Thought Head

Final Word

2011-06-04T00:01:00.003-04:00

Unfortunately what my European friend said is too true and it is the reason that I have stopped blogging after over five years without missing a day. I have said everything and the situation only gets worse. My complete attention has now been turned to the international entrepreneurial world which is fulfilling, enjoyable challenging and purposeful.
The final straw for me was the realization that it is now impossible to rein in Medicare, just as it was impossible to rein in Social Security. To do so is not difficult if people are prepared to embrace the benefits of free market competition. During the last Bush administration attempts to invest people’s social security payments was soundly defeated. Now Republican attempts to save Medicare by a degree of privatization caused them to lose a safe Republican seat in Congress recently because a majority of people prefer the Siren Song of nationalized health care and cradle to grave welfare with the government looking after them.
The reason is that the USA has now gone beyond the tipping point. Half the people pay no income taxes. The upwardly mobile pay half of what they earn in income taxes. The majority in the USA are demographically not high achievers except in procreation and in talk.
Internationally the USA is now a joke despite its military might. It toppled a safe ally in Egypt, has alienated Israel and Saudi Arabia and is giving a free pass to Iran and Syria. It pretends to be tough by waging war at a safe distance with a has-been in Libya and after finally killing Osama, another has-been, after ten fumbling years, behaves as if it was the successful end of World War 3.
I spent my life prior to 1970 watching the decline of the pound and since then have been watching the decline of the dollar.
It was sickening to watch the fake mutual admiration of Obama and Cameron and the fake esteem which the British elite afforded Obama. After that there was more fake talk from the G8 and from the IMF. Meanwhile China and Brazil continue to move ahead in various key metrics. The continuing decline of the USA is inevitable because there is a continuing fascination in the audacity of the USA in electing a black man to be the most powerful leader (even if fake) in the world and this Liberal obsession born out of guilt over slavery, is bolstered by dishonest power brokers epitomized by Soros, who see endless opportunities to feather their own nests from a socialist order.
The sad truth is that the West has now embraced the philosophy that people should give according to their capacity and take according to their need. The mistake that Lenin made was to think that the only way to achieve this end was through revolution. He did not realize that given time people follow like sheep to embrace Communist principles even in a democracy if the truth is not revealed to the majority by political manipulation and by their ignorance.

Death Spiral

2011-06-03T05:14:00.000-04:00

From a European friend -

If somebody would have said – let’s say in 1897 when Queen Victoria celebrated 60 years on the throne – that UK would be a 2nd rate or even a 3rd rate power in a number of decades and not even capable to challenge the Argentinean fleet he would have been laughed at or declared insane and sent to an asylum – this is food for thought if you take a look at the West today, America was regarded as supreme until only some years ago although its government had been running almost consecutive budget deficits for some 50 years – running constant deficits in itself is a sign of decadence, corruption and declining civic virtues.

America is in – or close to a situation of no return, even if they increase taxes which in itself is harmful in a globalized world they won’t be close to eliminate the deficits or to get it under control, one reason is that the politicians will continue to spend in order to try to win elections, the other reason is that the entitlement system in America is out of control, the combined unfunded liability of Medic care & Social Security is around usd 107 trillion in current value i.e. 7 times the U.S. economy and 10 times the national debt – entitlement programs account for some 60% of government spending and the politicians refer to this spending as non-discretionary spending which in plain English would mean uncontrollable spending which is shielded by laws written by Congress.

In Europe the entitlement situation is the same but the taxes are already in the stratosphere and on top of this the whole continent is in a demographic death-spiral

Obama Demagoguery

2011-05-27T05:37:00.002-04:00

The White House political plan for the 2012 election is for Democrats to call for fiscal discipline and offer no specifics or good-faith starting points. They will leave the Republicans to be specific, and then let them be hanged with their candor. Democrats will speak not of what they'll do but only of what they would never do, such as reform Medicare and Social Security, Instead they will bankrupt the USA and then blame Republicans.

Irish Charm

2011-05-25T00:20:00.000-04:00

From the Bog. Ah Begorrah! Oi’ll be swearin’ boi the shamrocks growin’ on the hill where Cuchullain slew the Great Leprechaun of Kildare. I am Barack Seamus O’Toole Flaherty Joyce O’Bama. I am the most Irish U.S. President to ever set foot on the Emerald Oisle.
Obama has traced his ancestral roots to a village in Ireland. One of the Obama’s maternal great-great-great-grandfathers was a shoemaker who immigrated to the United States to escape the troubles.
Obama declared solidarity between the United States and Ireland. Obama told the throng in central Dublin: "My name is Barack Obama, of the Moneygall Obamas" and then he said, "This little country that inspires the biggest things, your best days are still ahead" and “Is feidir linn” which is , "Yes we can," in Gaelic.
In Moneygall, Obama hoisted a glass of Guinness at Ollie Hayes's pub as fiddle music played and Michelle pulled pints at the bar. "I don't want to mess this up," Obama said before saluting the bar with a "Slainte" - Gaelic for 'cheers' - and a tentative gulp.
The sleepy village of 300 was the birthplace of Obama's great-great-great grandfather, Falmouth Kearney, a shoemaker who left in 1850 to begin a new life in the United States.
This makes Obama one of 37 million Americans who claim Irish ancestry.

Another Victim of 9.11

2011-05-23T00:01:00.003-04:00

Another Victim of 9.11
The world’s most-wanted terrorist lived his last five years imprisoned behind the barbed wire and high walls of his home in Abbottabad, his days consumed by dark arts and domesticity.
American officials believe that Osama bin Laden spent many hours on the computer, relying on couriers to bring him thumb drives packed with information from the outside world.
Videos seized from Bin Laden’s compound show him wrapped in an old blanket watching himself on TV, like an aging actor imagining a comeback. A senior intelligence official said other videos show him practicing and flubbing his lines in front of a camera. He was interested enough in his image, the official said, to dye his white beard black for the recordings.
His once-large entourage of Arab bodyguards was down to one trusted Pakistani courier and the courier’s brother, who also had the job of buying goats, sheep and Coca-Cola for the household. While his physical world had shrunk to two indoor rooms and daily pacing in his courtyard, bin Laden still had his three wives, children and a tight, interconnected circle of loyalists in the compound.

Muslim World

2011-05-22T00:01:00.005-04:00

The so called Arab Spring had already signaled al Qaeda's waning appeal among Muslim masses.
Starting in Tunisia and spreading to Egypt, Syria and elsewhere, demonstrators have been energized by opposition to corruption and repression and a keen desire for jobs. These movements contradict the aims of al-Qaeda which supports harsh Islamic societies. That does not mean Muslim countries will embrace Western democracy or resist the pull of politicized Islam. Egypt is already on a perilous path, which does not augur well for Israel and the USA.
Less than three months after the fall of the Mubarak regime, the caretaker military government has made radical shifts in foreign policy. Egypt has extended its hand to Iran and to the Palestinian terror group Hamas. Its relations with the U.S. and Israel have cooled markedly.
Last week, the Egyptians brokered a surprising deal on a unity government between Tehran-backed Hamas in the Gaza strip and its rivals in Fatah, which rules over the West Bank. Cairo didn't bother to inform either the U.S. or Israel about the talks. The foreign ministry abruptly announced plans to reopen the Egyptian border crossing into Gaza, an easy supply point for arms for Hamas.
Cairo also plans to establish diplomatic relations with Iran. Indeed, an Iranian destroyer recently was allowed to pass through the Suez Canal for the first time since the 1979 Islamic revolution.
A pro-Western Egyptian democracy would not support Hamas or Iran, the world's leading terror sponsor. Hamas responded predictably to bin Laden's killing: "We condemn the assassination and the killing of an Arab holy warrior." The Muslim Brotherhood, the best organized political group in Egypt, also condemned the bin Laden killing.
Al-Qaeda has a thriving franchise in Yemen and could gain other bases in the region if Libya collapses into Somalia-like disarray.

Split between Bin Laden and Zawahiri

2011-05-21T00:01:00.004-04:00

Ayman al-Zawahiri, deputy leader in al-Qaeda is Osama’s likely successor. According to al Qaeda documents, leadership succession inside the terror group is clearly laid out; the group's deputy will assume control if the leader is captured or killed.
Zawahiri is viewed as al-Qaeda's chief ideologue and operational commander, with bin Laden seen as the inspiration of the organization with a much less active day-to-day role. There is speculation that Osama bin Laden and the deputy leader of al-Qaeda parted ways six years ago, with bin Laden sidelined because he no longer had the funds to support al-Qaeda operations. Bin Laden's personal fortune and contacts to other rich Arabs were fundamental to his leadership position. In recent years al-Qaeda has lacked funds.
Zawahiri is believed to be operating from a base in the Pakistani tribal regions, where bin Laden also was presumed to be. A rift would explain why bin Laden moved to the compound in Abbottabad. That compound was built six years ago. Bin Laden and several family members moved in around five years ago.
Tensions between bin Laden and Zawahiri rose around 2005 after the creation of a new affiliate group, al-Qaeda in Iraq, led by the Jordanian Abu Musab al Zarqawi. The Iraqi affiliate unleashed a brutal campaign against Shiites in Iraq, including attacks on Shiite mosques, which horrified many Iraqis and undermined al Qaeda's efforts to win over the local population. That backlash eventually led to the so-called Sunni Awakening that helped U.S. forces regain the upper hand in many Iraqi provinces.
Zawahiri is even more radical than bin Laden. In statements and books, he attacked Iran, Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, Hezbollah, Hamas and other radical Islamists that bin Laden preferred to keep under a broader jihadist umbrella.

Relevance of Al-Qaeda

2011-05-20T00:01:00.005-04:00

Expelled with the Taliban from Afghanistan, rejected in Iraq, Osama died as a new Arab order that has nothing to do with jihad is struggling to be born.
In Iraq the USA defeated al-Qaeda and established a fledgling democracy in Iraq. Al-Qaeda, Iran and Syria had done their best to thwart the Iraqi project, but their efforts failed. Eventually, al-Qaeda was rebuffed in Iraq by the Sunnis it had come to help. They lost support from Shiites in Iran for supporting the Sunnis. In the decade that separates us from 9/11, the bin Laden legend has dimmed. It has lost its luster as a way back to the Islamic caliphate.
The killing of Shiites in Iraq was al-Qaeda’sundoing in the eyes of many Muslims. Islamic societies have a high tolerance for the use of violence. Bin Laden exploited the Islamic view of death for infidels as a moral obligation. Iraq was supposed to be where al Qaeda would break the spirit of the USA. Instead the carnage there, carried in all its gore by Arabic satellite channels, produced a backlash. There was a limit to the number of Shiite women and children that Sunni Arabs could see murdered. Blowing up hospitals, mosques and shrines, even Shiite ones, became too ghastly to sublimate into an acceptable war against the USA.
If the Taliban is allowed to win in Afghanistan, al-Qaeda could get a new lease on life. The Pakistani and Afghan Taliban movements have absorbed much of the ideology that ignited al-Qaeda in the early 1990s. The operational support of free passage and refuge that Iran gave to al Qaeda before and after 9/11 is probably still there if al Qaeda can organize itself into an effective strike force, especially against Saudi Arabia. Zawahiri is Iran's favorite Sunni holy warrior. He certainly has the ability and perhaps the means to maintain al Qaeda's global networks.

Bigger Challenges than al Qaeda

2011-05-19T00:01:00.005-04:00

Important as the death of Osama bin Laden may be, disposing of al Qaeda's leader wasn't the most important goal for U.S. foreign policy. The three more pressing problems are to get Pakistan right, get the Arab spring right and containing Iran.
Bin Laden, the most wanted man in the world, had been living in the heart of Pakistan, in security as well as comfort. Al Qaeda remains a deadly force, but its operational terrorists are only a few hundred, with its most lethal outposts distant from bin Laden’s retirement home. Polling by the Pew Research Center's Global Attitudes Project shows that confidence in bin Laden was slumping in the Islamic world, ranging from 22% in Egypt to 1% among Lebanese Muslims.
Pakistan is a nation of 187 million people—35% of them less than 15 years of age—that borders on China, India, Iran and Afghanistan. It is 95% Muslim, with virulently anti-Western Islamic elements that its government or military cannot control. It has nuclear weapons and has sold this technology to anyone willing to pay. Under Obama, relations between the U.S. and Pakistan have deteriorated dramatically.
Having encouraged the genie to come out of the bottle in Egypt, It is imperative for the USA now to find a way to help foster the pro-democracy wave in the Arab world without allowing it to produce the chaos that opens the door for Islamic extremists to offer their version of a new order. That is way beyond the capability of Obama and his cohorts.
Obama also continues to lose in the battle of wits with Iran. Iran's leaders are concluding from the weak response of Obama that the lesson to be learned from Egypt, Libya is to crush dissidents ruthlessly, and that the way to prevent the Western military intervention now plaguing Libya is to finish developing a nuclear weapon to deter it.

2011-05-18T00:01:00.005-04:00

Osama Bin laden
The following is the report by the more responsible U.S. media of the Osama killing a day after he was killed by U.S. Special Forces. The fog created by Obama’s electioneering speech the night before when he announced his cleverness to the world still caused the true account of the killing and subsequent disposal of the body to be incorrectly stated. Nevertheless, it was a victory for Obama as his jingoistic speech achieved an improvement in his overall favorability rating of 13%. A significant majority of voters in the USA (57%) now view his performance as President favorably. He appealed to U.S. triumphalism. It is enough for them to be able to chant, “We are the Champions.”
“Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, a mastermind of the largest terrorist attack in American history, was killed Sunday in Pakistan in a military operation after the U.S. learned of his location.
Obama agreed to the attack earlier in the day after it became clear last week that there was sufficient intelligence, following a lead about his whereabouts that first surfaced in August. Mr. bin Laden was killed with a "head shot" during the firefight, a senior administration official said. The raid was conducted by U.S. military personnel operating under the authority of the Central Intelligence Agency.
Bin Laden's body was given a burial at sea.
The elusive al Qaeda leader was killed in a targeted assault in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad, roughly 40 miles outside the capital city of Islamabad, like WestPoint. The raid was conducted by a small helicopter-borne strike team, a senior U.S. administration official said. The team was on the compound for less than 40 minutes.
Bin Laden's body was identified by the strike force, officials said. Family members in the compound also positively identified the body as Mr. Bin Laden's, giving the U.S. the confidence to make the announcement Sunday. DNA testing is also being conducted.
During the raid, one of the U.S. helicopters had to be destroyed because it was damaged during a hard landing in the compound and couldn't be flown out.
Omar Khan, a local resident in the area of the attack, said American and Pakistani commandos landed in the area at 1:10 a.m., local time, and raided a house. "The entire area was rocked with a massive explosion," he said. "A massive exchange of firing took place which continued for more than half an hour." Security forces have cordoned off the area.
Mr. Bin Laden's death is a major milestone for the U.S., but its precise effects on the battle against terrorism are unclear. Although Mr. Bin Laden is the inspirational leader of al Qaeda and its offshoots around the world, he isn't thought to be a critical operational leader of the organization. Increasingly, terrorist actions have been undertaken by offshoots of his organization.
Obama said he was first briefed on a possible lead on Mr. Bin Laden's whereabouts last August. Senior U.S. officials said the elusive al Qaeda leader was found in living in a large compound in an affluent suburb of Islamabad. In ordering the attack, officials "had high confidence that the compound harbored a high value terrorist target," one official said. He said there was a "strong probability" that Mr. Bin Laden was there.
For many years, the CIA has been gathering leads on people in Mr. Bin Laden's inner circle, and came to focus on one particular courier who turned out to be key to the operation, officials said. About two years ago, they identified areas where the courier and his brother operated, and they eventually led the U.S. to the compound.
In addition to Mr. Bin Laden, three men were killed in the raid. The U.S. believes that two of them were the couriers and the third was Mr. Bin Laden's adult son. A woman was also killed during the raid when she was used as a "shield" by one of the men in the compound. Two other women were injured.
The U.S. teams located the residence in August. "We were shocked by what we saw," one official said, calling it "an extraordinarily unique compound." That gave them the confidence it might be harboring Mr. Bin Laden.
The compound was roughly eight times larger than other homes in the neighborhood and with security measures including more than 12-foot-high barbed-wire fences and access restricted by two security gates.
The property was valued at about $1 million but had no telephone or Internet service. It was built in 2005. U.S. officials believe it was constructed to house Mr. Bin Laden, but they don't know when he moved in.
The strike also has the potential to make already tense relations with Pakistan even more strained. Having vastly ramped up intelligence efforts on the ground and from the air in Pakistan, the U.S. carries out the strikes with little input from the Pakistanis.
The CIA has launched more than 200 drone strikes since it was ramped up in 2008. The bulk of those strikes have been launched under President Obama, who was an early convert to the covert program, which has killed 1,200 militants.
In recent months relations with Pakistan have grown tense, but the drone program has continued. CIA director Leon Panetta met on April 11 with Pakistan's intelligence chief Ahmad Shuja Pasha, and continued to receive private agreement allowing the U.S. to launch drone strikes.
There were differing accounts of Pakistan's involvement in the raid. Senior U.S. officials said that the U.S. didn't notify Pakistan, or any other nation, ahead of the strike, because of concerns about possible leaks that could compromise the safety of the strike force. However, an official with Pakistan's the Inter-Services Intelligence spy agency said that the raid was conducted by a joint U.S.-Pakistani team.
Only U.S. personnel took part in the raid, one U.S. military official said, dismissing Pakistani claims that Pakistani forces were involved.”
After the news of Mr. Bin Laden's death became public, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari called an emergency meeting and security around Islamabad was tightened.
The official with Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence said the ISI was concerned that the news could lead to further criticism of Pakistan in the U.S. for not doing more to clamp down on al Qaeda in the heart of Pakistan and overshadow the death of Mr. bin Laden. In the past, Pakistani officials have said they didn't know where the al Qaeda leader was.
Mr. Bin Laden survived numerous earlier American attempts to capture or kill him, both from the air and by forces on the ground. Knowing he was vulnerable, he appears to have laid the groundwork for his terror movement to survive his death.
In recent months, U.S. counterterrorism officials have come to see Yemen-based al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and one of its leaders, U.S.-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, as perhaps a bigger immediate threat to the U.S. The CIA and Special Operations teams have been searching for Mr. Awlaki but lack good intelligence on his whereabouts, officials say.”

Geronimo

2011-05-17T00:01:00.005-04:00

Native Americans are objecting to the U.S. military's use of the code name "Geronimo" for Osama bin Laden during the raid that killed the al-Qaida leader.
After bin Laden was killed, the military sent a message back to the White House: "Geronimo EKIA" — enemy killed in action.
News about the code name spread quickly across Indian Country and on social network sites, resulting in a groundswell of criticism against the government. Several tribes and tribal leaders issued statements of disapproval, while many Facebook and Twitter posted angry comments, some using historical photos of the Apache leader for their profile pictures.
Geronimo is a legend among Apaches and other Indian tribes for fierce resistance during the 19th century as he tried to protect his land, his people and their way of life from encroachment by U.S. and Mexican armies.
Obama’s sensitivity about not offending anyone except for those who oppose his socialist ideology does not extend to the people who inhabited the USA first.

Truth

2011-05-16T00:01:00.005-04:00

The firefight at Bin Laden's compound pitted two or three men against a dozen or more commandos. Bin Laden didn't engage in the firefight and used no human shield. He wasn't even armed. U.S. forces shot him dead anyway. That's the truth.
Four of the five people shot to death in the operation that killed Osama bin Laden, including the al-Qaida leader himself, were unarmed and never fired a shot. The truth differs markedly from the Obama administration's original claims that the Navy SEALs came under heavy small-arms fire in a prolonged firefight.
According to the officials' account, as the first SEAL team moved into the compound, they took small-arms fire from the guest house in the compound. The SEALs returned fire, killing bin Laden's courier and the courier's wife, who died in the crossfire.
White House officials initially suggested bin Laden had been holding a gun and perhaps firing at U.S. forces. There was a report that he used his wife as a human shield. In fact, bin Laden was in pajamas and unarmed at the time he was shot. A commando fired two quick shots, one to the chest and one to the head.
Instead of a chaotic firefight, the commando assault was a precision operation, with SEALs moving carefully through the compound, room to room, floor to floor. Most of the operation was spent in what the military calls “exploiting the site,” gathering up the computers, hard drives and files that could provide valuable intelligence on al Qaeda operatives and operations worldwide.

U.S. Fabricated Heroism

2011-05-15T00:01:00.004-04:00

The story according to White House Spin was as follows -
President Barack Obama chose a risky attack option: A direct raid on the house, deep within Pakistan—potentially putting American fighters in face-to-face combat within a maze-like compound—instead of simply bombing the place from a stealth aircraft.
One helicopter was badly damaged after hitting the ground hard. The team of about two dozen U.S. Special Operations Forces spent 40 minutes, with guns blazing, charging through each of the structures on the property. Bin Laden and his family were found on the second and third floors of the large main structure, the final building to be searched.
Bin Laden tried to defend himself before being shot through the left eye. One of the team sent word to the USA that "Geronimo"—the code name for bin Laden—was believed to have been killed in action.
The risky decision to attack the Pakistani compound had proven its worth. The decision was built on months of tenacious planning, but ultimately, it came down to gut instinct.
After the firefight, bin Laden's body was initially identified by members of the military strike force, and by a woman at the compound identified as one of his wives.
The assault team also had orders to remove items of intelligence value. "They picked up anything they could get their hands on," including computer hard drives, said a U.S. intelligence official. "They're being exploited to find anything we can on them."
Three other adult men were killed, including the two couriers and one of bin Laden's adult sons. One woman was killed when she was used as a shield by Osama. Two other women were injured. The disabled helicopter was destroyed by the U.S. crew before the strike team left.
Bin Laden was buried at sea, in accordance with Islamic tradition that burial take place within 24 hours of death. A senior U.S. defense official said religious rites were read on the deck of the USS Carl Vinson. The body was placed in a weighted bag.
"After the words were complete," a senior defense official said, "the body was placed on a prepared flat board, tipped up, whereupon the deceased's body eased into the sea."

Excessive Caution

2011-05-14T00:01:00.006-04:00

For more than a decade, the USA had sought bin Laden, and missed half a dozen times. In 2002 and 2003, not long after bin Laden had escaped in the cave-riddled mountains of Tora Bora in Afghanistan, interrogations of CIA detainees revealed the nom de guerre of one of his couriers. The man, who hasn't been named by U.S. officials, was a protégé of the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and a trusted assistant aide to Abu Faraj al-Libbi, a former al Qaeda No. 3 captured previously.
It took several more years simply to learn the courier's real name. In 2007, CIA analysts finally obtained it. In August 2010, the CIA was able to follow the courier directly to the place where he lived: the Abbottabad compound. Intelligence officials had locked on to him when he made a phone call to a number they were tracking.
His property came in for intense scrutiny. Teams from the CIA, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, and National Security Agency studied it with satellite and other surveillance equipment. Built in 2005, the compound was on the outskirts of the town center, at the end of a dirt road. The main three-story building had few windows facing outward. There was a terrace on the third floor with a seven-foot wall, preventing people from seeing inside. Spies couldn't even rustle through the trash for clues. Unlike almost all the neighbors, the residents of the compound burned their garbage.
In September, Obama was told about the compound and informed that it might be housing valuable targets in the war on terror—the courier and his family, as well as the family of the courier's brother. In addition, "There was a mysterious third family living there," a U.S. official said. "There was an adult male they couldn't see but knew he was there. There was also a female, potentially a wife and children, whose family matched Osama bin Laden's potential family." Members of the third family never left.
In December, the CIA considered the intelligence compelling enough to act. Panetta had to go through the farce of calling a secret meeting with lawmakers to seek tens of millions of dollars to fund a program aimed at an even more intensive collection of intelligence about the property.
Clearly, the walled compound in Abbottabad was built to shelter someone who didn't want to be seen. Most of its 22 residents were relatives of one of bin Laden's most trusted couriers, a close confidant responsible for shuttling messages among al Qaeda leaders and friends world-wide.
Intelligence officials couldn't catch a glimpse of the other adult male. He never stepped in to view. U.S. officials said, “There was no other plausible explanation than that it was Osama Bin Laden. The other possibility was al Qaeda No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahiri.”
The Obama administration wanted to use a drone bombing raid. That approach would prevent any risk to American troops. It would also have destroyed any proof bin Laden was there and all intelligence information and so on April 19, Obama gave provisional approval for the commando-style helicopter assault operation. On Sunday, May 1st Obama gave the mission a final go.
Such excessive caution made it very risky that intelligence about the compound or the intended mission would leak to our enemies. Particularly as Obama is so politically motivated and since he will not risk the negative political fallout of even a handful of deaths of U.S. armed forces, it is a disastrous dynamic that he is Commander-in-Chief.

Abbotsbad

2011-05-13T00:01:00.004-04:00

To fit U.S. propaganda, Osama bin Laden was thought to be hiding in a cave in the remote tribal region that borders Pakistan and Afghanistan. Instead, he was residing in a large walled compound in an upscale town populated with retired Pakistani army officers and founded by a British military officer in 1853.
Osama bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan did not have telephone or Internet service and so Osama was a sitting duck once we knew where he was. He was isolated and alone awaiting martyrdom. Even still, we moved with paralyzing slowness to eliminate him.
Abbottabad is 40 miles from Pakistan's capital, Islamabad, and is a popular vacation area located in a scenic valley surrounded by dramatic mountains. The town of about 500,000 has seen an influx of jihadis other than Osama.
Most notably this year, Pakistani security forces captured Umar Patek, a key figure in al Qaeda's global operations. The USA had placed a $1 million bounty on the Indonesian national for helping organize the 2002 nightclub bombings in Bali, Indonesia, which killed 202. Two other al Qaeda operatives of French origin were also recently arrested en route to the town by Pakistani authorities.
Abbottabad is home to the Pakistan Military Academy, the Pakistani equivalent of the U.S.'s West Point or Britain's Sandhurst, and a haven for retired military officials.
A three-story building sits in the middle of an acre compound surrounded by concrete walls 14 feet high, topped by barbed wire and with security cameras. The house was known in the area as "Waziristan Mansion" as it was owned by a man from Waziristan tribal region, the mountainous Pakistani area where bin Laden first sought refuge. We now know that man was Osama.
The fortress-like building stood out from other surrounding buildings. Activity around the compound was unusual and suspicious. Residents couldn't see inside and only one person entered the house with frequency. He gave contradictory stories about who he was. There were no electronic communications outside the compound and all trash was disposed of inside the compound. U.S. spies could see into the compound. They knew a significant amount about the people who lived there, including that they were al-Qaeda operatives. It was known that a senior person lived there who never left his penthouse. It was clear that he was one of al-Qaeda’s most senior leaders. It was also known that Osama’s key courier visited the compound. It was not much of a guess to realize that Obama was a sitting duck who had been there for several years. Even if it was not Osama, the senior occupant was sure to be a major prize.
In Quetta, a better-known extremist hideout that is home to the Afghanistan Taliban's ruling council, the Quetta Shura, hundreds of hard-line Islamists took to the streets, holding aloft banners with bin Laden's picture and shouting anti-U.S. slogans after his assassination. Abbotsbad was quiet.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed

2011-05-12T00:01:00.006-04:00

The 9/11 Commission Report states that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was the principal architect of the 9/11 attacks. He has confessed to a role in many of the most significant terrorist plots over the last twenty years, including the World Trade Center 1993 bombings, the Operation Bojinka plot, the 9/11 attacks, an aborted 2002 attack on the U.S. Bank Tower in Los Angeles, the Bali nightclub bombings, the failed bombing of American Airlines Flight 63, the Millennium Plot, and the murder of Daniel Pearl.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was arrested on March 1, 2003 in Pakistan by Pakistani security officials (ISI) working with the CIA, and is currently being held at Guantanamo Bay. During U.S. hearings in March 2007 Sheikh Mohammed confessed full responsibility for the attacks, saying "I was responsible for the 9/11 operation, from A to Z. Mohammed made the confession after being subject to waterboarding. He was charged on February 11, 2008, with war crimes and murder by a military commission and would have faced the death penalty if convicted as he undoubtedly would have been.
On January 22, 2009, as a first act as President, Obama signed an order to suspend the proceedings of the Guantanamo military commission and said that the detention facility would be shut down within the year. In November 2009, the Obama Administration announced that Mohammed and four accused co-conspirators would not be tried in Guantanamo by a military court but would be transferred from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba to stand trial in civilian court near Ground Zero in New York. No trial date was given. The Obama Administration expressed confidence that the defendants would get a fair trial that was "open to the public and open to the world.”
Over a year after announcing five Sept. 11 plotters, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, would be tried in lower Manhattan for killing 2,973 people, Obama is no closer to bringing them to justice, nor to closing Guantanamo. He does not know how to proceed on either.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is a Kuwaiti-born terrorist. Bin Laden urged Mohammed to become a full-fledged member of al-Qaeda, but he refused until 1999, when he became convinced that Osama was committed to attacking the USA, following the African Embassy bombings and the 1998 fatwa issued by bin Laden outlined his objections to American foreign policy towards Israel, as well as the continued presence of American troops in Saudi Arabia after the Gulf War. Even then Mohammed continued to have autonomy within al-Qaeda.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his family are the architects of 9/11 and similar attacks. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's association with Osama bin Laden was secondary but sufficient to allow al-Qaeda, headed by Osama bin Laden, to claim responsibility for the attacks
Mohamed Atta, from Egypt, was the ringleader of the 19 hijackers and one of the pilots. Fifteen of the hijackers were from Saudi Arabia, two from the United Arab Emirates, one from Egypt (Atta), and one from Lebanon. Most of the operational meetings leading up to the 9/11 attacks were held in Hamburg.

The Mastermind of 9/11

2011-05-11T00:01:00.005-04:00

“The mastermind of 9/11, Osama bin Laden, has been killed in Pakistan,” says Obama
The FBI most wanted poster, listing the crimes for which he was wanted, made no mention of the 9/11 attacks. The poster says Osama Bin Laden was wanted in connection with the August 7, 1998 bombing of the United States Embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya. These attacks killed over 200 people. In addition, Bin Laden is suspect in other terrorist attacks through the world. The poster offered a reward of $25 million from the U.S. State Department for information leading directly to his capture or conviction. An additional $2 million was offered by the Airline Pilots Association and the Air Transportation Association. The FBI explained that 9/11 was not mentioned because "the FBI has no hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11.”
The FBI gathers evidence. The Department of Justice than decides whether it has enough evidence to present to a federal grand jury. In the case of the 1998 United States Embassies being bombed, Bin Laden has been formally indicted and charged by a grand jury. He has not been formally indicted and charged in connection with 9/11 because the FBI has no hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11.
President Bush declared. "Dead or alive, it doesn't matter to me." For Obama it did matter. Obama wanted Osama dead. He could have been taken alive by the Navy SEALs who confronted the unarmed terrorist in his penthouse apartment. Instead, he was shot to death and his body quickly disposed of because Obama has made it impossible to bring Osama to trial in civilian criminal court in New York or at a military trial in Guantanamo. His inept fumbling, condemnatory and contradictory statements about Guantanamo, torture and military tribunals have made it impossible to bring Khalid Sheikh Mohammed the real mastermind of 9/11 to trial.

Puerile, Political and Pathetic

2011-05-10T00:01:00.005-04:00

The USA is still the best place in the world to live, to innovate and to build a business because the USA is the biggest market. The USA which could have ‘had it all’ with the collapse of communism but instead is becoming increasingly puerile, political and pathetic.
As the nation waited for Obama on his hour delayed announcement at 11.30 pm on Sunday night, May 1st after Osama was killed, it was obvious as always that the reason we were waiting was for speech writers to hone the speech to give Obama the best political outcome irrespective of truth or anything else. It was obvious that much of what he and his administration then said was dishonest with the sole purpose of making Obama look as good as possible so that he would be re-elected in 2012.
No one in the media picked up on his dishonesty and instead parroted and embellished the same pathetic theme with such headlines as ‘We are the champions’ and Obama 1, Osama 0. Our enemies always have to be depicted as cowards, being shielded by women while we are always heroic.
Contrary to the spin, it was not a courageous decision of Obama. The truth is that we should have carried out the raid that we did soon after we knew a senior al-Qaeda leader was in residence there last August. We are lucky that Osama is no longer involved in field operations of al-Qaeda and so was not moving around. Since he had no external electronic communications, he was a sitting duck. It was a simple operation with no risk. The worst possible outcome would have been the deaths of a few USA special services personnel. That was most unlikely since the Osama compound was very lightly defended, with no prospects of reinforcements.
The Obama administration said that the raid was conducted in conjunction/agreement of Pakistan. That was clearly a lie. The helicopters went in under Pakistani radar and it was easy as the Pakistanis did not have any overt contact with Osama and so could not help when his compound was attacked. Indeed the mission could have been accomplished without them even knowing about it except that the US forces made unnecessary noise.
The Obama administration looking on with real time TV was another farce. The intent of that was to get footage for the next election. Obama as Commander-in-Chief directing operations will be aired ad nauseam. It was pathetic.
The killing of Osama after ten years is not a U.S. success story. The reason that we did not do it earlier was because we believed our own propaganda that he was living in a cave and we cannot cope with the thought that Pakistan is playing a double game. How dumb are we?
Obama is not courageous. He is the ultimate nervous wimp who has no clue and is way out of his depth. Everything Obama does is on the basis of least risk to him politically. As a consequence, almost everything that he does is a mistake.
Osama was unarmed when shot. Obama lied to cover up the fact that he did not want to capture him alive as he would not know how to handle it and is terrified of international law and international opinion.
The burial at sea “according to Islamic custom” was a pathetic attempt not to upset Muslims. If an unrepentant mass killer was buried by Muslims according to their incorrect understanding of Christian burial practices, we would see it as a gross insult to Christianity.
Our blunderings are never ending. Contrary to Wimp USA of to-day, people worldwide actually respected the last great US General, George Scott. They even respected Patton.
As to the significance of Osama himself in to-day’s world, that is grossly distorted. We repeatedly say that he was the mastermind of 9.11. The facts are that Osama was the founder of al-Qaeda. His great beef against the USA was our interference in Islamic countries and in particular having our troops in Saudi Arabia. He was not the architect of 9.11; his followers (mainly Saudis) were, based in Germany. As a consequence of him being number one on the US most wanted list, he gave up any operational involvement after 9.11 and since then has just issued the same type of tired videos. Al-Qaeda to-day is decentralized and worldwide. Many recruits come from all the Muslim countries particularly in the Middle East, but also Pakistanis born in the UK and similar Islamists from other countries, notably Europe but also from the USA.
Al-Qaeda fighters poured into Iraq after we deposed Saddam and fought on the side of Iraqi Sunnis opposed to the USA. In so doing they antagonized the Shiites including Iran which is now the major threat in the world. To-day al-Qaeda is much diminished in the eyes of the Muslim world. The so called Arab Spring has little to do with al-Qaeda. Their biggest beef is lack of economic opportunity, but all the other terrorist groups (Hamas, Hezbollah and a resurgence of the Muslim brotherhood) that have spawned as a consequence of the successes of al-Qaeda (and weak resolve of the USA) are of increasing strength in these rebel movements and in countries such as Iran. They are the real problem going forward, other than the bigger threat of what might happen to the nuclear arsenal and technology of Pakistan and the imminent Iranian nuclear capability.
The significance of Osama is a small part of what it was in 2001 except if one is on a domestic flight and then how anyone in the USA can think that Osama did not win, is beyond me.
What is the explanation of the USA chest thumping and self-adulation following the killing of Osama? Could it be that while the USA proclaims its superiority in everything, it actually has a massive inferiority complex? Politically, the USA is no better than much of the rest of the world and our values are declining. USA elections are bought with money from special interests. As a consequence, Obama just serves himself and these special interests.
The USA is still the most powerful nation by far - for some time longer. The Obama speech should have been an honest account of the operation itself, with praise for the CIA and Special Forces. Instead Obama shamelessly claimed the spotlight and the credit. Obama said “I instructed Panetta to make hunting down Osama his most important priority.” Other than being an absurd comment since Osama was already ‘the most wanted’, Panetta had, and we still have, much more urgent unresolved problems as I hope Obama knows – or does he know or care?

2010 Census

2011-05-09T00:01:00.005-04:00

The Hispanic population in the USA has grown dramatically over the last decade. The USA now has more than 50 million Hispanics. One out of every six people in the USA is Hispanic. More significantly, one out of every four children in America is Hispanic, and 92% of those children are U.S. citizens.
The increasing decline of the USA as this century progresses, will parallel its increasing Hispanic ethnicity. The parallel is coincidental but that might not be how it will be perceived looking back, after Obama has long gone and the inevitable distrust of black leadership as a consequence of his incompetence, has run its course.

Obama Persona

2011-05-08T00:01:00.003-04:00

Obama projects a different persona than he did as a candidate in 2008. Then his image was to be engaging, patient, open, optimistic and a self-identified conciliator.
In 2011, as President, Obama is testy, petulant, impatient, arrogant and divisive.
In a recent White House interview with a Dallas TV reporter, Obama said: "Let me finish my answers the next time we do an interview, alright?" In “open microphone" comments at a Chicago fund-raiser, Obama dismissed the GOP as "nickel and diming" him on budget negotiations, asking, "You think we're stupid?" The president wasn't embarrassed. He should be.

2011-05-07T21:34:00.001-04:00

Economic Destruction

2011-05-07T00:01:00.004-04:00

Had the U.S. economy recovered from the current recession the way it bounced back from the other 10 recessions since World War II, our per-capita gross domestic product (GDP) would be $3,553 higher than it is today, and 11.9 million more Americans would be employed.
Those startling figures are based on the average recovery rate of real GDP and jobs three years after the beginning of each postwar recession. The bigger the bust, the bigger the boom that follows, except for this time.
On average, three years after the four deepest previous recessions started, real GDP was 7.6% higher than the pre-recession level. During the Obama recovery, real GDP is up only 0.1%. Forty months after the start of the 1953, 1957, 1973 and 1981 recessions, total employment was on average 4.7% higher than the pre-recession peaks, while total employment today is still down 4.7%, which is a total employment gap of 13.9 million jobs.
The problem is not just the weak recovery; the economy is now on a growth path far different from the previous quarter century. Despite the largest monetary and fiscal stimuli in American history, in 2009 the capital stock of the nation actually shrank for the first time in the postwar period.
The economic system of a nation is the primary determinant of its success. In America, changes in economic policy have generally been so gradual that recessions and ensuing recoveries have simply brought the economy back to the same growth trend line.
The Reagan policies of the early 1980s had such a significant effect on economic growth and employment that they changed the growth trend line. In 1982, unemployment reached 10.8% as the Federal Reserve tightened monetary policy in order to curb inflation. If we had matched the 1982 recovery rate, today annual per-capita income would be $4,154 higher than before the recession, which would be an extra $16,600 for a family of four. 15.7 million more Americans would have jobs.
Reagan's tax cuts, Social Security reforms, regulatory reforms, and limits on the growth and power of the federal government not only helped the economy shake off the negative effects of the 1970s but generated an economic growth premium that bore dividends for Americans until 2007.
We now have the exact opposite situation. The policies and behavior of the Obama administration are sufficiently different from those of the previous quarter-century to destroy our economic growth. Under Obama's policies, federal spending has exploded as never before. If his 2011 budget were implemented, this president would increase the outstanding federal debt more than the previous 43 presidents combined. Government control of the health-care system and the financial system has been greatly expanded. The administration also supported last year's failed "card check" legislation, which was an attempt at the most dramatic expansion of the power of organized labor since the Great Depression. Obama has launched repeated diatribes against wealth accumulation, undertook a massive expansion in the regulatory power of the federal government and proposed the largest tax increases in American history. Those tax increases were aimed almost exclusively at America's entrepreneurs, risk takers and small businesses.

New U.S. Reality

2011-05-06T00:01:00.006-04:00

50 million Americans depend on taxpayer-supported programs. The modern-day soup line is a government charity check in the mail. The bubble of excessive consumerism has burst. Consumers are attempting to pay down household debt instead of spending cash. An unprecedented number of Americans are borrowing against their 401(k) s and canceling their life insurance policies. The inflation of food and fuel is making their predicament worse. Only the wealthiest 10% of the population, whose stock portfolios have come back to some extent, are doing better, but their spending is not enough to spur the economy or create much additional hiring.
Households are still carrying far too much debt on their balance sheets. Relative to income, debt today is approximately twice as high for families as it was in the 1980s. Total borrowing in relation to disposable, personal after-tax income leaped to approximately 136% in the first quarter of 2008 from 60% in the early 1980s before it began to recede. It has now declined to 117% of income compared to the pre- bubble norm of 70%. To return to that level, debt would have to be reduced by another $6 trillion. Similarly, the debt-to-asset ratio in relation to household assets is currently 20%, but the pre-bubble norm was 12.5%. The deleveraging process still has a long ways to go.
As more U.S. households pay down their debt, the slowdown in consumer spending will continue. The savings rate, which had averaged 8.6% during the 1980s and 5.5% in the 1990s, dropped to 2.8% in the 2000s. No longer are households engaging in mortgage equity cash-outs to the tune of over $80 billion per quarter, as they did in 2006. Cash-out refinancing today has dropped by 90%, contracting the available funds that helped power the pre-2007 spending binge.
Middle-class Americans are growing increasingly leery of debt, particularly as they realize their retirement nest egg is going to be much smaller than they expected. As a consequence, only 45% of households used credit card debt in 2010, compared to 56% in 2009, and 87% in 2007.
71% of American consumers are buying less expensive brands, 57% have trimmed or eliminated vacations, 11% have postponed marriage or children, and 9% have moved in with their families. There is reduced spending on alcoholic beverages, clothing and restaurants. 25 million unemployed or partially unemployed Americans are focusing on basic necessities. They make up a part of the 42 million Americans on food stamps. Government figures do not even take into account the two million plus discouraged workers who have dropped out of the labor force over the past year and a half and are still unemployed. If counted, the jobless rate is 11.5%.
Real median household incomes are down over 4% from the 2000-2009 decade. Net worth has declined by more than $100,000 for the average household compared to just three years ago, and total household net worth is $12 trillion lower today than at the pre-recession peak, which is an unprecedented decline of 18.5% over three years. The bulk of this loss comes from diminished home equity, and with more than six million homes in inventory or in foreclosure, prices continue to decline. Current debt loads are not sustainable either by incomes or asset values, which are falling. Real GDP growth is less than half of what one would ordinarily expect to see coming out of such a deep downturn and there has been virtually no recovery at all with respect to housing, income levels and employment. Since the dollar is losing value compared with other currencies at an increasing rate as the Obama Administration prints huge sums of money to pay for his idiocy, the real decline of the USA in a global sense is even worse. The USA, with Obama at the helm is a total basket case.

Economic Downgrade

2011-05-05T00:01:00.006-04:00

Standard & Poor's has downgraded the long-term outlook on America's AAA credit rating to “Negative.” S&P's analysis is their view of the President's budget strategy. As a consequence, it rates as low as anything significant on deficit reduction this year or next.
The harshness of Obama's anti-Republican rhetoric and the universal conclusion that his total focus is already on Presidential campaign speeches make it very difficult for S&P to believe that Obama will enter into a budget negotiations in good faith.
Obama criticizes the Ryan budget as heartless and cruel, ignoring the fact that its purpose is to address the rising U.S. debt problem without further damage to the U.S. economy, and to do so before a truly heartless and cruel credit downgrade of the sort S&P gave Japan in January. Obama's response was simply to mock the GOP proposal.
The S&P outlook is a warning that financial markets have noticed that this President seems to have decided his path to re-election lies in demonizing his opponents rather than seeing to the nation's fiscal well-being.

Social Security Taxes

2011-05-04T00:01:00.005-04:00

Obama wants to lift the cap on income on which the Social Security payroll tax is applied. As always he is dishonest in what he says, “For Warren Buffett, he stops paying at a little bit over $100,000 and then the next $50 billion he's not paying a dime in Social Security taxes. So if we just made a little bit of an adjustment in terms of the cap on Social Security that would do a significant amount to stabilize the system."
What Obama does not say is that he wants to lift the cap for high earners but doesn't want to increase the benefits for a corresponding increase. It would change Social Security from a program, in which there is at least some connection between the taxes paid on wages in return for benefits, into a welfare transfer program. Liberals have already altered the social insurance model of Medicare in their health-care law, increasing that 2.9% payroll tax for the top brackets and extending it beyond wages to investment income.
The "$50 billion" reference obscures that most of the increase could be paid by the more modestly affluent, which is everyone earning more than $106,800. A 6.2% additional hit on every extra dollar they make above that level is a huge reduction from their take-home pay.
If the cap is removed entirely, it will also mean a huge increase in the marginal tax rates that affect decisions to work, invest and save. Tax changes that Obama favors would bring the top marginal rate to somewhere between 57% and 68% when factoring in state taxes.
The truth is that Obama wants to tax the modestly affluent as well as the rich to the hilt, which will yield diminishing returns and still come nowhere close to solving the budget program. The hidden message of Obama’s class-war is that most of the additional taxes he seeks will come from middle class voters.

Obama Obscures Spending

2011-05-03T00:01:00.005-04:00

In his electioneering to carefully selected audiences around the USA, Obama sometimes talks about saving $4 trillion, at other times $2 trillion, over around 12 years. Washington normally measures over ten years. Those extra two years, never mentioning any one year any time soon, is more obfuscation.
What Obama does not mention is the huge bulge in spending since Liberals have controlled Congress and in particular since he became President. In 2000 spending was 18.2% of GDP. In 2007 it was 19.6%. In the three years since 2009 it has jumped to an average of 24.4%.
Obama, in his budget submitted in February, proposed to make that spending level permanent. Spending would still be more than 24% of GDP at the end of the budget window in 2021. The naked reality is that he is seeking a much higher level of government spending on a permanent basis. The so called one-off stimulus spending to improve the economy has been exposed as yet another example of Obama’s manipulative dishonesty.
The House budget plan proposed by Rep. Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) removes the Liberal spending binge. All that it asks for is to gradually return spending as a share of GDP back to a level that was normal only three years ago. Since government agencies and programs functioned with 19% to 20% of GDP in 2007, they can clearly function with that percentage in 2021, when GDP will be substantially higher and with many opportunities between now and then for reforms and increased efficiencies.
Totally lost in Liberal thinking, is that if GDP and employment grow more quickly, as they would if private investment increased as a result of lower government spending and debt, then that 19% to 20% share of GDP could provide much more for public spending.
The second Obama budget, submitted a week after the Ryan House budget, is an attempt to pander to polling data which showed elector dissatisfaction with Obama’s first effort. It is substantially different from the first Obama budget in an attempt to make the spending vision appear closer to that of the House.
The House budget deals with the deficit and brings the debt down as a share of GDP to the 2007 level without increasing taxes. Under the current tax system, revenues as a share of GDP were 18.5% in 2007, so that the budget deficit was only 1.1% of GDP that year. With higher real incomes moving people into higher tax brackets, revenues will be higher than either Obama budget.
This thinking is essential for economic growth. In contrast, balancing the first or even the second Obama budget requires substantial tax increases, way beyond what Obama has yet proposed.

Obama the Divider

2011-05-02T00:01:00.004-04:00

President Obama's extraordinary response to Paul Ryan's budget, with its blistering partisanship and multiple distortions, would have been unusual even for a Vice President in the fervor of a campaign.
Obama packaged his poison in the rhetoric of bipartisanship, which "starts," he said, "by being honest about what's causing our problems.” Obama then presented the false choice of preserving the government we have with no realistic plan for doing so, aside from proposing $4 trillion in phantom deficit reduction over a gimmicky 12-year budget window that makes that reduction seem larger than it would be over the normal 10-year window.
Obama mocked and denounced Ryan's plan to increase health-care competition and give consumers more control. Instead, he said that the solution was to do what he proposed, which was to rationalize Medicare's gargantuan liabilities through price controls and central planning. All Medicare decisions will be turned over to and routed through an unelected commission created by ObamaCare, which will ferret out unnecessary spending. Fifteen members will serve on the Independent Payment Advisory Board, all appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. If per capita costs grow by more than GDP plus 0.5%, this board would get more power, including an automatic budget sequester to enforce its rulings. So 15 sages sitting in a room with the power of the purse will evidently find ways to control Medicare spending that no one has ever thought of before and that supposedly won't harm seniors' care, even as the baby boom generation retires and starts to collect benefits.
According to Obama every U.S. fiscal trouble flows from the Bush tax cuts "for the wealthiest 2%." He talks about his own "series of emergency steps that saved millions of jobs." He is dishonestly referring to the $814 billion stimulus that failed and a new multitrillion-dollar entitlement in ObamaCare that harmed job creation.
Under the Obama tax plan, the Bush rates would be repealed for the top brackets. According to Obama, the "cost" of extending all the Bush rates in 2011 over 10 years would be $3.7 trillion. According to Internal Revenue Service data, the entire taxable income of everyone earning over $100,000 in 2008 was about $1.582 trillion. Obama’s distortions and lies are never challenged by sycophantic supporters, in particular the dominating Liberal media.
Obama had sought more tax-hike cover under his deficit commission, seeming to embrace its proposal to limit tax deductions and other loopholes. But the commission wanted to do so in order to lower rates for a more efficient and competitive code with a broader base. Obama wants to pocket the tax increase and devote the revenues to more spending.
Obama ludicrously claimed that Ryan favors "a fundamentally different America than the one we've known throughout most of our history." To the contrary, it is Obama’s political divisiveness in the midst of a fiscal crisis, which he and fellow Liberal travelers have largely caused, that is fundamentally changing the USA forever. Many of us came to this country because of what it offered. It is Obama and his fellow Liberals who have destroyed that America. The man with roots in Kenya has a different vision to the mask he wears. For him and his kind it is payback time. Income redistribution is a key part of that pay back. To do that, he will divide in an attempt to conquer.

America the Ugly

2011-05-01T00:01:00.004-04:00

TV Culture continually seeks a new, lowest common denominator. Jersey Shore is a creation which is worse than the real thing and becomes the real thing. "Snooki" Polizzi is a star of this dimwitted reality series. A typical scene has Snooki tottering down the boardwalk. She lives with young people who have casual, meaningless sexual contact. They are profane, without values, without modesty and without gentility. They see each other only as sexual objects. Rutgers University paid $32,000 to Snooki for her to speak on campus.
Real Housewives shows adult women pulling each other's hair. They are hard, plastic and offensive. Commercial breaks offer no relief. They have competing advertisements for drugs to enhance penile erections. It is no wonder that New York has a 41% abortion rate and 44% of births are to unmarried women and girls.
Local news stories are of local violence of people to each other and of a child left alone for a week and of 5-year-old who brings a gun to school and injures three.
Buildings and infrastructure show utilitarian ugliness and advanced physical deterioration. You see broken neighborhoods, abandoned factories with shattered windows, graffiti-covered abutments and lack of upkeep everywhere.

Consequences of Printing Dollars

2011-04-30T00:01:00.005-04:00

The rest of the world is taking steps to protect itself from U.S. monetary policy. Members of the International Monetary Fund have resolved to slow the flood of dollars pouring into their countries, including capital controls. On a temporary basis, the IMF is ending the fund's long-time commitment to free flows of capital.
The dollar is the world's reserve currency and so the Federal Reserve is the global central bank. Under Obama the Fed’s only concern has become the U.S. domestic economy.
The Fed's easy monetary policy combined with Congress's reckless spending have driven investors out of the United States and into Asia, South America and elsewhere in search of higher returns and more sustainable growth. The IMF estimates that between the third quarter of 2009 and second quarter of 2010, Turkey saw a 6.9% inflow in capital as a percentage of GDP, South Africa 6.6% and Thailand 5%.
This incoming flood of money gives asset bubbles and inflation. Brazil (6.3%) and China (5.4%) are both enduring bursts of inflation, as are many other countries. These nations can raise interest rates or let their own currencies appreciate, at the risk of slower economic growth.
Over the past year, Brazil has introduced taxes on stock and bond investment and raised bank reserve requirements; Indonesia has introduced holding periods for government bonds; South Korea has limited banks' ability to engage in foreign-currency financing. Even still their currencies have continued to rise and dollars keep pouring in.
The rest of the world wants to free itself from the USA's weak dollar standard. China is allowing more trade to be conducted in yuan, a first step toward making it a global currency. At a meeting of developing countries in China recently, leaders called for "a broad-based international reserve currency system providing stability and certainty other than the dollar. There is universal mistrust of Washington's economic stewardship and U.S. economic credibility.

Obama’s Ambivalence

2011-04-29T00:01:00.004-04:00

The U.S. has handed off responsibility to NATO for maintaining the no-fly zone and enforcing U.N. resolutions. Only six of NATO’s members, including Britain, France and Canada but not the USA, are carrying out air strikes.
Obama has painted a dark picture of Gadhafi's abuses and has warned that his continuance in power would turn Libya into a pariah, failed state too. He is now belatedly opting for regime change at the same time as saying that "our duty and our mandate under U.N. Security Council Resolution 1973 is to protect civilians. It is not to remove Gadhafi by force."
Obama has authorized $25 million to equip the rebels with uniforms, body armor and vehicles and will deploying Predator drones to strike Gadhafi's forces. That means that he will go beyond U.N. resolutions.
Obama resists any action of war right up to the time he concludes there is no better alternative to escalation. The cost of weak U.S. leadership is that a dictator who has committed acts of terror internationally and is despised by most of his people and who could have been deposed in the early days of a rebellion with minimal outside aid remains in power and defiant. Civilians are being starved and butchered thanks to U.N. resolutions that are supposed to protect them but limit the means by which that protection may come. Obama has become involved in a war which has become a stale mate because of his ambivalence.

No Heroes

2011-04-28T00:01:00.003-04:00

Missiles fired by a CIA drone in Pakistan's North Waziristan tribal region killed at least 26 people in the latest in a series of strikes that have inflamed tensions between the USA and Pakistan. The pilotless predator drone operated by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency fired at least 10 missiles at a mud-brick compound in a predawn attack. At least three women were among the dead.
Collateral killing of civilians in drone strikes in far distant countries is preferred by Obama to counting body bags by having military personnel in harm’s way on the ground in these countries.
Obama’s latest escalation is to order drone strikes in Libya.
Nothing though should surprise us about Obama. After decrying the nature of interrogation of terrorists under the presidency of his predecessor, he now willingly approves of the treatment, amounting to torture, of the U.S. military person who was responsible for the leaking of documents to WikiLeaks.

U.S. Poor

2011-04-27T00:01:00.004-04:00

Obama would like to spread the wealth around by heavily taxing the rich and increasing handouts to the poor.
He ignores the fact that U.S. Poor today are better housed, better fed, and own more property than did the average U.S. citizen throughout much of the 20th Century. In 1988, the per capita expenditures of the lowest income fifth of the U.S. population exceeded the per capita expenditures of the median American household in 1955, after adjusting for inflation.
Among the persons whom the Census Bureau identifies as poor, 38% are homeowners, 62% own a car, 14% two or more cars, nearly half have air-conditioning, and 31% have microwave ovens. Some 22,000 of poor households in the USA have heated swimming pools or Jacuzzis.
In actual material terms, the poor have become richer as the rich have become richer.

Dollar Disaster

2011-04-26T00:01:00.004-04:00

The U.S. dollar's downward slide is accelerating as low interest rates, inflation concerns and the massive federal budget deficit undermine the currency. With the USA in is pathetic decline, the weaker currency is one of the few factors driving the economy as it makes export sales easier. It is also causing higher prices in such staples as food and gasoline and diminishes the standing of the USA on the global stage.
The dollar, as measured by the index that tracks it against a basket of currencies, hit its lowest point since the 2008 financial crisis. Before the crisis began, the dollar had lost more than 40% of its value against the basket during a steady six-year decline. The dollar is 5% away from its all-time low, hit in March 2008, as tracked by the dollar index, which dates back to 1971.
The dollar's weakness is even more striking in the face of the struggles facing the European Union and Japan, the USA’s biggest rivals in alternative currencies. The decline of this once great country is staggering and there is no ability or will of Obama, Bernanke and Geithner to do anything to save the USA from its increasing humiliation. Obama is focused on shoring up his support from free loaders by income redistribution even as the wealth of the USA is in precipitous decline.

Tax Premium

2011-04-25T00:01:00.005-04:00

Taxpayers must spend significantly more than $1 in order to provide $1 of income-tax revenue to the federal government.
In addition to the tax collection costs of the IRS, taxpayers pay the costs of their own time spent filing and complying with the tax code in addition to the tax compliance outlays that individuals and businesses pay to help file their taxes. The total is a cost markup of 30 cents on every dollar paid in taxes.
In addition, taxpayers, whether individuals or businesses, respond to taxes and tax-compliance costs by changing the composition of their income, the location of their income, the timing of their income, and the volume of their income. There are also efficiency losses created when individuals and businesses invest in tax-avoidance activities that lower their tax liability at the expense of creating economic growth.
Taxpayers should be able to comply with the tax code without having to spend absurd amounts of money to do so. Tax reform to a simple flat-rate tax with no deductions would significantly reduce the current complexity inherent in our progressive tax system, which is full of loopholes, exemptions and special interest carve-outs.
The potential benefits of reducing tax complexity go well beyond their dollar impact. The U.S. income tax system relies on taxpayers to self-report their income. The system only works if most taxpayers view the outcomes as fair and accurately report their income. As such, excessive tax complexity undermines the current tax code. The U.S. economy will be enhanced greatly by significantly reducing the complexity of the current tax code.

Disgraceful Demagoguery

2011-04-24T00:01:00.004-04:00

President Obama in his budget speeches makes the statement repeatedly that our fiscal problems are a consequence of tax cuts by his predecessor to benefit the wealthiest Americans. That is an appeal to envy of the majority to garner votes for 2012.
The Internal Revenue Service's income tax statistics for 2008 show that the top 1% of taxpayers, which are those with salaries, dividends and capital gains above $380,000, paid 38% of taxes. Raising taxes on all the "millionaires and billionaires" would be a drop in the bucket against the $4 trillion White House budget and $1.65 trillion deficit. Even if Obama raises taxes on the top 5% or even 10% of taxpayers, it will come nowhere near to closing the deficit and that is if no damage is done to the economy. The top 5% pay more than all of the other 95%. The top 10% already pay 69% of all total income taxes. The top 10% aren’t nearly rich enough to finance Obama's entitlement ideology even before ObamaCare kicks in.
The reality is that in the absence of entitlement reform it will be necessary to soak lower income people because that is where the big money is, because that is most people. $1.4 trillion of taxable income is from filers making between $100 -200,000 of adjusted gross income and another $1.4 trillion from $50 -100,000 filers. That is half of all taxable income.
Obama always pretends not to increase taxes for lower income voters but does so indirectly. His first budget in 2009 included “climate revenues” from carbon tax of cap and trade, which would be passed down to all consumers. Obama is now talking about limiting tax deductions such as for mortgage interest payments. The most expensive tax deductions, in terms of lost tax revenue, go mainly to the middle class. These include the deductions for state and local tax payments (especially property taxes), mortgage interest, employer-sponsored health insurance, 401(k) contributions and charitable donations.
None of these fixes will resolve the debt problems of the USA. Medicare and Medicaid spending are consistently growing two to three times faster than the rest of the economy. The only solution is to confront entitlement spending. Obama’s socialist ideology and demagoguery isn’t the answer; it is an added problem.

Obama Taxes

2011-04-23T00:01:00.004-04:00

Obama and his wife Michelle reported a joint adjusted gross income of about $1.7 million in 2010 and paid $453,770 in total. They also paid $51,568 in state income taxes in Illinois.
The president and his wife also reported donations to 36 different charities totaling $245,075, with the largest single donation going to the Fisher House Foundation, a program that supports the families of members of the military receiving special medical care.
Most of the Obama’s income comes from proceeds from sales of the president’s two books, which became big sellers when he became the Democrat’s superstar.

General Electric

2011-04-22T00:01:00.000-04:00

General Electric, the USA’s largest corporation had worldwide profits of $14.2 billion of which $5.1 billion came from its operations in the United States. GE paid no taxes; instead it claimed a tax benefit of $3.2 billion.
Immelt, the CEO of General Electric and Obama scratch each other’s backs and are literally working together to line each other’s pockets, at the unwitting expense of the few who pay almost all U.S. taxes. On an ongoing basis, one of GE’s principle areas of focus has been to minimize its taxes from its extensive operations, such that its taxes are far lower rate than at most multinational companies.
Its extraordinary success in this regard at the same time as GE has performed badly even as it moves its manufacture out of the USA increasing unemployment, is based on an aggressive strategy of fierce lobbying for tax breaks and innovative accounting that enables it to concentrate its profits offshore. GE.’s giant tax department is led by a former Treasury official working with former I.R.S. personnel and hires from virtually all the tax-writing committees in Congress. As a consequence, General Electric has an extraordinary ability to lobby for, win and take advantage of tax breaks. GE spends tens of millions of dollars to push for changes in tax law, from more generous depreciation schedules on jet engines to green energy credits for its wind turbines. Most lucratively, GE is allowed to operate a vast leasing and lending business abroad with profits that face no taxes. The assertive tax avoidance of GE not only shortchanges U.S. taxpayers, but also harms the economy by discouraging investment and hiring in the United States.
In return for generous tax breaks from Rangel, then chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, GE awarded $30 million to New York City schools, including $11 million to benefit various schools in Rangel’s district as the largest gift ever to the city’s schools.
Rangel, as one of many fiddles, was censured by Congress last year for soliciting donations from corporations and executives with business before his committee.

21st Century USA

2011-04-21T00:01:00.000-04:00

The Ryan - Republican budget's core goal is to pare spending as a percentage of GDP to 20%. Obama is talking about federal spending of 24% of GDP and maintaining a tax system with no identifiable ceiling. The Ryan budget proposes a maximum tax rate of 25% for individuals and corporations to stimulate the American dream and build revenues through increased GDP.
With annual national output now at $14 trillion, those four points of GDP are trillions of dollars of government spending. At stake is the future of the USA. The choice is socialism or capitalist freedom of choice.

Soak-the-Rich

2011-04-20T00:01:00.002-04:00

Obama’s tax hikes to soak the rich will not work and will hasten the decline of the USA. Income tax revenues have been stable at 8% of GDP, regardless of tax rates. The only way to increase revenue is to grow the economy.
President Obama's response to Republican efforts to curb runaway federal spending is to emphasize, once again, his resolve to greatly increase tax rates on married couples whose joint incomes are above $250,000, even though it will not solve the fiscal problems of the USA.
Estimates by the Congressional Budget Office estimate that federal spending under Obama’s 2012 budget plan will average 23.3% over the next ten years, compared with 19.7% in 2007 and 18.2% in 2001. That will mean continuing budget deficits averaging 4.8% of GDP. Tax increases will not help. Federal debt will double growing from $10.4 trillion (69% of GDP) at the end of 2011 to $20.8 trillion (87% of GDP) at the end of 2021, adding $9.5 trillion to the nation's debt.
The reality could be even worse as it will not be possible to keep interest rates at their present unusually low levels and the economy is likely to do worse than anticipated particularly if Obama is re-elected. Increase in tax rates on the rich will not increase tax revenues as assumed in the estimates.
According to the Office of Management and Budget, total revenues would exceed 19% of GDP after 2015, rising to 20% by 2021. That has never been achieved except for brief periods in exceptional circumstances.
Both individual income taxes and overall federal taxes have been a constant percentage of GDP at 8% and 18%, respectively, regardless of top tax rates. The only way to raise real federal revenues is to raise GDP.

Obama Speak

2011-04-19T00:01:00.005-04:00

A classic Obamerism is his comment in derision of the Republican plan to cut the deficit on the basis that it did not include increased taxes for families/individuals earning over $250,000 a year.

Obama, “There’s nothing serious about a plan that claims to reduce the deficit by spending trillions of dollars on tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires.”
The truth is that families/individuals earning over $250,000 are less than 3% of the population and pay about half of all income taxes. That level of taxation is already at a punitive level beyond what the majority of these people would pay willingly. The majority of these people did not and would not vote for Obama. It is a case of taxation without representation. To increase their taxes means that they will be paying even more of the spending of half the population who pay no income taxes while being the biggest beneficiaries of government mandated spending.
Obama then added, “I don’t need a tax cut.” It is a mockery that Obama equates himself with the top 3% of income earners. Many of these people are establishing the future of themselves and their families. They have not benefitted from corrupt payments from people seeking monetary gains from Obama’s political success, nor from two politically motivated books, they are not living at taxpayers’ expense and are not set up for life with extraordinary future income from the inevitable extension of all the abuses that Bill Clinton has mastered.

Obama's Donors

2011-04-18T00:01:00.000-04:00

He might not be able to make a decision on the Middle East, but Obama finds it very easy to hot foot it to NYC to collect a bagful of money.
The guest list was top secret for President Obama's $30,000-a-head Harlem fund-raiser but it raised more than $1 million for Obama in one evening. White House adviser Valerie Jarrett and Rep. Charlie Rangel did not have to pay. Jarrett is the shadowy ex-Chicago real estate agent who now works behind the scenes at the White House. She was one of the first people to help Obama line his pocket through his association with the likes of a prominent racketeer now serving time. Rangel, of course, needs no introduction as his crookedness in and around Congress is well known.
It is obvious that anyone paying $30,000 to Obama is expecting value in return by Obama abusing his office. Such is the depth of corruption of U.S. democracy even as the USA tries to foist it on other countries.

The Ideologue

2011-04-17T00:01:00.003-04:00

Obama was willing to shut down the entire federal government rather than see Planned Parenthood's federal funding cut. He was completely inflexible.
According to Democratic aides, House Speaker John Boehner argued for the funding cut late into the evening of the final day before the government shutdown would have occurred. The president answered, "Nope, zero." Boehner was forced to accept the budget deal without that cut.
As an Illinois state senator, Obama famously opposed limiting even partial-birth abortion.

A Primer for Obama

2011-04-16T19:13:00.000-04:00

A U.S. strategy has to begin by distinguishing between friends and enemies.
In April 2009, Mrs. Clinton welcomed Moammar Gadhafi's son Mutassim to the State Department, saying the U.S. "deeply valued" its relationship with Libya and wanted to "deepen and broaden our cooperation." Clinton ignored the fact that the Gadhafi regime has the blood of hundreds of Americans on its hands, has declared jihad against Switzerland repeatedly takes foreign nationals hostage and indulges in unabated repression of its own people.
Syria has brutally occupied Lebanon for 29 years, allowed terrorist groups such as the Palestinian Hamas and the Kurdish PKK to set up headquarters in Damascus, became Iran's principal ally in the Arab world, served as a transit center for al Qaeda terrorists en route to kill Americans in Iraq and championed the interests of Hezbollah, which itself has killed hundreds of U.S. Marines.
Obama has tried to court Iran on the theory that only the pig-headedness of his predecessor had prevented an earlier rapprochement. Even now Obama seems to believe that some deal can be struck with Tehran over its nuclear ambitions.
By contrast, Yemen's Ali Saleh has cooperated in fighting al Qaeda, Saudi Arabia helped bolster pro-Western forces in Lebanon, Egypt and Jordan signed and honored peace treaties with Israel. Alternatives to the current rulers will probably be worse. That is true in particular in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, which are allies against Iranian imperialism and targets of radical Islamic overthrow.
Does Obama understand?

Obama Lack of Integrity

2011-04-16T19:12:00.000-04:00

For Obama, the end justifies the means.
The Obama administration dropped financial sanctions against the top Libyan official, Moussa Koussa, who fled to Britain, saying it hoped the move would encourage other senior aides to abandon Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, the country’s embattled leader.
As the longtime Libyan intelligence chief and foreign minister, Koussa is widely believed to be implicated in acts of terrorism and murder over the last three decades, including the assassination of dissidents, the training of international terrorists and the bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.

Obama’s Perspective

2011-04-14T00:01:00.001-04:00

Obama speak equates the burning of the Quran and the murder of innocent people in much the same language.
"The desecration of any holy text, including the Quran, is an act of extreme intolerance and bigotry," Obama said in a statement released by the White House.
"However, to attack and kill innocent people in response is outrageous, and an affront to human decency and dignity," he said.
At least 10 people have been killed and 83 injured in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar on a second day of violent protests over the actions of extremist Christian preacher Terry Jones, who supervised the burning of the Quran in front of about 50 people at a church in Florida on March 20, according to his website.
A suicide attack also hit a NATO military base in the capital Kabul, the day after protesters overran a U.N. mission in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif and killed seven foreign staff in the deadliest attack on the U.N. in Afghanistan.
Obama used nuanced language to dishonestly describe Islam and its clerics who do condone the killing of infidels as occurred on 9.11.2001 and repeatedly since, including this response to the reputed burning of a copy of the Quran behind closed doors. Islamists do not consider Infidels, which is a common definition of non-believers, to be innocent.
"No religion tolerates the slaughter and beheading of innocent people, and there is no justification for such a dishonorable and deplorable act," Obama said.
"Now is a time to draw upon the common humanity that we share, and that was so exemplified by the U.N. workers who lost their lives trying to help the people of Afghanistan."
The recent burning initially passed relatively unnoticed in Afghanistan, but after criticism from the USA puppet President Hamid Karzai and calls for justice by Islamic clerics during Friday sermons, thousands poured into the streets in several cities to protest and seek retribution.
By parsing words, Obama does nothing to resolve real issues. To the contrary, he exacerbates them. A leader calls a spade a spade. That is the only way to achieve a genuine mutual understanding to resolve the world’s ills.

Obama's Libyan Abdication

2011-04-13T00:01:00.001-04:00

The battle for Libya has reached a bloody impasse. Moammar Gadhafi continues to hold Tripoli, but his sons and mercenaries have been unable to break the uprising or retake the country's east. Having loudly declared that Gadhafi "needs to step down from power and leave," President Obama now seems to have retreated into a bizarre but all too typical passivity.
The USA has already announced its preferred outcome, yet it is doing little to achieve this end. The greatest danger now to U.S. interests would be for Gadhafi to regain control. A Libya in part or whole under the Gadhafi clan would be a failed, isolated and dangerous place ruled by a vengeful tyrant and a likely abettor of terrorists.
Obama’s response to events in Libya is what a world without U.S. leadership looks like.
Obama's Libya policy has succeeded in achieving its oft-stated goal of not leading the world. No one can any longer doubt the U.S. determination not to act before the Europeans do, or until the Saudis approve, or without a U.N. resolution. This White House has become a follower.

Obama Libyan Confusion

2011-04-12T00:14:00.001-04:00

What are we doing? Why are we doing it? At what point, or after what arguments, did Obama decide U.S. military involvement was warranted? Is our objective practical and doable? What is America's overriding strategic interest?
What does the U.S. government know about the composition and motives of the rebel forces we're attempting to assist? For 42 years, Gadhafi controlled his nation's tribes, sects and groups through brute force, bribes and blandishments. What will happen when they are no longer kept down? What will happen when they are no longer oppressed? What will they become and what role will they play? Will their rebellion against Gadhafi degenerate into a dozen separate battles over oil, power and local dominance?
What happens if Gadhafi prevails? Obama has said he wants U.S. involvement to be brief. But what if Gadhafi is fighting on three months from now?
What happens if Gadhafi falls? Who will take his place?
If we mean to protect Libya's civilians, as we have declared, then we must have regime change. But in order to remove Gadhafi, we will need to provide Special Forces teams to work with the rebels, who are largely untrained and ragtag. The Libyan army has tanks and brigades and heavy weapons. The USA will have to provide the rebels training and give them support. They will need antitank missiles.
Once Gadhafi is gone, will Libya be partitioned, will there be a need for a peacekeeping force to stabilize the country, to provide a peaceful transition, and to help the post-Gadhafi government restore its infrastructure?

Regime Change

2011-04-11T00:01:00.000-04:00

Defense Secretary Gates says
"The Libya mission was never about regime change. Certainly it was not one of the military objectives." He recites the mandate of U.N. Security Council resolutions—to establish a no-fly zone and protect civilians—and concludes: "I think we've come pretty close to accomplishing those objectives."
Gates stresses that "at the end of the day this needs to be settled by the Libyans themselves," adding that "I don't think we ever had illusions about the ability to reverse the gains Gadhafi had made on the ground, other than stopping him from doing more and stopping him from slaughtering civilians."

Obama’s Libya Speech to the Nation

2011-04-10T00:09:00.001-04:00

The president insisted that the USA "took a series of swift steps in a matter of days." In fact, the administration dithered for over two weeks. Obama claimed, "At my direction, America led an effort" to create "a no-fly zone to protect the Libyan people." In truth, the direction and leadership came from the French, the British, and the Arab League.
Obama insisted that the operation's command would move swiftly from America to NATO, to give the appearance of transferring the mission to a multinational body. What he did not say is that NATO is commanded by an American, Adm. James Stavridis. So the baton has been handed from an American general to an American admiral.
The president said, "I made it clear that Gadhafi had lost the confidence of his people and the legitimacy to lead, and I said that he needed to step down." Obama has still not said how he will bring about the Libyan dictator's removal. When an American president says someone should go, they must. If they stay, America's credibility is undermined and adversaries are emboldened.
Obama is now parroting Bush’s Freedom Agenda, saying America supports "freedom for people to express themselves and choose their leaders" throughout the region. That statement is contrary to what Obama said in June 2005, when he insisted "we cannot, and should not, foist our own vision of democracy" on the Middle East.
The president claimed he authorized military action after consulting the bipartisan leadership of Congress. In fact, Obama made his decision and then waited nearly three days before informing 18 members of Congress that bombing would commence 90 minutes before it happened.
Obama is irresolute, weak and unreliable. The USA and the world need strong U.S. leadership. A new Gallup poll found that 52% of Americans still see President Obama "as a strong and decisive leader." Their media induced perception is not reality. It does though show the flaw of our much vaunted democracy.
The USA has a commander in chief who is allowing the USA to slip into a subordinate, non-leadership role in world affairs. He could well be commander in chief of the world’s most powerful nation for another five and a half years in a world that is becoming increasingly fractured and hostile. What a disaster for humanity!

Saving Benghazi

2011-04-09T00:01:00.001-04:00

The cavalry arrived in the nick of time. Help came as Moammar Gadhafi's loyalists were at the gates of Benghazi. The USA deferred to France and Britain, and let it be known ahead of time that we are not eager to assume a bigger burden in this rescue mission. Of course the USA still had to supply almost all the weapons as only they could. It was a dramatic change to previous U.S. rescue missions in other Islamic settings—Kuwait in 1991, Bosnia in 1995, Kosovo in 1999, Afghanistan in 2001, Iraq in 2003. In all of these previous endeavors, it was the USA that supplied the will and the sense of moral and strategic urgency.
Middle Eastern rulers and oppositionists have a clear reading of Obama. Nothing remains of the falsehood in June 2009, in the Cairo speech from the self-styled herald of a new American Islamic relationship breaking with the legacy of George W. Bush.
Doing what is right in Libya is not easy. The peoples of Libya are not homogenous; they are composed of dozens of ethnically disparate, unfriendly tribes. Three tribes which support Gadhafi have had the capacity to maintain power by force. The rival tribes in the East around Benghazi are no better disposed to the USA; they sent more jihadists to fight in Iraq than came from elsewhere. Their tribal warfare is 20,000 years old. After we have interfered they will still kill each other anyway, but later.

War by Committee

2011-04-08T00:01:00.001-04:00

America's founders gave the powers of Commander in Chief to the President because war has to be prosecuted with determination, discipline and the national interest foremost in mind. By marked contrast, the use of force against Libya is the first war by global committee, with all the limitations and greater risk that entails.
The war's early prosecution raises concern about its leadership, its limited means and strategic goals. On none of these have coalition members been clear or unified, particularly Obama. It is not clear who is commanding different parts of the operation. If no one is in charge, then no one is accountable for success or failure. There is no agreement on the military and strategic goals.
Gadhafi knows, because of the limits of the U.N. resolution, that he needn't fear any foreign troops parachuting into Libya. Gadhafi could exploit divisions on the global war committee and achieve a military stalemate. He could then remain in control of a rump part of Libya and create mayhem.
The other problem with war by global committee is that it diminishes the role of the U.S. Congress. So far regarding Libya Obama has bowed to the wishes of the U.N., the Europeans and the Arab League instead of seeking domestic political consent.
The worst offense a Commander in Chief can make is to commit U.S. military force and the credibility that goes with it in half-hearted fashion.

USA Follows

2011-04-07T00:01:00.001-04:00

When Nicolas Sarkozy urged Hillary Clinton to get the U.S. behind an international intervention in Libya, she demurred. The U.S. Secretary of State warned the French president that a war could be risky and bloody. After four frantic days of diplomacy the Obama administration had agreed to participate in the intervention. Obama was concerned about being out of step with the changes sweeping the Arab world and of being outmaneuvered by the U.K. and especially France, both more aggressive advocates of intervention.
Col. Moammar Gadhafi threatened to retaliate against a pro-democracy rebellion by setting off a bloodbath. That prospect alarmed Obama advisors including U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice and National Security Council staffer Samantha Power. Both had made their names by arguing the West's inaction during the Rwandan genocide in the 1990s made it morally complicit.
The uprising had begun in mid-February, when disaffected Libyans in the country's east, heartened by revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia, took to the streets and seized control of the city of Benghazi. After the revolt spread, Col. Gadhafi's forces rallied behind tanks and airpower and launched a fierce counterattack. Until the U.N. passed its resolution, loyalist forces appeared ready to retake Benghazi.
The USA found itself lagging the more aggressive postures taken by the UK and France. Two days later came the first sign of a shift in the U.S position, when the Arab League endorsed the no-fly zone. That paid immediate diplomatic dividends in favor of U.S. intervention as Russia quickly indicated it wouldn't veto a no-fly zone resolution and China followed suit.
On Thursday, the resolution passed, with the USA and nine other Security Council members voting for it, five abstaining, and none voting against.

Syria

2011-04-06T00:01:00.001-04:00

Facing nationwide uprisings, Syrian despot Bashar al-Assad has killed more than 170 demonstrators in 14 cities in a week. Power is concentrated in the hands of the president and his security services.
Syria has 3,000 political prisoners, the largest number of any Arab country and has now arrested 400 more on charges ranging from public disorder to high treason.
Even before President Obama's election, high ranking Democrats, including then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, visited Damascus to denounce President George W. Bush and praise Assad as a model Arab leader. For three decades, Hafez al-Assad, Bashar's father, duped a succession of U.S. presidents by promising to make peace with Israel. The Syrian despot became the only Arab leader to have had one-on-one summits with every U.S. president since Richard Nixon. Bush was the first president to abandon that tradition.
Obama is hesitating about what to do regarding Syria. Similar fumbling during the pro-democracy uprising in Iran in 2009 made it easier for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to consolidate its coup and impose Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president for a second term.
By abandoning well-established allies in Tunisia and Egypt, Obama was accused of being fickle, but the overt switch to the people's side came too late to enable the USA to claim a share in ending the dictatorial regimes and the USA will still have the ensuing chaos to deal with as being the only Western nation with a credible military might other than Britain to an increasingly limited extent.
Having climbed reluctantly on the French and British bandwagon in opposing Gadhafi and then having to supply most of the costly weaponry, Obama will once again have to decide whether protecting protesters from death and arrest by their governments is a universal principle or whether it must be put against a prism of what is good for his re-election campaign.

Bahrain

2011-04-05T00:01:00.001-04:00

The headquarters of the U.S. Fifth Fleet in Bahrain is a part of efforts to block Iran's nuclear ambitions and counter any interference with the flow of oil.
An indigenous Shiite Muslim population outnumbers Sunni citizens by two-to-one, but Shiites are socially and economically discriminated against by the Sunni ruling family, the al-Khalifa family which is an institutionalized dictatorship. Demographically, Bahrain can be likened to Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Iraq also had a majority Shiite Muslim population with Sunni Muslim control by the Baath Party of Saddam Hussein.
Bahrain is no longer an oil producer of any consequence, but is still a beneficiary through its banks, hotels, bars and restaurants, particularly for Saudis who drive across the 16-mile causeway completed in the 1980s.
The al-Khalifa family has profited from resorts and luxury housing projects built on artificial islands constructed in the shallow coastal waters and by reclaimed land sales. Shiite villagers have protested when some of this activity stopped them from harvesting their traditional fishing grounds. At least six people have been killed in the crack down on recent protests. Events are pushing Bahraini Shiites closer to having ties with Iran.
This crisis reveals that the USA and Saudi Arabia are no longer aligned. The latter perceives Obama as demanding universal freedoms from allies, but not from adversaries like Iran.

Arab League

2011-04-04T00:01:00.001-04:00

The 22-member Arab League's call for a no-fly zone over Libya is an endorsement that they respect U.S. military weaponry and want it on their side when they need it. Both Bushes had it right, Obama has it wrong.
We have heard repeatedly from Obama and his fellow apologists that the Iraq war tarnished the image of the USA to an extent that U.S. leadership in the Mideast was unacceptable. Both President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have insisted that the U.N., NATO, the Europeans, Arabs, anyone but the USA take the initiative on Libya.
The Arab League is begging them to reconsider this abdication. With the unsurprising exceptions of Iranian client Syria and Libya's neighbor Algeria, the group took the extraordinary step of calling publicly for American intervention in the affairs of an Arab state. Though the League formally asked the U.N. Security Council to approve a no-fly zone, they know that the U.S. will carry the military and political burden in imposing one.
The pro-Western Gulf or North African allied states have nothing to gain in seeing U.S. influence or military power devalued in their region, either by others or through Liberal self-abnegation in the USA. However much the Arabs like to complain, they know the USA is a largely benign force and honest broker.
Not by coincidence, Saudi Arabia and fellow Gulf States have sent military forces into Bahrain to help put down an uprising by the majority Shiites against the Sunni monarchy, which declared a state of emergency. The Saudis fear that the Bahrain contagion fueled by Iran will spread to them. Their intervention reflects a lack of confidence that the USA with Obama at the helm will assert itself in the region. The Saudis don't believe they can count on the USA to stop an imperial Iran.
Obama the ditherer is a disaster. We know what George Bush stood for. When will Obama just stand up?

Obama Dithers

2011-04-03T00:01:00.001-04:00

Two months of haphazard White House policy on Egypt, Yemen and Bahrain, has been followed by Obama changing from being a skeptic of intervention to a proponent of military strikes in Libya in a matter of hours. Obama flip flopped and commenced military action without the traditional courtesy of consulting congressional leaders.
Instead, a few hours before the USA undertook a brutal bombardment of a defenseless sovereign country, Obama perfunctorily informed lawmakers of what he had already decided to do. He then left for Latin America, leaving Congress in a vacuum. Who is in charge? Who are our partners? What are we attacking? What is the goal? How long? Can Gadhafi stay? If not, who next? Obama offered no answers to these questions. He was hiding out in Brazil.

We need a Strong Leader

2011-04-02T00:01:00.001-04:00

Obama is a confused weakling. As a consequence, the USA is an arrogant non-entity in international diplomacy.
The USA is following the lead of France and Britain, empowered by the United Nations and the Arab League, in interceding militarily in Libya. Even that confused and hesitant action would have been precluded if Moammar Gadhafi had access to nuclear weapons.
Gadhafi unilaterally forfeited his nuclear weapons program by 2004, turning over uranium-enriching centrifuges and warhead designs. Gadhafi did so because he believed he was less secure with the bomb than he would be after relinquishing it. He feared that the USA which had recently invaded Iraq, would deal with him much as it had Saddam Hussein.
A similar fear impelled the Iranian regime to suspend its own nuclear weapons program in 2003. The program resumed only when the threat of military intervention receded. The Iranian regime is the pre- eminent sponsor of terror in the world. With nuclear weapons, Iran could become a catastrophic threat.

Fear in Egypt

2011-04-01T00:01:00.001-04:00

Early elections will only benefit well-organized and politically disciplined groups like the Brotherhood and the remnants of Hosni Mubarak's National Democratic Party, which is really the party of the Egyptian military. Either the old order which is the military regime stays in power, or Egypt will have an Islamic dominance. The big change meanwhile is a new lawlessness as there is no longer a police presence.
Egypt's Coptic Christians are 15% of the population and the largest non-Muslim group in the Middle East A Coptic church south of Cairo has been burned to the ground, on account of a Coptic-Muslim romance. This episode is commonplace in Egypt as are many other burnt-out building shells.
Coptic Christians no longer see any future in Egypt and want their children to emigrate. The threat to the Coptic community is also a reminder that beyond the Muslim Brotherhood there are Egypt's still more extreme Salafis. The issue is not that they have become stronger since the revolution. It is that they are becoming bolder. There is no police counterbalance to their street dominance in certain poor neighborhoods. They no longer have any fear of the government as there is no fear of being arrested and prosecuted.
Obama and his fellow travelers are now too busy causing chaos in other parts of the Middle East to worry about the disaster that their interference and desire for regime change caused in Egypt in their quest in other countries for the same type of democratic mess with which we are saddled in the USA.

Obama’s New War

2011-03-31T00:01:00.001-04:00

Obama has introduced his own confused means of launching a war in another distant Muslim country where he does not know what is going on and has no idea what the end game will be. He created civil war in Libya in an ongoing attempt to improve his popularity in the USA so that he will be re-elected in 2012. Such is the depth of the critical thinking and integrity of this follower of popular public opinion, which is itself formed by the Liberal media.
Gadhafi is an easy target for the media since his atrocities while less than those of Saddam Hussein have been closer to home for a U.S. audience, notably the downing of the Pan Am flight over Lockerbie, reputedly ordered by Gadhafi. When a foreign dictator is responsible for terrorist atrocities against U.S citizens it is a relatively safe play for Obama to take military action against him so long as U.S. lives are not put at risk, with the intention of removing him from power even if we do not know what and whom will replace him. To further insulate himself from any negative consequences, Obama will hide behind the umbrella of NATO and a U.N. resolution that he is simply launching costly Tomahawk missiles at Libyan military installations and forces to prevent opposition forces being slaughtered. Obama compounds the confusion by pretending that he is not taking sides in the civil war that he has created, while to gain more votes, he praises ‘the brave men and women’ of the U.S. Military who are plying their usual trade of killing people that they do not know or care about from a safe distance, with ‘shock and awe’ weaponry, paid for by confiscatory taxation of the rich in the USA.
If Obama was genuinely concerned about preventing the loss of human life, he would have realized that a civil war that he has fomented is not the way to go about it. If he studied history, he would know that 23,000 were killed in one day during the USA’s own civil war at Antietam. The pathetic blunderings and mutterings of Obama, Clinton, Gates and Petraeus are not what one expects from a great military tradition as the USA would like to see itself. Indeed the USA has not had a decent military leader since George Scott and the USA’s excessive concern about limiting its own casualties by remote and long range killing tactics is hardly heroic. Petraeus himself collapsed during the conflict of a Senate hearing, which would have been immediate thumbs down if he had been in the arena of a gladiatorial contest.
If Obama’s guiding principle was the hatred of oppression and the brutal killing of innocent people, he would not have ignored the many more worthy causes for his attention throughout the world in Zimbabwe, North Korea, China, Iran and he would not turn a blind eye to Syria, Bahrain and Yemen where the ruling dictatorships have all been quelling rebellion with severe violence and murder.
The uncomfortable truth is that the USA has no right legally to intervene in the internal affairs of a sovereign nation. That right has been upheld for over 350 years since the massacres of the Thirty Years War in Europe. The upholding of this legal right has allowed many subsequent massacres, notably by Stalin and Hitler within their own sovereign lands. It was Hitler’s territorial aggressions which led to war and the eventual end of the Holocaust.
To be re-elected, Obama will attempt to justify war with its terrible consequences, where the USA is the killer, in a conflict which has nothing to do with the USA and where the USA will be a certain loser whatever the outcome. If only the U.S. Liberal media would show graphic pictures of the horror that the U.S. military inflicts around the world including the charred and dismembered bodies of children it has killed, the re-election campaign of Obama might be put into perspective.

Syria

2011-03-30T00:01:00.000-04:00

Obama has courted President Bashar al-Assad, sending a U.S. Ambassador to Damascus after many years without one and dispatching assorted emissaries to persuade Assad to break with his Iranian patrons. Special envoy, George J. Mitchell, made several visits to Damascus. Those pleas predictably went nowhere.
For two years, Obama has tried to coax Syria into negotiating a peace deal with Israel and to moving away from Iran in a fruitless effort that has left the USA bolstering one of the most repressive regimes in the Arab world. The State Department organized a delegation from Microsoft, Dell and Cisco Systems to visit Assad with the message that he could attract more investment if he stopped censoring social networks like Facebook and Twitter. The Obama administration also approved export licenses for civilian aircraft parts.
In return, Syria deepened ties with Iran and the Islamic terrorist group, Hezbollah, undermining the government of Saad Hariri in Lebanon, pursuing a nuclear program and failing to deliver on promises of political reform. Assad had previously engineered the assassination of a former Lebanese prime minister, Rafik Hariri, at which point the Bush administration recalled its ambassador in February 2005.
Now Liberal illusions have evaporated as Syrians have revolted and Assad has opened fire on demonstrators, killing at least 65 so far. Protests that began in Daraa, after the arrest of teenagers for painting anti-government graffiti, have spread throughout the country. Assad's forces killed 20 protesters in Sanamein alone. The uprising is widespread, involving different religious groups in southern and coastal regions of Syria, including Sunni Muslims usually loyal to Assad.
Assad could undertake a crackdown like that of his father and predecessor, Hafez al-Assad, who ordered a bombardment in 1982 killing 10,000 people in the northern city of Hama. Then Obama will be sucked into war with Syria as he has in Libya, without any clue as to what he is doing or what the outcome will be.
The unrest in Syria and in Jordan will leave Israel further isolated. The Israeli government is already concerned about the consequences of the overthrow of Egypt’s leader, Hosni Mubarak, since a new government is unlikely to be as committed to Egypt’s 1979 peace treaty with Israel.
While Israel has largely managed to avoid being drawn into the region’s turmoil, last week’s bombing of a bus in Jerusalem, which killed one person and wounded 30, and a rain of rocket attacks from Gaza, have fanned fears that the terrorist group Hamas is trying to exploit the uncertainty.
The unrest in Jordan, which has its own peace treaty with Israel, is also alarming. Protests in Jordan have resulted so far in one person dead and more than a hundred wounded, posing the gravest challenge yet to King Abdulla, a key ally of the West.
Like Moammar Gadhafi, Assad has promoted terrorists and has funneled them into Iraq for years. Syria has helped to re-arm Hezbollah in Lebanon with thousands of rockets that it will be launched at Israel in a future attack.

Afghan Hatred of USA

2011-03-29T00:01:00.001-04:00

After a U.S. helicopter attack killed nine Afghan children, General Petraeus apologized to Hamid Karzai as hundreds of demonstrators marched through central Kabul chanting anti-American slogans and a growing number of Afghan lawmakers criticized U.S.-led forces for civilian deaths.
More than 200 civilians have been killed in military operations and insurgent attacks in recent weeks. While Afghan officials acknowledge that Taliban-led insurgents are responsible for 90% of civilian deaths, it is the errant helicopter strike on the nine children that has generated the greatest furor. Attack helicopters apparently mistook children gathering firewood for a group of hidden Afghan insurgents.

Islamic Fundamentalism in Pakistan

2011-03-28T00:01:00.001-04:00

Taliban militants shot dead Shahbaz Bhatti, Pakistan's 42-year-old minister for minority affairs and the only Christian in the overwhelmingly Muslim nation's cabinet for supporting the repeal of a barbaric blasphemy law that makes insulting the prophet Muhammad punishable by death.
The law is often used against religious minorities, especially Christians such as Asia Bibi, an illiterate peasant sentenced to hang last year after she allegedly badmouthed the prophet during a row with Muslim coworkers. Two months ago a bodyguard murdered Punjab Gov. Salmaan Taseer for visiting Ms. Bibi in jail and speaking out against abuse of the law. Mumtaz Qadri, Taseer's murderer, has become a national hero.
Islamic parties such as the Jamaat-e-Islami only command a fraction of the national vote, but their ideals are widely tolerated by mainstream political parties. Ostensibly secular, the ruling Pakistan People’s Party supported both Kashmiri militancy and the Afghan Taliban in the past. In its current incarnation it appears permanently cowed by the country's legion of vocal fundamentalists. President Asif Ali Zardari did not attend the funerals of either Taseer or Bhatti and his government has made it clear that it will not touch the controversial blasphemy law. Interior Minister Rehman Malik declared that he would personally kill anyone who dared blaspheme Muhammad's name.
According to the Pew Global Attitudes Project, U.S. favorability ratings stood at 17%last year, the lowest of all countries surveyed. On the streets, there are bloodcurdling yells for the execution of Central Intelligence Agency operative Raymond Davis, for killing two Pakistani secret service agents in January. Personal pleas for diplomatic immunity by President Barack Obama are ignored.

India

2011-03-27T00:01:00.001-04:00

With a storied ancestry that includes the Indus Valley culture -- which, beginning 4,500 years ago, rivaled all other civilizations for more than a millennium -- India is emerging from the world's shadows to become a global player in trade, technology, and political influence. India now has the confidence of a rising power. It has become part of the long-term global balance of power.

India with 1 billion people has great poverty and great challenges. 36% of the population cannot read or write and are incredibly poor. Welfare for the indigent is $4 per month. In stark contrast to this poverty are India’s vast palaces and enormous wealth of the very few. Its forts are as impressive as any worldwide. Some are still inhabited by royalty, who are now without political power but are still very rich. Beyond the walls of the privileged few who have opulence, space and service is a teeming, chaotic populace.
Abject poverty is an accepted way of life.

Ramshackle hovels and tents are the homes of many. Pigs root out trash in city streets and cows lie down on four lane highways choked with traffic which includes pedestrians, bikes, scooters, auto-rickshaws, cars, buses, trucks, mules, camels and an occasional elephant. Traffic in the cities is chaotic. Everyone drives with a hand on the horn and without lane discipline or giving way to other road users. The cows here are like Boston pedestrians. They amble across busy streets without looking and it is a serious offence if one is hit by a vehicle. Congestion will only become worse before it gets better as India continues its dramatic progress. The main roads are mostly in terrible condition. At intersections there are often no lights and no policeman. Traffic inches forward, inches from traffic trying to go the other way. Pedestrians crossing these roads take their lives in their hands. Where there are signals every type of vehicle surges forward into a narrowing space. Road works create a free for all with vehicles neither able to move forward or back. India is orderly chaos. Vast distances are traversed at a snail’s pace but with periods of hair raising speed punctuated by duels with herds of goats, monkeys, dogs, camels, an occasional elephant, peacocks, people and equally aggressive drivers coming the other way, on road surfaces that have speed bumps often difficult to see, potholes and, on occasion, no road surface at all. On one occasion, I landed at Jaipur to find that my pre-arranged car was not there and had to organize my own beaten up car on the spot with a driver and a companion who had passable English, for $49. The journey took five hours each way to go about 350 kms. My meeting took four hours. I learned that life in India is a series of near misses and that Indians will work for very little. The biggest irritation was that I was asked repeatedly if I would like to stop at an Uncle’s store on the way back where I would be able to buy very good gems, paintings etc.

Food from nature is excellent and bountiful. Obesity is not a problem. Indians are lean and hungry. Indians have a fire in their eyes and in their bellies, much more than one sees in welfare dependant USA. They have a great attitude. Everyone is striving to better themselves and they are making tremendous gains. 65% are under 35, which is a different dynamic in the USA where two people of working age will shortly be supporting one retiree and where almost half of the ‘workers’ are so called civil servants or rely on state benefits without working. People help each other because there is no other help.
Children play alongside stagnant sewage and rotting trash. Filthy and ragged, they still know how to play and they smile as they look at you. They know how to play without their mothers arranging a play date. If there is waste ground, there will be boys playing cricket. There are no supervising parents spoiling the fun.

Education is free and uniforms are provided by the school. Indians sacrifice greatly to educate their children. Everyone knows the importance of education. One bill board about a school proclaimed ‘A smile is worth a mile’. In the villages skills are passed down to the next generation. Exquisitely hand dyed and embroidered bed spreads are made by village woman earning $6 a day for sale to tourists.

India is very class conscious but all children are eager to learn, again in sharp contrast to our underclass which thinks it is clever not to learn except about drugs, sex and counter-culture. Morality and modesty still have meaning in India.

India’s infrastructure is already overloaded. Power cuts are routine but are mostly planned. Air travel is surprisingly good as several independents are now in operation. One, Jet Air will shortly be flying to London. Goods move on inadequate roads. These roads are choked with trucks having to pass camels pulling carts. A partial solution might be to move goods by rail except that trains are laden with people. Transportation of people involves packing too many in too small a space whether it be in buses (people cling to the sides and sit on top), cars, scooters (a family of four on a put- put) or auto-rickshaws (driver in the middle with a passenger either side and four people in the back – or one obese American).

India is a religious country but also has great tolerance. The predominant Hindus believe in reincarnation. Life is cheap – ones status in the next life might be better. It is chilling to see a two year old child run into a busy road with death a second away. It is sobering to see a pedestrian funeral procession in heavy traffic, with a body in Kafan cloth hoisted on shoulders on the way to a do it yourself cremation. The bone remnants that do not burn are then dispersed subsequently in holy rivers.

Economic reforms, undertaken in 1991, more than a decade after China began its market reforms, will annually lift millions of people out of wretched conditions. The reforms have gradually freed markets, encouraged a wider role for private enterprise, and removed regulations from many industries such as software and biotechnology. From 1951 to 1991, India's governments, strongly influenced by the Soviet economic model, had put controls over the economy, stagnating growth.

The growth of markets is the best way to create prosperity. The scooter class, or those who can afford scooters -- is growing incredibly fast. In 1981, India's scooter class was about 8 percent of the population, or 65 million people. Today, the number is 25 percent of the population, or more than 250 million people.

Consumer spending is skyrocketing. Annual car sales have leaped from 150,000 in 1991 to more than 1 million today. India's airline industry, which was one of the first to be deregulated in 1991, has gone from one state-owned airline to eight competing carriers.

Until recently it would take four years to register a car; now one can get the keys the same day. Before, it took a month to get an Internet connection; now, broadband, cable, and dial-up are available in cities almost immediately. But if India wants to be a world-class power, it will need to improve infrastructure around the country and it will need to build first-class roads. That will take time.

India is an elephant (they have important cultural and religious significance to Hindus). The elephant may not be as fast as the Chinese tiger, but it is incredibly strong and it has stamina. Chindia, now a recognized word, is the two countries working together. They are a formidable combination.

Vietnam

2011-03-26T00:01:00.000-04:00

The ultimate victory and the ultimate irony is that we failed to defeat communism on the battlefield in Vietnam only to see the same end result thirty years later as capitalism defeats communism in the market place.

In the three decades since Vietnam has gone from communism to a form of capitalism, it has begun surpassing many neighbors. It has Asia’s second-fastest-growing economy, with 8.4 percent growth last year, trailing only China’s, and the pace of exports to the United States is rising faster than even China’s.

American companies like Intel and Nike, and investors across the region, are pouring billions of dollars into the country; overseas Vietnamese are returning to run the ventures.
Through the end of last year; Vietnam’s growth rate exceeded that of Thailand, Malaysia, Taiwan, South Korea and even India, its closest rival.

The latest Asian economic tiger, Vietnam now produces and uses more cement than France, its former colonial ruler. The main indexes for the Ho Chi Minh City stock market and a smaller exchange in Hanoi have doubled in value. Vietnam sells almost nine times as much to Americans as it buys.

In Vietnam, nearly double-digit growth is starting to produce the same shortages of skilled labor as in India and China. Accountants, human relations managers and other professionals are so scarce that salaries are soaring 30 percent to 50 percent a year.

Roads and ports are increasingly choked with cars and ships, the congestion worse than China’s but not yet as bad as India’s. Vietnam has a government that, like China’s, has embraced capitalism after becoming disillusioned with the widespread poverty and sometimes hunger that accompanied tight state control of the economy. Economic liberalization policies have been pursued in earnest since the early 90’s, after poor harvests and economic mismanagement left millions facing malnutrition in 1990.

Myanmar

2011-03-25T00:01:00.000-04:00

Since seizing control of the country in 1988, Burma's military junta has taken a series of harsh measures to secure its grip on power, and over the past several months, it has appeared to step up its arrests of opposition figures. The junta has reserved its most brutal treatment for Burma's eastern ethnic groups, including the Karenni, the Shan and the Mon, as well as the Karen, the largest minority in the region.

A fiercely independent group of approximately 3 million people, the Karen speak a separate language from most Burmese, use their own ancient writing system and have traditionally opposed the military junta. Two decades of sporadic government campaigns have already driven hundreds of thousands of Karen and other refugees into neighboring Thailand, where at least 150,000 now live in official camps and an estimated 1.5 million dwell illegally.

Burmese forces have burned down more than 200 civilian villages in Karen state, destroyed crops and placed land mines along key jungle passages to prevent refugees from returning to their home villages.

In the balmy waters of the Bay of Bengal, just off the coast of Burma, an Asian energy rush is on. Huge pockets of natural gas have been found. China and India are jostling to sign deals. Plans are afoot to spend billions on new ports and pipelines.

Yet in onshore towns, not a light is to be seen, not a street lamp, not a glow in a window, as women crouch by the roadside at dawn, sorting by candlelight the vegetables they will sell for two cents a bunch at the morning market. Paraffin and wood are major sources of light and heat. People receive two hours of electricity a day from the military government.

Attempts at outside pressure to prod the government to address its people’s needs and curb abuses have faltered, in large part because China’s thirst for resources. China and Russia, and even Singapore and Indonesia, trade freely with Myanmar.

The Asian energy rush is the latest demonstration of how the hunt for oil and gas, and China’s economic leverage, are reshaping international politics. With the rise of China’s economic power and its unflagging support, the military government in Burma has become more entrenched than ever

China’s National Development Reform Commission is building a pipeline to carry China’s Middle East oil from a deep water port off Sittwe across Myanmar to Yunnan, China’s southern province. This energy source will provide China with an alternative to the Strait of Malacca, on which it now depends for delivering its oil from the Middle East.

North Korea

2011-03-24T00:01:00.000-04:00

North Korea

In North Korea, Kim Jong-il is often linked, as Japan’s Hirohito once was, to images of white horses, snow-capped mountain peaks and other symbols of racial purity. South Korea, on the other hand, is regarded as contaminated by too close contact with other races. At a recent meeting between generals from both Koreas, the North delegation’s leader condemned the South for allowing racial intermarriage.

North Koreans’ race theory, like that of the Japanese before World War 2, actuates a blithe indifference to international law. A uniquely virtuous people have no reason to obey moral inferiors, be they allies or enemies. China is sufficiently pragmatic to know that despite decades of military and economic assistance it can draw on no residue of good will in dealing with Pyongyang. Neither can the South Koreans, whom the North Koreans reviles for their ethnic treason no matter how much cash they pump northward.

U.S. Liberals do not understand that this utter imperviousness to gestures of friendship and conciliation makes it impossible to have genuine diplomatic relations between North Korea and the USA. Only China can influence North Korea and so it is a pawn in the undeclared war between China and the USA for control in Asia. That has been the situation ever since MacArthur provoked the Chinese into entering the Korean War by threatening the Chinese border with North Korea.

Pakistani Madrassas

2011-03-23T00:01:00.001-04:00

The Jamia Feridia School operates openly in Islamabad and has a 40-year history as part of the religious establishment in Pakistan. On the campus of this religious school, or madrassas, some 10,000 students study the teachings of the Koran every day.

Abdul Rashid Ghazi, assistant headmaster at the school, sat cross-legged on the floor flanked by a Koran and a Kalashnikov. Speaking in perfect English, Ghazi, describes himself as the school's head teacher of Islamic theology. He states, ``Osama bin Laden's philosophy is quite logical and consistent with the Koran. If there are any forces attacking your people and your faith, you are justified in attacking in response. In fact, you are obligated to do so." He praises Osama bin Laden's call to jihad, or holy war, against the West and expresses great pride that hundreds of graduates from his school have answered the call to take up arms against U.S. forces in Afghanistan. He openly describes himself and his students as pro-Taliban.

There are many such radical madrassas in Pakistan. They all teach that it is a legitimate jihad to fight and kill U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan as the accurate teaching of the concept of jihad.

Support for the Taliban and bin Laden can be found in many corners of Pakistan, from the capital city to remote, rural provinces. In a sermon in Peshawar, in the Northwest Frontier province, Mullah Mohammed Yousef Qureshi, the chief cleric, railed against American policy and offered the popular theory that Israel orchestrated the 9/11 attacks to draw the United States into a war against Islam. Qureshi is a judge and an expert on Sharia, or Islamic law. He thundered against America, saying, ``we are friends of Osama because he is a friend of Islam and is standing up to the Western world. We are friends of the Taliban because they are working on behalf of Islam."

The madrassas system of memorizing the Koran without necessarily understanding the text produces semiliterate clerics who exploit the emotions of the masses, leading to deplorable mob psychology and violent behavior in the streets. Few graduates go to the higher level of religious education, where they can learn theological explanations, Islamic and world history, comparative religion and Islamic law.

Islam and Democracy

2011-03-22T00:01:00.000-04:00

Islamic societies see efforts to promote human rights as meddlesome at best or a form of cultural imperialism at worst. Often these cultural conflicts pivot on the rights of women.

Under ordinances, adopted in 1979, rape victims in Pakistan must produce four male witnesses to bring a charge. If they fail to prove rape, they risk being countercharged with adultery, a crime punishable by jail or flogging. Women arrested under the ordinances can be held without bail, often languishing for lengthy periods without being tried.

Proposed amendments would not repeal the ordinances, but do provide for bail, clarify rules of evidence, and establish a minimum age of sexual consent, a concept alien in much of a country where girls are married off as soon as they reach puberty.

Tentative steps toward modernizing laws are difficult steps forward. Islamists in Pakistan’s Lower House of Parliament shouted and tore up copies of secularizing legislation before staging a walkout. A senior member of a six-party religious alliance accused Musharraf of the worst betrayal of following a Western agenda to secularize Pakistan. Now that he is gone, repressive Islamic laws will prevail in a democratic Pakistan.

Pakistan

2011-03-21T00:01:00.000-04:00

In Pakistan a radicalized society virtually guarantees the survival of Al Qaeda.

Politics are the domain of highly mobilized religious parties whose reading of Islam is intensely confrontational. These parties are vertically integrated. They operate madrassas, or religious schools, that indoctrinate students who are then deployed into party militias. They are heavily armed and well funded, in part by state subsidies intended to win their loyalty.

British security services believe that 1,200 people in Britain are engaged in terrorist activity there and overseas. Pakistani Islamic politics and its radical society, coupled with the apparently burgeoning supply of recruits in Britain, indicate that terrorist bombs will be a continuing threat.

President Pervez Musharraf chose to stand with America, and took tremendous steps to fight Islamic extremists and move Pakistan toward enlightened moderation. Pakistan worked closely with the United States, sharing intelligence and capturing and handing over many terrorists, including top Al Qaeda leaders. It sent more than 70,000 troops to the Afghan border and conducted successful operations to flush out foreign fighters. Hundreds of Pakistani troops were killed in these efforts, and thousands injured. General Musharraf showed that he understood the seriousness of dealing with the root causes of extremism, making real efforts to improve economic and educational opportunities. He solved the country’s crippling debt crisis and loosened regulations on businesses, paving the way for an economic growth rate rivaling India’s.

With mixed success, he worked to free the judiciary from religious control and to loosen the grip of Islamic extremists on madrassas. The biggest myth is that Islam is a religion of peace. The Koran is studied extensively to promote violence in religious schools set up for that purpose. Muhammad was a war lord, who put all the Jews in Medina to the sword. He was not a man of peace, unlike Jesus.

General Musharraf faced repeated assassination attempts. In return, the USA undermined him in their push for democracy. After Musharraf was forced out, Pakistan has become a much less reliable ally of the USA and is becoming an increasing problem.

China and Saudi Arabia

2011-03-20T00:01:00.002-04:00

"We are opening new channels, we are heading east," said Prince Walid bin Talal, a billionaire investor and member of the royal family. "China is a big consumer of oil. Saudi Arabia needs to open new channels beyond the West. So this is good for both of us."

For decades, many Middle Eastern countries saw China as a source of low price, low quality goods or, worse, as a Marxist threat that armed rebel groups in the region during the 1950's and 1960's. But relations warmed in the 1990's, and oil trade boomed.
Now, interest in China and other Asian countries is rising throughout the Arab world. In Dubai, the sprawling Chinamex Mart, a mall for Chinese business, is seeking to become the largest distribution hub for Chinese products in the region. Chinese diplomats are making their presence felt on the society pages of local newspapers, and airlines in the region have been adding flights to Asian capitals.

Part of what makes China an especially attractive business partner for Saudis is a hands-off approach to domestic policy. Discussions with the Chinese focus on economics and rarely on politics, businessmen say.

China is willing to do business with Iran and other states isolated by the United States, and can sell technology without the encumbrance of requirements for Government approval.

Saudi oil sales to China have more than doubled in recent years, and now account for 20 percent of China's oil imports. Trade between the countries has grown an average of 41 percent a year since 1999.

China's growing technological and military prowess adds to the interest. That avenue was opened in the late 1980's, when China supplied Saudi Arabia with intermediate-range ballistic missiles. Now, if the United States balks at offering modern weaponry to the Saudis, China would again be a logical source.

Zimbabwe

2011-03-19T00:01:00.001-04:00

When I was in Zimbabwe in 2005, a bottle of sunscreen cost me over $40. As it happened the ‘smoke’ from Victoria Falls made us very wet and the sun was not a problem. It was clear then that inflation was out of control. People were fighting over scarce gasoline. Since then President Robert Mugabe has destroyed the shanty towns, making even more people homeless unable to cope with an economy in ruins.

By 2006, a roll of toilet paper cost $145,750 in Zimbabwe dollars. The price of toilet paper, like everything else here, soars almost daily, spawning jokes about an impending better use for Zimbabwe's $500 bill, now the smallest in circulation. For Zimbabweans, toilet paper, bread, margarine and meat have become luxuries. All are casualties of the hyperinflation that is approaching 1,000 percent a year.

Government services have crumbled. The purity of Harare's drinking water, siphoned from a lake downstream of its sewer outfall, has been unreliable for months, and dysentery and cholera sweep the city. The city suffers rolling electrical blackouts. Mounds of uncollected garbage pile up on the streets of the slums. Public-school fees and other ever-rising government surcharges have begun to exceed the monthly incomes of many urban families lucky enough to find work. The jobless, over 70 percent of Zimbabwe's 4.2 million workers, hawk tomatoes and ground corn from roadside tables.

Even though Mugabe was voted out in a democratic election, he has tightened his grip on power even further, turning the economy over to a national security council of his closest allies. In addition, he has seeded the government's civilian ministries with loyal army and intelligence officers who control key functions, from food security to tax collection.

Mugabe's government prints trillions of new Zimbabwean dollars to keep ministries functioning and to shield the salaries of key supporters against erosion. Zimbabwe fell into hyperinflation after the government began seizing farms owned and run by whites in 2000 allowing black squatters to take them over. Rhodesia, as a British colony, was the bread basket of Africa and a most successful country. Now under its name of Zimbabwe it is a disaster like other former colonial countries in Africa, as a consequence of wide scale corruption. Britain left its former colonies too soon for them to be self governing under pressure from US Liberals after WW2, when the USA assumed world leadership from Britain bankrupted by the war. Now the USA like the rest of the world watches and does nothing. It is much easier to pontificate about Egypt.

Somalia

2011-03-18T00:01:00.000-04:00

Foreign-born Islamist fighters, affiliated with Somalia's most powerful militant group, Al Shabaab, have established a stronghold in a northern suburb of Somalia's beleaguered capital, Mogadishu, posing another threat to a country whose instability is a growing concern in East Africa.
Some 500 foreign and Somali fighters have used sandbags to barricade the streets of Qobdoro and have turned its soccer stadium into a military base. They are now locked in urban battle with Somalia's government and troops from the African Union. 53 AU peacekeepers have died in fighting here in the past two weeks ago.
There is an overlap in both training and membership with al Qaeda groups in Pakistan and Yemen. Qobdoro provides space for foreign Islamic extremists to train Somalis for bomb-making, suicide bombings, indoctrination, extremism and fighting. They are making the village like the model used in Pakistan and Afghanistan where terrorists have safe havens for military camps.
The terrorists' goal is to establish a base in Somalia to launch attacks against Western targets. An early expression of that strategy came in July, when Al Shabaab claimed responsibility for multiple bombings in neighboring Uganda that left 76 people dead.
They have imposed harsh Islamist justice, with residents of Al Shabaab-controlled areas describing beheadings and amputations for minor infractions, such as theft. Many former Qobdoro residents fled because of executions carried out by foreign militants.

West Africa

2011-03-17T00:01:00.001-04:00

Nigeria is the fifth-largest oil supplier to the United States and Africa's most populous country. The world needs a stable Nigeria for reasons that go beyond oil. Nigeria is crucial to all of West Africa, having often provided the military troops and negotiating forums to quell civil war and related violence in neighboring countries. Nigeria is also important to counterterrorism efforts, both as it tries to monitor and defuse an encroaching fundamentalism among its own Muslims.
Sub-Saharan Africa is on track to double its oil production in the next 10 years, when it will likely supply up to one-fourth of America's imported oil, much of it from Nigeria. It is past time for the U.S. government to pay attention to this part of Africa if only for its own self interest, having turned a blind eye to the ongoing genocide in Darfur. How can the USA be so pious about Egypt and ignore the much worse problem areas in the world.

Blood and Oil

2011-03-16T00:01:00.000-04:00

Ever since Royal Dutch Shell discovered oil in the Niger Delta back in 1956, revenue from oil wells has gone to line the pockets of Nigeria's elite: military dictators and corrupt federal and local government officials. Very little has gone to help the impoverished communities in the delta, which remain among the poorest in the world. Environment degradation, caused by oil slicks and gas flares, has gone untreated.
Under Nigerian law, oil revenues go to the federal government, which then passes on a percentage to the states. Because of theft, corruption and mismanagement, on both the federal and state levels, very little of that money reaches the local communities.

Traveling through the delta region, one sees no sign of an area wealthy in natural resources. Despite generating hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue since oil was discovered, the Niger Delta is one of the poorest and least developed parts of the country.
Warri, the western delta's oil capital, is a crime-ridden sprawl of rutted streets and cinderblock shops. Obioku, an impoverished delta village, is completely isolated. With no fast boats available, the nearest health center or clinic is a day's journey away. No telephone service exists here. Radio brings the only news of the world outside.
The USA and the rest of the Western world do nothing except consume the black gold.

Cause of Rebellion

2011-03-15T00:01:00.001-04:00

The wave of protests breaking out across the Mideast and North Africa has a common cause. In each case, the unrest was triggered by young people lacking jobs or a viable future. The revolts have resulted from a population boom that has produced a high percentage of teenagers and young adults living with repressed social expectations..
Jihan Ibrahim is a 24-year-old Egyptian activist, who lived in California for several years when she was younger. “I want to be able to elect who I want to represent me. I want my government to be transparent,” said Ibrahim, “I want free education and decent health care, and decent wage and job opportunities. Young adults like Ibrahim are part of a regional population surge, a situation that occurs when infant mortality declines during a period of improved medical technology and families continue to have many children. The huge surge in young people is because more babies are surviving.
Overall, 15- to 24-year-olds make up about 20 percent of the population across the Mideast and North Africa, and 30 percent when that range is extended to 15- to 29-years old, In the U.S., 15- to 24-year-olds and 15- to 29-year-olds make up 14.1 percent and 21.3 percent of the population, respectively. What makes the youth bulge particularly problematic is its combination with economic conditions that have made it hard to employ these young people in productive ways.
Unemployment among the young is unacceptably high. In 2009, Algeria and Iraq had unemployment rates of 45 percent for 15- to 24-year-olds. In Libya, the rate was 27 percent in 2005, the most recent data available. And in Egypt, where youth-led protests forced regime change, the rate was 25 percent. Compare that with an unemployment rate for young people in the USA of 19.1 percent and 20 percent across the 27 nations of the European Union as of August 2010.
The Middle East and North Africa have the highest youth unemployment rates and the effect of unemployment in these countries is felt even more strongly due to high inflation. The surge in the youth population creates potential destabilization if there is inadequate opportunity for youth achievement. Governments have failed to address the needs of this particular segment of the population
In Korea, Taiwan, China and parts of Southeast Asia, the increase in youth population has coincided with growth in the economy and good employment opportunities and has resulted in even more rapid growth.

USA as the Enemy

2011-03-14T00:01:00.001-04:00

40% of U.S. corn is now used for fuel, not food resulting in food inflation. The United Nations benchmark index hit a record high last month, raising fears of shortages and higher prices that will hit poor countries hardest. So why is the United States, one of the world's biggest agricultural exporters, devoting more and more of its corn crop to making ethanol?
In 2001, only 7% of U.S. corn went to make ethanol. By 2010, the ethanol share was 39.4% as a consequence of tax breaks to subsidize ethanol, which otherwise is completely uneconomic as an octane enhancer for gasoline. There are much better choices but they do not make companies like Archer Daniels Midland rich. The ethanol lobby makes U.S. politicians rich as the world starves.
U.S. farmers account for 39% of global corn production and 16% of that crop is exported. U.S. corn supplies are critical for world supplies and price control particularly as demand from developing nations increases. The USA is exacerbating the problem with the xenophobic monetary policy of the U.S. Federal Reserve that has increased the price of nearly all commodities traded in dollars. 40% of U.S. corn production is used to produce feed for animals. As corn prices increase, beef, poultry and other prices rise, too.
Ethanol achieves none of its alleged policy goals. If the entire U.S. corn crop were devoted to ethanol production, it would satisfy only 4% of U.S. oil consumption. The Environmental Protection Agency has found that ethanol production has a minimal to negative impact on the environment. Even still Obama has lifted the cap on how much ethanol may be mixed into gasoline to 15% from 10% and the EPA has greatly expanded the number of cars approved to use the 15% blend. Congress has extended the $5 billion tax credit for blending ethanol into gasoline. It is immoral to devote scarce farmland to make a fuel that exists only because of taxpayer subsidies and government mandates simply to benefit corrupt politicians. Such is the U.S. model of democracy that U.S. politicians brag about and try to impose on the rest of the world.

Decline of U.S. Naval Power

2011-03-13T00:01:00.001-05:00

The USA and Europe have endured thousands of attacks by Somali pirates without taking the initiative to protect our vulnerable boats. In the past fifty years, the USA has not only lost enthusiasm for the exploration of space, we have retreated on the seas. Once again Asia is on the ascendancy as the USA declines. Up to 30 ships, the largest ever constructed, each capable of carrying 18,000 containers, will soon be launched in South Korea. The USA will not build, own, nor man them. They won't even call at U.S. ports, which are not large enough to receive them.
90% of world foreign trade moves by sea. First Britain and then the USA have been the guarantors of the open oceans. With the loss of a large number of important bases world-wide, the USA needs more naval power not less. Forty percent of the world's population lives within range of modern naval gunfire, and more than two-thirds within easy reach of carrier aircraft. Naval power and presence preserves often fragile peace amongst nations and prevents wars from imbalances of power and unrestrained adventurism.
We have the smallest navy in almost a century, declining in the past 50 years to 286 from 1,000 combat ships with an ongoing 17% reduction from 1998 to the present. 60 ships were commonly underway in the USA’s seaward approaches in 1998, but today there are only 20.
As China's navy rises and ours declines, not that far in the future trajectories will cross. The U.S. Navy need not follow the Royal Navy into near oblivion. We have five times the population and almost six times the GDP of the U.K., and unlike Britain we were not exhausted by the great wars and their debt, and we neither depended upon an empire for our sway nor did we lose one. A technological nation with a GDP of $14 trillion can afford to build a fleet worthy of its past and sufficient to its future.

Generation Y

2011-03-12T00:01:00.001-05:00

After voting two to one for Obama in November 2008, Generation Y (defined as those born in the 1980s and '90s) are discovering that they have bleaker prospects than previous generations. Such is the hangover of their audacity of hope.
According to the Pew Research Center, roughly two-fifths of Generation Y remains unemployed. Moreover, as the national debt and unfunded liabilities grow and future tax burdens reach crippling proportions, their prospects are fading fast.
Compounding their problems are continuing weak long-term financial returns on any invested money and an ever weakening dollar. With the S&P 500 returning compound annual growth rates of 10%, individual retirement accounts (IRAs) and 401(k) plans were thought to offer the means to generate wealth over a lifetime. That was the last century .Past performance is not indicative of future results is the legal disclaimer. They are now a statement of fact.
In addition to onerous Social Security and Medicare payments, baby boomers will deplete Generation Y's wealth through the dynamics of portfolio management. As the nearly 80 million baby boomers make this shift to fixed income investments on retirement, demand for stocks will decrease, giving depressed equity values.
The USA no longer occupies the privileged position it assumed after World War II. As the nucleus of the Bretton Woods system, the U.S. controlled the world's reserve currency, underwrote global security and economic growth, and served as the consumer of last resort. The easy prosperity attendant with abundant capital inflows, unconstrained monetary expansion, and steadily appreciating asset values is over.
The most promising opportunities will be in emerging markets like Brazil, India and China. Goldman Sachs already estimates that more than half of the global assets under management are outside of the USA. Investors will allocate greater portions of their portfolios to the stocks of foreign companies and the bonds of foreign governments that are investing in economic growth rather than spending on entitlements. U.S. investors will finance the growth of foreign companies instead of American ones, contributing further to American economic decline and reducing U.S. equity returns.
Obama and his kind are making the situation worse by printing money to stimulate consumption. Rather than saddling us with more debt to finance entitlements, he should invest in physical and communications infrastructure, adopt competitive tax policies, and offer incentives for foreign investment into the USA. That will not happen
Improving the U.S. investment climate would ease the USA's economic challenges and make us more globally competitive over the long run. Given the dissolution of private pensions and the ballooning tax burden of Social Security and Medicare, attracting investment is the best hope for Generation Y to pursue the American Dream.

Housing Market Madness

2011-03-11T00:01:00.001-05:00

The home-price index has fallen for five consecutive months and 22.5% of all residential properties with a mortgage are in negative equity. Prices in many markets still have not touched bottom. Bank foreclosures have to accelerate to stabilize the system.
Instead Obama has proposed his latest bad idea to raid banks and delay a home-price recovery. He wants to force the nation's biggest mortgage servicers to provide $20 billion for principal write downs on mortgages where borrowers owe more than their homes are worth. Such a program will swamp mortgage servicers as debtors rush for more freebies, gumming up the foreclosure process and leaving responsible borrowers worse off.
Forcing principal write downs is not the way to fix the housing market. Borrowers took on more debt than they could afford or have lost their jobs, and so the relief will be short-lived. Write downs are very expensive and reward reckless borrowers at the expense of those who are paying their bills. It will though ensure votes for Obama on Election Day 2012 by raiding the few mortgage servicers to distribute cash to many homeowners.
Coercing $20 billion out of the banks will not make them more eager to lend. Multiple government programs to prop up the housing market have only postponed the day of recovery. They have given homeowners the false hope that they can stay in homes they cannot afford, delayed foreclosures that are inevitable, and prevented prices from finding a bottom.

Dollar in Retreat

2011-03-10T00:01:00.001-05:00

The USA forced Britain to allow the dollar to supplant the pound as the reserve currency after World War 2 in return for a loan when Britain was spent financially. Now we are seeing the supreme reign of the dollar coming to an end with several currencies becoming dominant.
The impact of such a change will be profound, affecting the stability of exchange rates, the stability of financial markets, the ease with which the U.S. will be able to finance budget and current-account deficits, and whether the Fed can continue to allow the dollar to decline in value as an easy means of reducing its unsustainable debt.
No longer will the dollar be the only convenient currency in which to do business for corporations, central banks and governments worldwide. No longer will the liquidity of markets in dollar instruments be the world's safe haven in crises, with U.S. Treasury securities being the single most important asset bought and sold by international investors, because of its long reputation for stability. The dollar has benefited from a lack of alternatives. Other countries with a reputation for stability, such as Switzerland and Australia, are too small for their currencies to account for more than a tiny fraction of international financial transactions.
Information technology with hand-held devices now makes it easy to compare prices in different currencies making room in the global economic and financial system for more than one international currency. The euro and yuan will soon be viable alternatives to the dollar. Europe will have alternatives to U.S. Treasury securities and China is moving rapidly to internationalize the yuan. In the last year, the share of bank deposits in Hong Kong denominated in yuan quadrupled. Seventy thousand Chinese companies are now doing their cross-border settlements in yuan. Dozens of foreign companies have issued yuan-denominated "dim sum" bonds in Hong Kong. In January the Bank of China began offering yuan-deposit accounts in New York insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.
Allowing Chinese companies to do cross-border settlements in yuan will free them from having to undertake costly foreign-exchange transactions. They will no longer have to bear the exchange-rate risk created by the fact that their revenues are in dollars but many of their costs are in yuan. Allowing Chinese banks, for their part, to do international transactions in yuan will allow them to take a bigger slice of the global financial pie. Chinese officials have set 2020 as the deadline for transforming Shanghai into a first-class international financial center.
The dollar's safe-haven status will be lost. Foreign investors hold dollars not only because they are liquid but because they are secure. The U.S. government has a history of honoring its obligations, and it has always had the fiscal capacity to do so. Now, federal debt has been allowed to approach 75% of U.S. gross domestic product. Trillion-dollar deficits will continue and will probably become worse because of the profligate ways of the USA. As the burden of debt service grows heavier, the USA will attempt to lower their value by inflating them away with a devalued dollar. Foreign investors will be reluctant to put their eggs in the dollar basket to see them decline in value.

Prophets of Doom

2011-03-09T00:01:00.001-05:00

Warren Buffet has criticized the doomsayers and says that the best years of USA are still ahead. That is good Liberal political propaganda and is, of course, correct on a superficial level. The USA will continue to grow and the creativity of man will continue to make the world more prosperous with better technology to enhance life. People who can find a Coca Cola as Buffet did at the start of its life cycle will create immense wealth for themselves. Such stock picking requires a rare skill as it is counter –intuitive that a drink with many harmful ingredients and no nutritional value would sweep the world. The Buffets of the world will become even richer and can assuage any guilt that they might have by supporting Liberal propaganda. That though is not the lot of the vast majority of people in the USA who will experience declining prospects relative to the prospering world outside its borders.
The present rapid growth in the developing is in contrast to the slow growth in the mature economies which also experienced the biggest decline during the downturn.
Multinational corporations wishing to take advantage of the growth in China and other emerging markets are investing aggressively there, giving rise to more growth and inflation. YUM!, the fast food chain, will build 900 KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell restaurants this year; 80% of them will be in emerging markets. A stand-alone China division will add 500 stores.
AkzoNobel, the Dutch chemicals manufacturer plans to open two paint stores a day in China and is investing heavily in the Brazilian pulp and paper business. Federal Mogul Corp., a Michigan auto-parts supplier that emerged from bankruptcy protection in 2008, eliminated 11,000 jobs during the recession, most of them in North America and Europe. Since the recession ended it has hired 4,000 workers—half in emerging markets.
Manpower, a U.S. staffing firm, says 95% of its one hundred new office openings this year will be in emerging markets such as Poland, India, China and Vietnam.
In China, annual purchases of cars and trucks have soared from five million in 2005 to more than 18 million in 2010. In the U.S. and Europe, sales are still below pre-crisis peaks. General Motors sold more cars in China last year than in the U.S. Total inflation-adjusted economic output has risen more than 70% in China since 2005 and about 55% in India, but only 16% in the U.S.
Money is pouring into the emerging economies, creating inflationary pressure and increasing central bank holdings of foreign currencies. At more than $5 trillion, they are six times their level of a decade ago. China holds about half of the total, slightly more than $2.6 trillion.
The International Monetary Fund estimates that emerging markets will see an annual economic growth rate of 6.5% in 2011 and 2012, while the world's advanced economies will expand at a rate of 2.5%.
China's currency is pegged to the dollar, a link that limits its ability to raise interest rates to control inflation. It could allow the currency to appreciate more, but exporters are pushing against this because it would limit exports. Other emerging economies, like Brazil, have raised interest rates and allowed their currencies to appreciate but are reluctant to go too far.
Investors are growing worried that some central bankers may already be behind the curve in preventing inflation and may have to raise rates more than expected this year. Those fears have pushed stock indexes in India and China down by 7% and 4% this year even as the S&P 500 is up nearly 3%.
Policy makers from Brazil to Taiwan are intervening directly in foreign exchange markets to hold down their strengthening currencies. They do so by buying the dollars that the USA is feverishly printing to pay for its unsustainable debt. Some are also restricting the flow of capital into their markets.

The American Dream

2011-03-08T00:01:00.002-05:00

U.S. entrepreneurial activity is at its highest point in 15 years, with over 550,000 new businesses created each month. These entrepreneurs are ambitious leaders prepared to take risk of pursuing growth opportunities and assuming accountability for the uncertainty of the outcomes. They are the antithesis of the slothful types who become sit-at-a-desk government administrators.

Over 90% of businesses fail within 10 years and the typical entrepreneur earns less money, has worse benefits, works more hours, and has more stress, including losing sleep and getting in more conflicts with their spouses and others, compared to those that work for someone else,

Even when most entrepreneurs grow their businesses to a point of seeming strong success of several million dollars in revenues, still do not realize their personal and financial dreams. They work too much, have too much stress, not enough time with family and friends, and not enough money particularly with crippling confiscation of 50% of what they earn for federal and state tax rates.

Despite these obstacles, the very few do very well. There are over 930,000 individuals with personal net worth greater than $5 million. 80% of are entrepreneurs who have sold their business. In the present economy it is taking longer to sell a business. In 1978, the average time it took to sell a business was 57 days. Now, it is over 270 days and only 17% of listed businesses ever actually sell.

It is tough, but there really is an American dream for the very few who risk all. Many of rest of the people in the USA will continue to live off the spoils of the few so long as left leaning government continues.

Jobless Recovery

2011-03-07T00:01:00.001-05:00

The latest employment reports have not been encouraging. At the rate of 36,000 new jobs a month—the number gained in January—we will never achieve full employment. Even if we keep adding jobs at the December rate of 121,000 new jobs, we wouldn't achieve full employment in this millennium.
We now have a labor force of 153 million people, of whom 14 million are officially counted as "unemployed," defined as not working and actively seeking a job. Were we fully employed (defined as 5% unemployment) there would be 7.7 million unemployed workers. So our "excess" unemployment is 6.3 million workers.
Population growth and immigration bring a steady stream of new workers into the labor force every year. They want jobs, too. So our job-creation target grows every month. At the trend growth rate of 1.2% annually, we add another 1.8 million labor force participants a year, and with them, the need for another 1.8 million new jobs.
Additionally, using Labor Department terminology there are 1 million "discouraged" workers, defined as workers who have given up looking for work. It defines another 2 million would-be workers as "marginally attached", which are those not actively seeking a job but ready to take one. At the trend growth rate for them of 1.2% annually, we get another 1.8 million labor force participants a year, and with them, the need for another 1.8 million new jobs. The withdrawal of so many workers from the labor market has been a major factor in keeping a lid on the official unemployment rate, despite lackluster job creation.
More than 2 million workers are added to the labor force each year and so we would need monthly job gains of 460,000 to achieve full employment in time for the 2012 presidential elections.
Efforts by Obama ostensibly to create jobs by giving away vast sums of tax payer money to people who vote for him in so called stimulus spending has not created jobs but has destroyed future prospects of job creation by plunging the USA into a hopeless downward debt spiral. Such is Obama’s “Audacity of Hope”.

Lower Paying Jobs

2011-03-06T00:01:00.001-05:00

While the unemployment rate dropped to 9 percent in January, from a two-decade peak of 10.1 percent in October 2009, many of the jobs people are now taking don't match the pay, the hours, or the benefits of the 8.75 million positions that vanished in the recession. This adjustment will limit gains in consumer spending, which accounts for 70 percent of the U.S. economy. The good jobs that would trigger a solid boost in spending have been eliminated.

Projections from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that while the number of openings for food preparation and serving workers will grow by 394,000 from 2008 - 2018, the average wage is only $16,430 including tips.

Skilled jobs are being done by less skilled people wherever possible to reduce costs. An example is that doctors’ work is being performed increasingly by pharmacists and nurses.

Lowe's, the second-largest U.S. home improvement retailer, typifies the reshuffling of the U.S. workforce. The chain, based in Mooresville, N.C., said on Jan. 25 it is eliminating 1,700 managers responsible for store operations, sales, and administration as profit growth trails that of the larger Home
Depot chain. Meanwhile, Lowe's said it will add 8,000 to 10,000 weekend sales positions and is creating a new assistant store manager position.

Government Workers

2011-03-05T00:01:00.001-05:00

Working for the government is something of a misnomer as the prevailing culture is to do as little as possible for as much as possible. Unionization has ensured that they have, collectively, been successful in this objective. Taking into account generous benefits, government employees tend to be paid 30% more than those in the private sector.
Private workers retire later and relatively few receive retiree health coverage. For those who do, eligibility has been tightened and premiums increased. In contrast almost 90% of state and local governments offer retiree health benefits to employees. They generally retire in their 50s, at which point the government pays most of their costs, including Medicare premiums and deductibles.
Another major benefit of public employment is job security. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that, a private worker has a 20% chance of being fired or laid off in a given year. In state and local government, the discharge rate is 6%. Government job security is equivalent to about a 15% increase in compensation.
These figures will have to change dramatically if federal, state and local governments are to become solvent.

Financial Decline

2011-03-04T00:01:00.000-05:00

The USA is no longer the financial center of the world. The sale of New York Stock Exchange parent NYSE Euronext to Deutsche Börse of Frankfurt, Germany, is a blow to America's capitalist pride.
The merger will continue the long-term consolidation of global financial trading. The NYSE became a stock company to raise capital to expand, reaching abroad to buy Euronext in Paris. A Deutsche/NYSE combination will create a more formidable competitor for other leading exchanges, such as Chicago's CME Group. The German exchange operator is a leader in European interest-rate futures, and combined with NYSE's European assets it would match the CME Group's futures dominance in the USA.
In the early 1990s, American exchanges played host to half of the world's new public companies. Last year, U.S. deal-making was dwarfed by the action overseas. The iconic NYSE now lags behind two Asian exchanges in IPO volume. U.S. over-regulation is to blame, especially the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley law and its multimillion-dollar compliance burden on public companies.
The Securities and Exchange Commission's 2009 survey of U.S. and foreign firms showed that the burden of complying with Sarbox remains a major deterrent to going public in the United States. Now the Dodd-Frank law requires mountains of new rules that will further burden U.S. financial players, not least in the new derivatives regime emerging from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

Obama the Confused Wimp

2011-03-03T00:01:00.000-05:00

The USA made its cold peace with Gadhafi when he abandoned his secret nuclear program in 2003. There is no case for U.S. forbearance now that Libya has embarked on a civil war which will further roil the entire region. Instead Obama is paralyzed by the risk of loss of popularity in the USA if he does anything to negatively affect the security of Americans in Libya. So too must the governments of Britain and France, which have been outspoken in their denunciations.
The USA also has an interest in using its resources and power to prevent the bloodbath that Gadhafi's bitter-end resistance makes inevitable. For the Obama Administration to stand by and propose sanctions that will have little impact while the regime murders hundreds or thousands of civilians will not endear Libyans to the USA when Obama offers his weak outstretched hand to the next government in Tripoli.
Obama as he always does when the going gets tough is to pass the buck to the United Nations calling on the "international community," whatever that is to "speak with one voice." What the world really needs is a U.S. President that can lead.

Addled Thinking

2011-03-02T00:01:00.000-05:00

The tragedy in Islamic world is the ideology which enhances the cult of aggression, intolerance, violence, fatwa, jihad, non-existent dissent and opposition. The basic root causes need to be addressed first. Otherwise merely changing one dictatorship with another will accomplish nothing. The turmoil if left unaddressed will lead to even worse regimes.

The protestors talk of freedom, but what freedom are they talking about? Sharia law does not allow democracy. It is a deception to blind opponents. Islam believes in "Taqqiya" which is to lie and speak camouflaged truth to achieve hidden goals. In this regard they are not alone as it is the same playbook that Obama uses.
In Egypt, Obama has made the USA irrelevant. The most significant support is from the Saudis, UAE, Jordan, Morocco and to some extent Turkey. It is in their interests that the country where two-thirds of Arabs live not be turned into a training camp for Islamic fundamentalists. The Egyptian Military, having established martial law will provide an orderly transfer of power to a Mubarak clone operating under some actual but minor democratic changes and a whole host of promised but unrealized substantial changes.

China Questions Dollar

2011-03-01T00:01:00.001-05:00

Chinese President Hu Jintao is calling the present U.S. dollar-dominated currency system a product of the past and has highlighted moves to turn the yuan into a global currency.
Hu criticizes efforts by the U.S. Federal Reserve to stimulate growth through huge bond purchases to keep down long-term interest rates, because it fuels inflation in emerging economies, including in China. Hu says that U.S. monetary policy "has a major impact on global liquidity and capital flows and therefore, the liquidity of the U.S. dollar should be kept at a reasonable and stable level."
China is becoming more assertive in the wake of the global financial crisis, from which it emerged relatively unscathed. The crisis started in the USA as a consequence of Liberal policies to allow people to buy houses that they could not afford and negatively affected the majority of the world.
China is signaling the decline of the primacy of the U.S. dollar as a reserve currency and its use in international trade and investment. China is concerned that loose U.S. monetary policy is not only fueling inflation, but that it will erode the value of China's holdings of dollars within its vast foreign-exchange reserves, which reached $2.85 trillion at the end of 2010.
China's central bank governor is calling for the creation of a new synthetic reserve currency as an alternative to the dollar. China is also expanding the role of its own currency, allowing greater use of the yuan in cross-border trade and investment.
China's moves already have spawned a thriving market for offshore trading of yuan in Hong Kong, and are widely seen as first steps toward making the yuan an international currency in line with China's new prominence as the world's second largest economy.

Weakness of USA

2011-02-28T00:01:00.001-05:00

Obama would find it impossible to press a Reset button with China. That can only happen in countries grappling with decline worse than that in the USA, notably Russia.
With Obama at the helm, Chinese strategists have reached the conclusion that the United States is declining, and their own country is rising much faster than had previously been expected. That is feeding a powerful strain of forceful nationalism that appears to be increasingly widespread, especially among the young.
In this view it is time for China to "stand up," to right some of the wrongs suffered when the country was relatively weak, and to reclaim its rightful role in Asia and the world. Such sentiments are not the exclusive preserve of the military, although it may seek to tap them, and at times to stir them, for its own ends.
We are at the end of a thirty year era of relatively smooth relations between the United States and China. In the past 12 months China has:
•Shielded North Korea from tough international sanctions, despite Pyongyang's unprovoked sinking of a South Korean naval vessel and subsequent deadly shelling of a small island;
•Escalated what might otherwise have been a minor incident at sea into a major confrontation with Japan.
•Used its near monopoly in the production of certain rare earth minerals critical to high-tech manufacturing as an instrument to exert diplomatic leverage.
•Intensified its long-standing claim to virtually all of the resource-rich South China Sea by suggesting that the region was a "core national interest," a term previously used to refer only to areas (like Tibet and Taiwan) over which China is willing to go to war.
•Declared publicly that, when it comes to resolving competing claims over this region "China is a big country and other countries are small countries, and that's just a fact."
•Threatened for the first time to impose sanctions on U.S. companies that participate in arms sales to Taiwan.
•Conducted unprecedentedly large and complex naval exercises in the waters of the Western Pacific outside the so-called "First Island Chain."
•Revealed the existence of a new stealth fighter aircraft.
•Begun initial deployments of a new anti-ship ballistic missile targeted on U.S. aircraft carriers operating in the Western Pacific.
In response Obama has whimpered and Hilary Clinton has postured.

Damp Squib

2011-02-27T00:01:00.000-05:00

The U.S. hand can be seen in the failed Jasmine Revolution in China. U. S. media had received the nod to be there as was a senior U.S. dignitary.
The U.S. Ambassador to China, Jon Huntsman, Jr., was also outside McDonald’s last Sunday in the heavily-trafficked shopping district of Wangfujing in Beijing exactly where a would – be revolution was scheduled to happen. Huntsman’s presence was described by the U.S. embassy in Beijing as part of a family outing and purely coincidental.
A video capturing Huntsman walking by the designated protest location has been circulating on the Internet, propelled by a website set up by Chinese patriots. The site M4.cn is a retooled version of Anti-CNN.com, which criticized Western reporting of the 2008 Tibet unrest.
Now Huntsman's name has gone the way of "Jasmine." Searches for his name on Chinese micro blogs are now being blocked. Perhaps that is to save the USA from continuing embarrassment that its attempts to create revolution fail. The Chinese are no doubt concerned that the USA will try again and do not want the Huntsman’s name to become a rallying point for the few Chinese dissidents.

China

2011-02-26T00:01:00.000-05:00

China’s leaders are aware that economic development will result in the emergence of powerful challengers to power and probably the loss of the political monopoly.
China has been censoring news about the Arab revolt and putting down small but widespread protests that draw inspiration from it, exacerbated by inflation and rising food prices, a consequence to some extent of U.S. policy to devalue the dollar. China's domestic security chief, has added his voice to calls for tighter Internet controls as censors ratcheted up temporary online restrictions, after a failed attempt to use social-networking sites to start a "Jasmine Revolution" in China with support from the USA. Police and Internet censors easily thwarted an anonymous online appeal for people to stage simultaneous antigovernment protests in Beijing, Shanghai and eleven other Chinese cities. Only a handful of people turned up for the planned protests, as police detained or confined to their homes dozens of activists across China and Internet censors blocked searches for the word "Jasmine" on Twitter-like micro blogging sites and other websites.
The Communist Party's Politburo Standing Committee, the country's top decision-making body, is seeking new ways to defuse social unrest using media manipulation and a sophisticated Internet censorship system, known as the "Great Firewall."
Despite the role of Twitter and Facebook Inc. in mobilizing protests in the Middle East, China is allowing Chinese social-networking sites to flourish so long as they cooperate with censors by removing or blocking controversial material. The official view is that there is nothing to worry about, so long as dissidents are prevented from using the Internet to damage or destroy social stability.
One social-networking site, Renren.com, a Chinese equivalent of Facebook that focuses on entertainment and is rarely used for political discussion is even planning a $500 million initial public offering in New York. China identified the potential benefits and risks of the Internet early on, seeing that it could make a country strong, while also exposing it to new dangers.
A Chinese official blamed the recent unrest in the Mideast and North Africa principally on their relatively slow economic development and their old methods of controlling society. China, by contrast, has maintained rapid economic growth while using a combination of old and new methods to prevent a repeat of the 1989 pro-democracy protests around Tiananmen Square that were crushed by the army.
Before the internet call for a "Jasmine Revolution," Chinese police detained or confined to their homes dozens of other political activists. At the other end of the spectrum, China's Internet censors have demonstrated a highly sophisticated capacity to control the flow of information online without shutting it down completely, mainly by obliging Internet companies to remove politically sensitive content.
When the protests in Egypt began, censors allowed limited reporting and discussion of the unrest online but limited the number of people viewing it, mainly by blocking searches for "Egypt" and related terms, first on micro blogging sites, and then on other sites as well with additional controls after the anonymous appeal for a "Jasmine Revolution" appeared on a U.S.-based Chinese-language website and began to be circulated first on Twitter, which is blocked in China, and then on some Chinese micro blogging sites.
All references to the appeal were deleted from Chinese sites, and searches for "Jasmine" and related words were blocked on search engines and micro blogging sites. People were temporarily prevented from posting items with photographs and links to other sites. The search function on Sina Weibo, one of the most popular micro blogging sites, was disabled.
Many Internet users reported having problems using the virtual private networks that normally let them circumvent the Great Firewall to view politically sensitive sites. Many people also reported having problems sending text messages including references to planned protests, such as the word "Wangfujing"—the name of the shopping district where protesters were encouraged to gather in Beijing.
Chinese officials are particularly concerned about micro blogs, which can spread information so quickly that tens of thousands of users may notice if something is suddenly blocked or a function isn't available, especially if it was posted by someone popular.
The battle is on for the control of the Internet in China. Is the USA interfering in China’s internal affairs?

Arab Revolt

2011-02-25T00:01:00.000-05:00

It started with a Tunisian vegetable seller setting himself ablaze. The subsequent uprisings across the Arab world express discontent of differing kinds. Yemen's protests are secessionist. The demonstrators in Egypt were urban, educated, under-employed, young people. Libya's civil war has a tribal dimension. The protests in Algiers are largely about rising prices and mass unemployment, exacerbated by the USA devaluing the dollar to minimize the negative effects of unsustainable debt in the USA. The Arab regimes under attack vary widely from the mildly authoritarian in Morocco to the violently totalitarian in Libya.
In Bahrain with a population of about 1.2 million and a per capita GDP of $27,000, women have the franchise, and the country is an excellent place in which to invest. Despite having a minority Sunni government ruling over the Shiite majority, the country is religiously tolerant; it has a Jewish woman as its ambassador to the USA. Representative government though does not exist and growing inequality of Sunni rulers over the Shiite masses sparked their revolution.

No James Bond

2011-02-24T00:01:00.001-05:00

An American detained in Pakistan in the killing of two armed men was working secretly in the country for the Central Intelligence Agency. Pakistani intelligence officials weren’t informed by the USA. As a consequence relations have been severely damaged. Obama referred to the arrested man as as "our diplomat" and said that he was covered by diplomatic immunity and should be immediately released.
Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI, believes the USA could be using other undeclared operatives as a way of circumventing visa restrictions imposed by Pakistan on the U.S. spy agency.
The CIA has "acted with arrogance toward ISI which has resulted in weakening the relationship on which it is entirely dependent," a senior ISI official stated.

Toothless Tiger

2011-02-23T21:59:00.001-05:00

As Libya sinks into the morass of civil war and mass slaughter, Obama continues to fumble the ball and his strongest action is to ask for a UN resolution censuring Moammar Gadhafi, the person who personally ordered the destruction of the Pan Am flight which detonated over Scotland. George W. Bush forced Gadhafi to abandon Libya’s quest to make weapons of mass destruction. Otherwise the carnage in Libya would now be much greater. Now we have Obama as Wimp-in-Chief with his unimpressive Secretary of State at his side saying that we will do nothing in response to what is happening in Libya. He is no doubt mindful of Libya’s seat on the U.N.'s Human Rights Council, underlying what a sick joke the U.N. is and by extension what a sick joke Obama is. He can puff his chest out with self-importance over Egypt but is powerless when real trouble erupts in the land of a truly evil dictator.

Obama failed to give any support to Iranian protesters after the carnage following Iran's fraudulent elections in 2009. As a consequence there is not much hope that Iranians will be sufficiently emboldened to overthrow this tyrannical regime. Libyan people trying to overthrow Gadhafi will not be helped by the toothless U.S. tiger. Obama is not fulfilling his pledge to win the hearts and minds of Arabs. Instead the USA has become a laughingstock.

Anarchy or Discipline

2011-02-22T18:26:00.001-05:00

Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew says. "What a country needs to develop is discipline more than democracy."
Successful Asian countries believe that the public welfare is best served by enlightened one-party rule that nurtures economic growth but draws the line at anything that threatens social harmony including political competition most of all.
The USA is continuing to fan the flames of revolt in all countries not seeing democracy in the same way that the USA sees it. Trying to undermine China, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is preaching with self-satisfied smugness that, “China and other authoritarian countries are facing a dictator's dilemma on how to control the Internet.” The USA teaches aliens as they see them, how to use the U.S. inventions of Google, Facebook and Twitter to cause rebellion. They have seen how effective social networking and uncontrolled internet communications have been in alienating children in the USA and destroying their moral values in parallel with their developing bodies before they are able to cope.
Democracy in the USA is not so great. Uncontrolled freedom does not give a utopian society. It gives a country where various elements trash society. One only has to compare Singapore with the depressing mess of much of the USA. Even worse are the trashed minds in the USA and the trashed values. Political corruption is endemic in the USA. The legalized political corruption in the USA is no better than old fashioned bribery and corruption of third world countries. The money machine behind lobbying and the buying of elected seats is the worst in the world. Where else could a former President go cap in hand to foreign dictators to raise a hundred million dollars for the benefit of himself and his wife who is our serving Secretary of State, by having it paid into a Foundation in his name?
In the USA, unpopular and undemocratic self-serving changes are pushed through by politicians and the USA as a consequence is in a spiraling decline. That is not stopping the USA from causing problems elsewhere in the world. Housing chaos in the USA from loans given to people with no ability to repay triggered a worldwide financial crisis. By devaluing the dollar the USA is now triggering inflation in the developing world. The USA is causing political unrest around the world, mindless of the growing political unrest in the USA particularly that between unionized government employees and those who try to make ends meet on their own in the private sector.
Just as there is much questionable democracy in the world, there are also many stripes of dictatorship and some as in Singapore could be much better than the messed up democracy that we have in the USA.

Libya

2011-02-21T00:01:00.000-05:00

In Bahrain, protesters have reclaimed the central square. In Yemen, security forces have killed a protester, hundreds of protesters are defying police in Algeria and millions are celebrating in Egypt’s victory march.
In Libya, Civil War is not far away. Protesters have seized control of some military bases and tanks. Libya could be the third domino to fall after Tunisia and Egypt. Protests against the 40-plus-year reign of the dictatorship of Gadhafi have now spread to Tripoli, the capital. Crowds in the capital were throwing rocks at billboards of Gadhafi and troops were trying to subdue them with tear gas and gunfire. Moammar Gadhafi's forces have now killed at least 200 protesters in the eastern city of Benghazi as it tries to crush a rebellion that has spread to more than a half-dozen cities across the country. Protesters remain defiant despite facing repeated assaults and several towns in the nation's eastern provinces are now under control of forces which are no longer loyal to Gadhafi.
Getting concrete details about Libya's increasingly chaotic situation has been difficult because journalists cannot work freely inside the country. U.S. based Arbor Networks has reported repeated Internet service outages in Libya and people in Libya can no longer make telephone calls on their land lines.
A state-controlled newspaper said the Benghazi violence was part of "the dirty plans and the conspiracies designed by America and Zionism and the traitors of the West."
By its pious posturing and confused foreign policy, the USA invariably succeeds in being blamed. The one certainty is that any new regime in Libya will not like the USA any better. The latest Obama confusion was the vote by the U.N. Security Council condemning Israeli settlements in the West Bank. The USA vote in support of Israel was the only one out of fifteen, not to vote against Israel, but the Obama representative made it absolutely clear that he opposed the settlements also, hoping to win support for himself at the expense of contempt for the duplicity of the USA.
Meanwhile the USA is also killing civilians in countries where it is trying to exercise control. Peace Prize winner Obama has reinforced the excessive concern about protecting the lives of U.S. Troops at the expense of the lives of civilians in their own countries to prevent an electoral backlash. Obama prefers to use drone strikes ordered from the USA to kill unknown numbers of people in distant lands so as not to risk any loss of life of U.S. Troops. The death toll of civilians from forces on the ground is also climbing. Joint operations by Afghan forces and NATO-led foreign troops, including those from the USA, have killed 64 civilians in eastern Kunar province alone over the past four days.

Political Disaster

2011-02-20T00:01:00.000-05:00

Political Disaster
Americans (I mean those from the USA and not those who are ignored when people from the USA call themselves Americans) are woefully ignorant of the world but never fail to make arrogant pronouncements on everything beyond their borders. At the same time they arrogantly believe that the political mess in the USA is to be admired by lesser peoples elsewhere.
When will Obama and his ilk get it into their heads that not all dictatorships are the same and start to understand that U.S. foreign policy needs to be tailored to the circumstances instead of causing chaos in countries allied to the USA to achieve cheap political gains (votes) at home while failing totally to confront countries that comprise the evil empire.
Daily the corrupt, hypocritical and self-serving political mess in the USA becomes worse. Efforts to bring entitlements and pay in the public sector into line with the private sector in Wisconsin are rebuffed by Obama as he repays the Unions for paying for his election, by the teachers who have one of the most militant unions, by demonstrations worthy of Bahrain except that the demonstrators know that they can cause total disruption without any negative consequences for them personally (only for everyone else) and by elected Democratic state politicians who are in hiding out of state so that they do not have to vote on the proposed legislation which their voting base (the Unions) want to reject, but cannot achieve democratically. The solution proposed by the teachers is to force the mythical rich to pay more in taxes to featherbed the teachers’ retirement and health care. The teachers ignore their declining contribution of the USA where everyone is becoming less well educated, males most of all so that they will increasingly be kept by women beyond what can be confiscated from the rich for the upkeep of each couple.
A benevolent dictatorship like Singapore is better than the USA by every metric involving academic attainment and all that flows from it. The USA is still the best place perhaps in the world to live because of its expansive beauty and wide open spaces and most of all for its entrepreneurial freedom to fail. Even these attributes though are in decline. It might take a hundred years before the rot in the U.S. political system finally does the USA in, but the decline each day is painful to behold. We now have Obama pretending to be a leader by doing nothing as feeble attempts are made by others to right the ship. The awful reality is that it will work. Enough of the electorate will mistake his pathetic posturing as leadership and subject us all to another four years of increasing collapse wrought by an emboldened Obama, after the USA staggers through the next two years to the next election, which will be just as rigged as in many other countries.

USA Silence

2011-02-19T00:01:00.000-05:00

Bahraini security forces fired tear gas and police violently cleared protesters. Security services then opened fire on demonstrators as they marched toward the Bahraini’s capital buildings escalating the standoff between the country's Sunni Muslim rulers and its Shiite majority population.
Bahrain's Crown Prince, who is also deputy commander of Bahrain's armed forces, issued an emotional appeal for calm on state TV. He called for all protesters to leave the streets and said if they leave, the army will leave as well and dialogue will start.
The violence came on the fifth consecutive day of mass antigovernment demonstrations in the tiny and prosperous banking hub on the Persian Gulf, which has little oil wealth but is the home of a key U.S. naval base.
The Bahrain government is supported in its actions by its oil rich neighbors. The White House, State Department and their media propaganda machines are largely silent. Such is the lack of integrity of the USA, which only makes its pious pronouncements and causes trouble in countries like Egypt even though a long standing ally, which did not use force against the protesters even though the USA was pouring gasoline on the flames of revolt and countries like Iran which is now an implacable enemy of the USA as a consequence of the USA’s inept posturing.

Egypt Since 2005

2011-02-18T00:01:00.001-05:00

In a ranking of the destructive effects of dictatorships, Egypt is nowhere near the top of the list. If USA thinks that democratization is always the best way, there would have been many more pressing places in which it could interfere, preferably after getting its own democratic house in order. Obama is requesting more civil discourse by our politicians. In response, they bonded by political rivals sitting together during the State of Union speech. To the contrary, our politicians need to scratch the backs of each other less so that they root out the endemic corruption, which results in elected seats being bought in the USA by powerful interests that expect a reciprocal pay off.
Egypt has been officially been a Republic since June 18, 1953. It has been under a legally justified Emergency Law continually since 1967 (with the exception of an 18-month break in 1980). The emergency was imposed during the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, and re-imposed following the assassination of President Anwar Sadat. The law has been continuously extended every three years since 1981.
In February 2005, Mubarak ordered the reform of the country's presidential election law, paving the way for multi-candidate polls in the presidential election. For the first time since 1952, the Egyptian people had a chance to elect a leader from a list of various candidates. The new law placed restrictions on the candidates, designed to prevent undesirable politicians from standing against Mubarak, who had an easy election victory in September 2005 for his fifth consecutive term. Egypt also holds regular multi-party parliamentary elections. Less than 25 percent of the country's 32 million registered voters (out of a population of more than 72 million) turned out for the 2005 elections. For the first time candidates ran for election who were from the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood. They were permitted to do so by standing as Independents. A quarter of the seats went to such candidates which became the fault line for the present revolt. To-day they command as much as 40% support. Unless Egypt's secular forces can coalesce into serious political parties, Islamists won't find the fetters of democracy to be much of a problem.
The real center of power in Egypt is the military. The Egyptian military receives billions of dollars of aid from the United States. It remains Egypt's most powerful institution. It has dozens of factories manufacturing weapons as well as consumer goods, and it exempts itself from laws that apply to other sectors. Now that they are the Government it is anybody’s guess what will happen next.
The USA wanted the Egyptian army to take over even though relationships with top generals are distant. Reminiscent of the accession in Afghanistan, the opposition leader, acceptable to the Muslim Brotherhood and to the USA does not even live in Egypt. He lives in Vienna. Similarly, the hand-picked U.S. puppet, Karzai, ascended to lead the government in Afghanistan despite not having lived in Afghanistan. Particularly as the USA has fumbled in Afghanistan, Karzai has become increasingly corrupt and when the USA eventually leaves defeated (while claiming success), Karzai will have ensured his own continuing power by having thrown his lot into undeclared alliances with Iran and Pakistan.