right people are put in charge. Unfortunately, history and common sense are not on its side. We don't trust utopian promises; we deal with human nature as it is. Common sense tells you that when you're in a hole, you have to stop digging! A common sense conservative looks to history to find solutions to the problems confronting us, and the good news is that history has shown us a way out of this, a way forward from recession. Ronald Reagan, he was faced with an even worse recession, and he showed us how to get out of here. If you want real job growth, you cut taxes! And you reduce marginal tax rates on all Americans. Cut payroll taxes, eliminate capital gain taxes and slay the death tax, once and for all. Get federal spending under control, and then you step back and you watch the U.S. economy roar back to life. We're not interested in government fixes; we're interested in freedom! Freedom! And why shouldn't we be? We're Americans.
THE COMING NUCLEAR EXPLOSION OF THE DEBT BOMB
In just the last eight months, the Congressional Budget Office estimates of the amount of additional federal debt to be held by the public grew by an astounding $4 trillion for the 2010-19 period; and that the amount of federal debt held by the public grew from $5.9 trillion to $7.5 trillion in just the last 12 months. The federal government (i.e., taxpayers) now owns (primarily through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) or insures (through the Federal Housing Administration and other government programs) about 80 percent of the $14.6 trillion of home mortgages outstanding in the United States. Last week, Congress passed a bill (House Bill 3221) requiring all student loans be made by the federal government rather than banks, which means the taxpayers will be 100 percent liable for any student loan defaults. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. is considering tapping its Treasury credit line for up to $500 billion. It needs to do this because of the high number of bank failures and because each bank account is insured by the government (i.e., taxpayers) up to $250,000. Very soon, the debt bomb is going to go nuclear.
MORE MUSH FROM THE WIMP
On March 14, 1980, Kirk Scharfenberg of the Boston Globe wrote a mock headline over an editorial the Globe was planning to run on a speech President Jimmy Carter had made, planning to replace it with a serious headline before publication. To Mr. Scharfenberg's horror, the mock headline was inadvertently printed in 161,000 copies. The headline was: "More Mush from the Wimp." The headline resonated with millions of Americans because of Mr. Carter's perceived weakness on foreign policy. Iranian militants were holding Americans hostage in our embassy in Tehran, and Mr. Carter didn't seem to be able to do anything about it. He said he was surprised by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and he didn't seem to be able to do anything about that, either. The Carter administration, Henry Kissinger said, had achieved at one and the same time "the worst relations with our allies, the worst relations with our adversaries, and the most serious upheavals in the developing world since the end of the Second World War." Today, Messrs. Scharfenberg and Kissinger would be talking about Mr. Carter's vertebrae-challenged successor now in the White House.
HALF-FULL REPORT 09/18/09
Maybe we should call this The Cornucopia Report this week. The deluge of astonishingly good news keeps pouring down, with the moonbat left in response drowning in its own bile of rage and going off the cliff berserk-o. Where to begin amidst this treasure trove? Of course: the Million Conservative March on Washington last Saturday (9/12). With the LFM (Lunatic Fringe Media) desperately ignoring and disparaging it - reporting, e.g., that there were only "tens of thousands" when there were at least close to a million or more - this event marks a genuine turning point in American political history. The only other event comparable was the August 28,1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom which launched the modern civil rights movement and at which Dr. Martin Luther King gave his famous "I Have A Dream" speech at the Lincoln Memorial. There was, however, one major lack and disappointment. Everyone remembers (or learns about in school) that 1963 event because of King's speech. Where was our Dr. King? Where was the speech that the vast multitude of conservatives wanted to hear? In other words, where the hell was Sarah Palin? If there's a parade of history, get out in front and lead it - or the parade and history will pass you by. Carpe diem - or your day will be gone. Sarah had better stop hiding from the world, stop confining herself to posts on Facebook, or this Teaparty Juggernaut will quickly find other leaders. It's not too late, Sarah, but you are burning daylight.