DEDICATED TO EXPOSING DISINFORMATION AND PROPAGANDA AND TO PROMOTING UNIVERSAL HUMAN RIGHTS - WITH SHARP ANALYSIS AND BLUNT COMMENTARY. NO ADS. NO TIP-JAR. JUST THE TRUTH.
Thousands of papaya trees were chopped down on 10 acres of Big Island farmland under the cover of night last month. Hawaii County police said the destruction appeared to be done with a machete, but there are no leads and few clues beyond the tree stumps and all the fruit left to rot.
"It's hard to imagine anybody putting that much effort into doing something like that," said Delan Perry, vice president of the Hawaii Papaya Industry Association. "It means somebody has to have passionate reason."
A growing theory among farmers is that the attack was an act of eco-terrorism, a violent protest against the biotechnology used in growing papayas here. Police did not respond to calls seeking comment.
The majority of papayas grown on 170 farms on Oahu and the Big Island are genetically modified.
James Estrin/The New York Times
The High Price of Looking Like a Woman
By LAURA RENA MURRAY
Some transgender women seek out practitioners who will illegally, and dangerously, inject them with silicone to achieve a more feminine appearance.
AS THE WORLD SPINS DOWN INTO A GLOBAL DEPRESSION, THE NYTIMES IS COVERING A TRANSGENDER SILICONE CRISIS AND OBAMA PLAYS GOLD ON MARTHA'S VINEYARD.
SHEESH.
LIBERALS ARE ABSOFREAKINLUTELY INSANE.
AS THE EXCERPT WITHIN THE EXCERPT PROVES, THE DELINQUENCY IS THE RESULT OF THE RECESSION.The numbers are just staggering. Not surprising, but a stark reminder that we’ve got another huge economic problem that nobody cares about. From the Huffington Post:
Outstanding student debt has climbed 25 percent since the start of the financial crisis in 2008, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York — an increase from $440 billion then to $550 billion now
AND OBAMA?!?!?!?
IF HE HAD A SHRED OF HONOR OR DECENCY OR TRULY LOVED THIS NATION, THEN HE'D RESIGN - OR AT LEAST ANNOUNCE HE WON'T SEEK RE-ELECTION.
Obamas Share Sacrifice at Pricey Vineyard RestaurantJOHN EDWARDS WAS RIGHT, THERE ARE TWO AMERICAS:President and Mrs. Obama are sharing in the sacrifice tonight at the Beach Plum Restaurant on Martha’s Vineyard, which features an array of overpriced selections for the first couple to choose from that could easily bring the bill within range of $200.
Jawad also criticizes me for pointing out that the curriculum that Perry has gotten from the Aga Khan for Texas schools is "whitewashing Islam's bloody historical and modern-day record." I stand by my words. A reader of my website AtlasShrugs.com has examined the curriculum and found numerous questionable aspects of it. "The religion that the Prophet Muhammad preached provided his followers an ethical and moral vision for leading a life of righteousness," it tells kids. Muhammad's jihad conquests and cultural annihilations? His child marriage? Forget it. The curriculum also discusses "the beauty and perfection of the Qur'an." Calls to jihad? Calls to hate unbelievers and wage war against them? Nothing.More at the link, and she's quite right to be concerned. This may suggest a flaw on Pipes' behalf - to say that Perry's links with Norquist are on a financial level at best is a weak argument; why couldn't Perry do it himself?
Then Jawad turns to my criticism of Perry's ties to Grover Norquist, saying, "one need only note, as Pipes did, that all of Perry's connections to Norquist concern taxation issues, not Islam." That's the kind of thinking people use to say that Hezbollah is a fine group, because look, they run schools and hospitals. No candidate worth his salt should have anything to do with Norquist, for tax issues or any other reason. You can't come out for cutting taxes without playing ball with Norquist? Please.
And Perry's ties to Norquist are extensive: Robert Spencer notes that "Perry and Grover Norquist held a joint press conference in March 2011. Perry appeared at a fund-raiser for Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform group. Also, Norquist actively campaigned for Perry back in 2009. Their association is longstanding: Perry was investigated by the Texas Ethics Commission in 2004 for allegations that the Governor illegally used campaign money to finance a trip to Bahamas; the point here is not the allegations, but the fact that along on the Bahamas trip at his own expense was Grover Norquist. Perry and Norquist are clearly not just casual acquaintances."
So what will happen when Norquist approaches his good buddy Perry and asks him to give an appointment to or do some favor for some Islamic supremacist? Will Perry then turn against his old friend? I hope so. But if we don't call out Perry on his ties to Norquist now, how can we be sure of that?
APPEASING THE ENEMIES OF THE WEST IS NEVER A GOOD THING.
Welcome to ShariaTube
We've had a good run on YouTube. With nearly eight million views and close to seven thousand subscribers, it seemed like YouTube took international communication to the next level for us. But things have changed.
The strikes on the bases used by the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) follow an attack by the separatists that killed nine Turkish troops.
A PKK spokesman told the AFP there were no casualties from the raids.
TURKEY ATTACKS ANOTHER COUNTRY HARBORING TERRORISTS. IT'S MUSLIM ON MUSLIM VIOLENCE. SO... THERE'S NO OUTCRY.
IF JEWS DID IT THEN THERE'D BE AN OUTCRY.
WHICH IS ANTISEMITIC. BECAUSE EVERY NATION HAS THE RIGHT OF SELF-DEFENSE.
US ratings agency Standard & Poor's downgraded Venezuela's foreign and local currency sovereign ratings by one notch Friday, citing the country's political risk as a credit weakness.SOCIALISM IS WRECKING EUROPE'S DEBT STRUCTURE, IT'S WRECKING OURS - AND NOW IT HAS WRECKED VENEZUELA'S.
It cut the ratings from BB- to B+ with a stable outlook, saying the decision "reflects our recently revised sovereign rating methodology's heavier weight on political risk, which is a credit weakness for Venezuela."
S&P said its outlook also weighed both the negative impact of the Chavez government's interventionist investment and growth policies on the one hand, along with the country's modest fiscal and external positions.
"In our opinion, changing and arbitrary laws, price and exchange controls, and other distorting and unpredictable economic measures have undermined private-sector investment and hurt productivity -- weakening Venezuela's domestic economy," it added in a statement.
Ancient Dog Skull Shows Early Pet DomesticationSOME PEOPLE THINK THE DOG DOMESTICATED MAN.
33,000-year-old fossil suggests dogs arose in multiple places, study says.
The skull of a domesticated canine.
It took 33,000 years, but one Russian dog is finally having its day.
The fossilized remains of a canine found in the 1970s in southern Siberia's Altay Mountains (see map) is the earliest well-preserved pet dog, new research shows.
Dogs—the oldest domesticated animals—are common in the fossil record up to 14,000 years ago. But specimens from before about 26,500 years ago are very rare. This is likely due to the onset of the last glacial maximum, when the ice sheets are at their farthest extent during an ice age.
White House releases picture of Obama being briefed at Martha’s VineyardHERE IS THE PHOTO:
The White House released a photo Friday morning of President Obama receiving a national security briefing while on vacation in Martha’s Vineyard.
The photo of Obama speaking with John Brennan, his top counterterrorism adviser, could be read as an effort to push back at arguments that the president is somehow disengaged while on vacation with his family.
EVERY DAY, OBAMA WAKES UP HE SPENDS EVERY WAKING MOMENT THINKING ABOUT ONE THING...
President Obama has headlined 127 fundraising events for himself and others, significantly outpacing the fundraising activity of the previous five presidents during their first terms, new research obtained by USA TODAY shows.THAT'S 1.7 TIMES AS MANY FUNDRAISERS AS DUBYA.
By comparison, President George W. Bush had held 88 fundraisers and President Clinton, 76, at this point in their first terms, according to data compiled by Brendan Doherty, an assistant professor of politicial science at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md. Doherty, who also studies presidential activity with the non-partisan White House Transition Project, examined fundraising going back to President Carter.
On July 28, the Treasury Department designated six al Qaeda operatives involved in shipping money and men from the Persian Gulf to senior al Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The move targets a node of the global terror network that is critical to its overall strength, freezing any of its financial assets under U.S. jurisdiction and prohibiting any transactions with the operatives. Of the many conduits for al Qaeda funds and personnel across the world, the U.S. government believes this one is the most important.
“This network serves as the core pipeline through which al Qaeda moves money, facilitators and operatives,” according to Treasury. “Without this network, al Qaeda’s ability to recruit and collect funds would be severely damaged,” an Obama administration official involved in the designations tells The Weekly Standard.
The centrality of this network to al Qaeda’s day-to-day operations makes the Obama administration’s move significant. What makes it extraordinary is the network’s partner: Iran.
“There is an agreement between the Iranian government and al Qaeda to allow this network to operate,” Under Secretary of Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence David S. Cohen told The Weekly Standard in an interview last week. “There’s no dispute in the intelligence community on this.”
SEC. 2. AUTHORIZATION FOR USE OF UNITED STATES ARMED FORCES.(a) IN GENERAL- That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.
Islamic mosques are being built more often in France than Roman Catholic churches, and there now are more practising Muslims in the country than practising Catholics.Sarkozy is going to have to take very serious steps if he wants to be reelected. And residents of France with common sense are going to need to get serious about demonstrating against this Islamic occupation.
Nearly 150 new mosques currently are under construction in France, home to the biggest Muslim community in Europe. The mosque-building projects are at various stages of completion, according to Mohammed Moussaoui, the president of the Muslim Council of France (CFCM), who provided the data in an August 2 interview with the French radio station RTL.
The total number of mosques in France has already doubled to more than 2,000 during just the past ten years, according to a research report "Constructing Mosques: The Governance of Islam in France and the Netherlands." France's most prominent Muslim leader, Dalil Boubakeur, who is rector of the Grand Mosque of Paris, recently called for the number of mosques in the country to be doubled again – to 4,000 – to meet growing demand.
By contrast, the Roman Catholic Church in France has built only 20 new churches during the past decade, and has formally closed more than 60 churches, many of which are destined to become mosques, according to research conducted by La Croix, a Roman Catholic daily newspaper based in Paris. [...]
Every Friday, thousands of Muslims in Paris and other French cities close off streets and sidewalks (and by extension, close down local businesses and trap non-Muslim residents in their homes and offices) to accommodate overflowing crowds for midday prayers. Some mosques have also begun broadcasting sermons and chants of "Allah Akbar" via loudspeakers in the streets.
The weekly spectacles, which have been documented by dozens of videos posted on Youtube.com (here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here), have provoked anger and disbelief. But despite many public complaints, local authorities have declined to intervene because they are afraid of sparking riots.
The issue of illegal street prayers was catapulted to the top of the national political agenda in France in December 2010, when Marine Le Pen, the charismatic new leader of the far-right National Front party, denounced them as an "occupation without tanks or soldiers."
During a gathering in the east central French city of Lyon on December 10, Le Pen compared Muslims praying in the streets to Nazi occupation. She said: "For those who want to talk a lot about World War II, if it is about occupation, then we could also talk about it [Muslim prayers in the streets], because that is occupation of territory. It is an occupation of sections of the territory, of districts in which religious laws apply. It is an occupation. There are of course no tanks, there are no soldiers but it is nevertheless an occupation and it weighs heavily on local residents."
Many French voters agree. In fact, the issue of Muslim street prayers – and the broader question of the role of Islam in French society – has become a major issue ahead of the 2012 presidential elections. According to a survey by Ifop for the France-Soir newspaper, nearly 40% of French voters agree with Len Pen's views that Muslim prayer in the streets resembles an occupation. Another opinion poll published by Le Parisien newspaper shows that voters view Le Pen, who has criss-crossed the country arguing that France has been invaded by Muslims and betrayed by its elite, as the candidate best suited to deal with the growing problem of runaway Muslim immigration.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy, whose popularity was at 25% in July – worse than any predecessor less than a year ahead of a re-election bid, according to the TNS-Sofres polling group – has been spooked by Le Pen's advance in the opinion polls. He now seems determined not to allow Le Pen to monopolize the issue of Islam in France.
Sarkozy recently called Muslim prayers in the street "unacceptable" and said that the street cannot be allowed to become "an extension of the mosque." He also warned that the overflow of Muslim faithful on to the streets at prayer time when mosques are packed to capacity risks undermining the French secular tradition separating state and religion.
Interior Minister Claude Guéant on August 8 told Muslims who have been praying on the streets of Paris that they should utilize a disused barracks instead. "Praying in the street is something that is not acceptable," Guéant said. "It has to stop." [...]
Boubakeur, of the Grande Mosque of Paris, says the construction of even more mosques – paid for by French taxpayers – would ease the "pressure, frustration and the sense of injustice" felt by many French Muslims. "Open a mosque and you close a prison," says Boubakeur.
But Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has implied that the construction of mosques and minarets actually is part of a strategy for the Islamization of Europe. Publicly repeating the words of a 1912 poem written by the Turkish nationalist poet Ziya Gökalp, Erdogan said: "The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets and the faithful our soldiers."
Reflecting on the retreat of Catholicism and the rise of Islam in France, Archbishop Giuseppe Bernardini, an Italian Franciscan who heads the Izmir archdiocese in Turkey, and who has lived in the Islamic world for more than 40 years, has recounted a conversation he once had with a Muslim leader, who told him: "Thanks to your democratic laws, we will invade you. Thanks to our religious laws, we will dominate you."
Blogger Z! has this anecdotal story of interest. Excerpt:...In a shop in Beijing (a city in which guides tell you NOT to talk politics), [my cousins who recently visited China] saw row upon row of T shirts and coin purses that have a picture of Obama on them and the words OBA-MAO! My cousins asked how they heck they could do that and WHY? They said people in CHINA say that Obama's "MAO'S MOST FAMOUS STUDENT".......My cousins were stunned. The shop owner said "We here in Beijing think America's more Communist than we are now...we get to keep some of our money now."...More information via this Google search of Obamao.
An additional shooting attack took place Thursday evening north of Eilat, in which one person was injured. Army forces, police and ambulances were seen rushing toward the location of the attack and IDF helicopters were hovering overhead.[...]This might be a side-effect of the so-called "Arab spring", and it is definitely dangerous.
IDF forces were still searching the area around Eilat and the Egyptian border out of concern that there may be terrorists still in the area. Sources said that it is possible that there were as many 20 terrorist in the area, both in Israel and on the Egyptian side of the border.
They added that there may be another terrorist cell hiding in the area. IDF and special police counter-terrorist forces killed seven terrorists during the three earlier attacks.
At a press conference Thursday evening, OC Southern Command Maj.-Gen. Tal Russo said that security forces had been on high alert for terror attacks coming from Sinai to Israel.
PALMYRA, Pa. — Hundreds of foreign students, waving their fists and shouting defiantly in many languages, walked off their jobs on Wednesday at a plant here that packs Hershey’s chocolates, saying a summer program that was supposed to be a cultural exchange had instead turned them into underpaid labor.
In the protest on Wednesday, about 200 students who were scheduled to start work on an evening shift at 3 p.m. walked into the plant and presented a petition with several hundred signatures to a management representative. Then, together with some students coming off the daytime shift, they marched out.MORE HERE
Monica Lopossay for The New York Times
“There is no cultural exchange, none, none,” a student from China said. “It is just work, work faster, work.”Multimedia
They came down the driveway to the plant, with semi-trailer trucks wheeling by, chanting, “We are the students, the mighty, mighty students!” and labor slogans in English as well as their own languages. The students said they believed that so many of them walking off their jobs would stop some production on their shifts.Monica Lopossay for The New York Times
One student scrawled contact numbers on her legs.Monica Lopossay for The New York Times
The students walked off their jobs at a plant in Palmyra, Pa.
“We want to own our rights,” Ms. Zhao said, speaking in English. She and three other Chinese students held out their arms, pointing to bruises they said they had from moving large boxes.
Representatives from two American labor unions participated in the rally at an intersection outside the plant. Three labor officials, including Rick Bloomingdale, president of the Pennsylvania State Federation of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., and Neal Bisno, president of a Pennsylvania branch of the Service Employees International Union, staged a brief sit-in at the plant entrance and were arrested.
BBC: Israel attacks: Several killed in series of incidents Attacked Israeli bus
The bus was attacked near the southern resort of Eilat Several people have been killed in a series of attacks on vehicles which have taken place in southern Israel. The attacks began when gunmen fired at an Israeli bus which was travelling near the Egyptian border.
A shadowy Islamist insurgency that has haunted northern Nigeria — surviving repeated, bloody efforts to eliminate it — appears to be branching out and collaborating with ’s affiliates, alarming Western officials and analysts who had previously viewed the militants here as a largely isolated, if deadly, menace.AL QAEDA ISN'T THERE BECAUSE OF BUSHITLERCHENEYHALLIBURTIONBIGOIL.Just two years ago, the Islamist group stalking police officers in this bustling city seemed on the verge of extinction. In a heavy-handed assault, Nigerian soldiers shelled its headquarters and killed its leader, leaving a grisly tableau of charred ruins, hundreds dead and outmatched members of the group, known as Boko Haram, struggling to fight back, sometimes with little more than bows and arrows.
Now, insurgents strike at the Nigerian military, the police and opponents of Islamic law in near-daily assaults and bombings, using that can be detonated remotely and bear the hallmarks of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, Western officials and analysts say.
For two years now, Eurozone leaders have tried to deny reality, concocting one temporary bailout scheme after another in an effort to sweep Europe's budget problems under the rug.THERE IS NO REASON IN THE WORLD THAT THE GERMAN PEOPLE SHOULD HAVE TO PAY FOR THE SOCIALIST OVERSPENDING OF THE GREEKS - OR ANY OTHER SOCIALIST EUROPEAN COUNTRY.
But this game is nearing its end, says Rupal Ruparel of London-based think-tank OpenEurope.
A crisis that began in countries like Greece that seemed too small to worry about has now spread to countries like Spain and Italy that are big enough to take the whole Eurozone down.
The only way to actually solve the problems, says Ruparel, is to acknowledge the facts: "Austerity" programs won't help countries pay back their debts.
Either the whole Eurozone has to combine its fiscal spending--a solution in which German taxpayers would pay for Greece's deficits--or the debts have to be restructured.
Ruparel believes the "fiscal unity" solution is politically untenable.
So that leaves restructuring.
A planned restructuring will be painful, Ruparel says, but it will be a lot less painful than a market-forced one.
And the sooner Europe's leaders acknowledge this and get cracking, the better.
THE PREMISE OF THIS COMPARISON IS WRONG.MICHAEL BARONE: Harry S. Obama?Posted at 8:27 am by Glenn Reynolds
“Pundits have lately been comparing Barack Obama to Jimmy Carter, suggesting he is a likely loser in 2012. But my American Enterprise Institute colleague Norman Ornstein, writing in the New Republic, compares Obama to Harry Truman, suggesting he might outperform the polls and win. . . . Truman won many votes from Democrats still upset about the Civil War. Few such votes are available to Obama or congressional Democrats in 2012. In addition, Truman’s victory was due to two ‘F factors’ — the farm vote and foreign policy — the first of which scarcely exists today and the second of which seems unlikely to benefit Obama in the same way.”
The number of Americans who have children and live together without marrying has increased twelvefold since 1970, according to a report released Tuesday. The report states that children now are more likely to have unmarried parents than divorced ones.NPR:
As more and more U.S. couples decide to have children without first getting married, a group of 18 family scholars is sounding an alarm about the impact this may have on those children.
In a new report out on Tuesday, they say research shows the children of cohabiting parents are at risk for a broad range of problems, from trouble in school to psychological stress, physical abuse and poverty.
The study is put out by the National Marriage Project and the Institute for American Values, groups whose missions include strengthening marriage and family life. It suggests a shift in focus is needed away from the children of divorce, which has long been a preoccupying concern for such scholars.
Brad Wilcox, a report co-author and head of the National Marriage Project, says divorce rates have steadily dropped since their peak in 1979-80, while rates of out-of-wedlock childbearing have soared. Forty-one percent of all births are now to unwed mothers, many of them living with — but not married to — the child's father.
...another recent study finds that a quarter of American women with multiple children conceived them with more than one man. Psychologist John Gottman, a co-author of Tuesday's report, says that kind of instability can have a negative impact on kids in all kinds of ways."Both in externalizing disorders, more aggression," Gottman says, "and internalizing disorders, more depression. Children of cohabiting couples are at greater risk than children of married couples."
WE CAN THANK THE LEFT FOR UN-STIGMATIZING THE UN-MARRIED PARENT.
ESPECIALLY HOLLYWOOD.
THEY'VE NORMALIZED WHAT WAS ONCE UNIVERSALLY SEEN AS THE DEVIANT, AND NOW WE ARE SEEING THE RESULTS:
CHILDREN WITH BIG ANTI-SOCIAL BEHAVIOR PROBLEMS.
LEFTISM: IT'S BAD FOR THE CHILDREN.
WE NEED TO ERADICATE LEFTISM FOR THE CHILDREN.
RTWT.Last year, Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn announced the city had won a coveted $20 million federal grant to invest in weatherization. The unglamorous work of insulating crawl spaces and attics had emerged as a silver bullet in a bleak economy – able to create jobs and shrink carbon footprint – and the announcement came with great fanfare.
McGinn had joined Vice President Joe Biden in the White House to make it. It came on the eve of Earth Day. It had heady goals: creating 2,000 living-wage jobs in Seattle and retrofitting 2,000 homes in poorer neighborhoods.
But more than a year later, Seattle's numbers are lackluster. As of last week, only three homes had been retrofitted and just 14 new jobs have emerged from the program.
Debt Crisis Seen Taking Toll on Euro- Area Economy
The slowdown in Germany, Europe’s largest economy, will make it more difficult for the euro zone to pull out of its debt crisis, economists said
Thousands of people gathered in the Australian capital, Canberra, to protest against a planned carbon tax aimed at curbing greenhouse emissions.
A year on from that pledge, conservative opponents, who opposed the measure, are calling for new elections.
They say the tax will drive up household bills and cost jobs.
BBC - AND EVERYONE ELSE: German economic growth slows sharplyIn summertime Berlin, the streets are quiet and the cafes are full. "The effects of this crisis are imperceptible here," a Berliner said.
BERLIN — There is no one whose thoughts European officials would rather read than Chancellor Angela Merkel, who meets Tuesday at the Élysée Palace with France’s president, Nicolas Sarkozy, as they struggle to find a lasting solution to the European debt crisis.
The most common critique of Mrs. Merkel is that she lacks the necessary sense of urgency to restore confidence in the euro and calm the crisis. But a stroll through summertime Berlin makes clear why she remains so cool-headed. While the latest official figures on Tuesday showed German economic growth almost stalling in the second quarter, slowing growth across the euro zone, he streets are quiet and the cafes are full. Deeply tanned residents are returning to their jobs after vacations in fiscally compromised nations, like and Portugal.
Germany may be the only European nation that is large enough and rich enough to cover the debts of its struggling neighbors, but its citizens are reluctant to be the source of the bailout. Germany is in many ways in the eye of the storm, with barely a hint of the winds swirling nearby.
Growth in the German economy slowed sharply between April and June and was weaker at the start of the year than previously thought, figures show.
The economy grew by just 0.1% in the quarter, according to figures from the national statistics office. Growth in the eurozone as a whole also slowed.
Germany had been driving the economic recovery in the eurozone.
HET NYTIMES: GREAT ANALYSIS ! GREAT TIMING! BWAHAHAHA!
THE EUROZONE IS IN A VIRTUAL RECESSION AGAIN - JUST LIKE THE USA. SIGH.
Economic growth in the 17 countries that use the euro sagged to a lackluster quarterly rate of 0.2 percent in the second quarter as Germany's expansion slowed sharply.The official figures from the European Union statistics agency are more downbeat news for the global economy. They were well short of the 0.8 percent figure from the first quarter, and follow disappointing second-quarter growth reported in the U.S.
WE ARE IN A VIRTUAL GLOBAL REESSION.
LOWER OIL PRICES AND A HIGHER YUAN ARE THE ONLY EXTERNALS THAT CAN QUICKLY HELP EUROPE.
I DON'T THINK EITHER WILL HAPPEN - DESPITE BEING IN OPEC'S AND CHINA'S INTEREST.
SO WE ARE HEADED FOR WORSE, HARDER TIMES. SIGH.
"We had reversed the recession, avoided a depression, gotten the economy moving again," Obama told a crowd in Decorah, Iowa. "But over the last six months we've had a run of bad luck."
LAST WEEK, LEFTY JOURNALIST EZRA KLEIN MADE THE SAME CASE:Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man.
Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people.
Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.
This is known as “bad luck.”
Whatever weak recovery we might have hoped for is being hindered by global commodity prices, consumer deleveraging, fears of flagging demand in emerging markets, earthquakes in Asia, and much more. Globally, it’s been an almost uninterrupted run of crises and bad luck.IF YOU WANT THE USA TO HAVE GOOD LUCK, THEN VOTE OBAMA OUT OF OFFICE.
The European Central Bank (ECB) said Monday it bought a record 22 billion euros ($32 billion) of government bonds last week, trying to ease a eurozone debt crisis threatening Italy and Spain.ITEM 2 - NPR
The ECB announced earlier this month that it would resume its bond buy-back programme, which it suspended five months ago, to help eurozone countries hard hit by financial market volatility as they struggle to stabilise their public finances.
This brings to 96 billion euros the total amount the ECB has so far devoted to the programme.
Within weeks, Europe's spreading debt crisis will force Germany to decide on one of the most critical questions in the Continent's postwar history: Will currency union be strengthened or weakened?
Germany, with the biggest and healthiest economy, has to make the call, and this has prompted a fierce national debate.
The 17 European countries that use the euro as their common currency have such widely varying debt burdens that they cannot survive as a single eurozone unless the strongest rescue the weakest.
The cost of that intervention, however, could conceivably approach 1 trillion euros ($1.45 trillion) and would necessarily involve a major shift in governance authority from individual states to the European power center in Brussels.
Without Germany's wealth and credit standing, nothing can happen. But for Germany to give its blessing to a eurozone rescue mission, German leaders would have to compromise on core principles of thrift and sovereignty that until now they have fiercely defended.
Unprecedented bailouts by governments totaling 365 billion euros ($522 billion) in emergency loans and ECB bond purchases have failed to stamp out the crisis. Faltering investor confidence may overcome the unwillingness of euro leaders to forge a U.S.-style fiscal union. Opponents don’t want to relinquish control of their own budgets or risk the higher borrowing costs that would result.
French Banks
Last week’s market volatility prompted Sarkozy to return to Paris from his vacation for a day to meet top officials and outline an accelerated schedule to announce 2012 budget cuts. It forced Bank of France Governor Christian Noyer to issue a statement that banks were solid and well-capitalized.
As the week ended, Italy announced extra budget cuts that were demanded by the ECB, and Finance Minister Giulio Tremonti repeated his endorsement of euro bonds. That view is shared by counterparts including the head of the group of euro-area finance ministers, Luxembourg’s Jean-Claude Juncker.
A French official last month said there isn’t enough coordination among national economic policies to justify jointly sold bonds.
No ‘Unlimited Support’
German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble told Der Spiegel in an interview published on Aug. 13 that he opposed unlimited aid, including joint borrowing. “There is no collectivization of debt or unlimited support,” he told the German magazine.
Merkel last directly addressed the topic in 2010, telling reporters in Berlin on Dec. 6 that EU treaties don’t “allow euro bonds, as far as we’re concerned.”
Since opposing any financial aid for Greece in early 2010, Germany has bowed to the requirements of the moment. Officials have since indicated the rejection of euro bonds isn’t ironclad.
Deputy Foreign Minister Werner Hoyer said in a July 20 interview Germany may not resist common bonds “forever” if the euro area were threatened. While euro bonds “are not the right solution for now,” the government is talking in terms of “the foreseeable future” rather than on a permanent basis, Peter Altmaier, deputy parliamentary leader of Merkel’s Christian Democrats, said on Deutschlandfunk radio yesterday.
I PRAY MERKEL - BORN IN EAST GERMANY - REMEMBERS THAT AFTER UNIFICATION, THE NEW GERMANY DID NOT EMULATE THE EAST.
MORE SOCIALISM IS NOT THE ANSWER.
AND LESS DEMOCRACY IS NOT THE ANSWER, EITHER.
EURO BONDS WILL MEAN MORE SOCIALISM/STATISMM AND LESS DEMOCRACY FOR EUROPEANS, AND MORE POWER FOR EU BUREAUCRATS.
MERKEL MUST DO WHAT IS NECESSARY NOW AND TAKE STEPS THAT CAN LEAD TO AN PRDEWRLY UNWINDING OF THE EURO AND A RETURN TO NATIONAL CURRENCIES AND NATIONAL DEBT.
for those making more than $1 million — there were 236,883 such households in 2009 — I would raise rates immediately on taxable income in excess of $1 million, including, of course, dividends and capital gains. And for those who make $10 million or more — there were 8,274 in 2009 — I would suggest an additional increase in rate.Commentary from Reliapundit:
So, let me get this straight:
Buffett, you think we can balance the budget by taxing 245,000 Americans at a marginally higher rate?
YOU'RE INSANE.
THE DEFICIT THIS YEAR WILL BE $1.4 TRILLION.
IF YOU TOOK ALL THE ASSETS AWAY FROM THESE FOLKS, IT WOULD NOT BALANCE THE BUDGET - AND YOU WILL HAVE KILLED THE GOOSE THAT LAYS THE GOLDEN EGGS.
WE SPEND TO MUCH; WE ARE TAXED ENOUGH.
Meet Israel’s Alinskyites: How Radicals Infiltrated a New Protest MovementTAB TWO WEEKS AGO: LEFTISTS ATTACKING AND DESTABILIZING ISRAEL FROM WITHIN
Stealth socialist strategies are employed against the Jewish state too.
Israeli politics since 1967 have largely revolved around foreign policy and security. But the gap between incomes and costs as well as the left’s attempt to find some winning issues and the deadlock in the “peace process” have produced a new protest movement complaining about high housing prices that is sweeping Israel.
What is the cause and meaning of this movement?
The protests’ key organizers have clearly political motives, despite the fact that the New York Times claims, “So far, the protesters have managed to remain apolitical.” In fact, the individuals and organizations animating this protest are committed to a left-wing political agenda intended to weaken, embarrass, and, if possible, topple Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.
