Ideas, opinions and observations expressed here please me. For the most part. Example: "Those who hammer their guns into plows, will plow for those who do not." - Thomas Jefferson I hope you will enjoy them, too. They're pretty much what you would expect; after all, I began life with Herbert Hoover in the White House, a time when youngsters in this country didn't have to attend classes to learn about ethics. Even the worst among us knew very well the difference between right and wrong. ~~~ 
~~~ "Did you ever know a politician that was not 'facing the most critical time in the world's affairs' every time he spoke in public?" --humorist Will Rogers (1879-1935) ~~~ 
"Calling an illegal alien an 'undocumented immigrant' is like calling a drug dealer an 'unlicensed Pharmacist."
~~~ Identity Justice
Obama's Conventional Choice
Responding to early 19th-century rumors that they drank excessively, the Supreme Court justices decided to drink nothing on conference days -- unless it was raining. At the next conference, Chief Justice John Marshall asked Joseph Story to scan the sky for signs of rain. When Story said he saw none, Marshall said: "Our jurisdiction extends over so large a territory that the doctrine of chances makes it certain that it must be raining somewhere -- let us refresh ourselves."
This Story:
Assessing Sonia Sotomayor
Americans have argued about the court's jurisdiction forever. They should not stop, especially now that the president has nominated U.S. Appeals Court Judge Sonia Sotomayor.
The 1987 fight over President Ronald Reagan's nomination of Robert Bork interred the tradition that the Senate, in evaluating judicial nominees, would not delve deeply into the nominee's jurisprudential thinking. Bork's defeat was unjust, but the new approach to confirmations was overdue, given the court's increasingly central role in American governance.
Before Sotomayor's confirmation hearings begin, the Supreme Court probably will overturn a ruling she supported on the 2nd Circuit -- the propriety of New Haven, Conn., canceling fire department promotions because there were no African Americans (although there was a Hispanic) among the 18 firemen the selection test made eligible for promotion. A three-judge panel of 2nd Circuit judges, including Sotomayor, affirmed a district court's dismissal of the firemen's complaint, doing so in a perfunctory and unpublished order that acknowledged none of the large constitutional questions involved.
Stuart Taylor of the National Journal calls this "a process so peculiar as to fan suspicions that some or all of the judges were embarrassed by the ugliness of the actions that they were blessing and were trying to sweep the case quietly under the rug, perhaps to avoid Supreme Court review or public criticism, or both." Taylor says that when "the circuit's more conservative judges got wind of the case," they sought to have it reheard by the full 2nd Circuit. They failed but successfully argued that the Supreme Court should take the case.
Taylor has also noted this from a Sotomayor speech to a Hispanic group: "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion [as a judge] than a white male who hasn't lived that life." Says Taylor, "Imagine the reaction if someone had unearthed in 2005 a speech in which then-Judge Samuel Alito had asserted, for example: 'I would hope that a white male with the richness of his traditional American values would reach a better conclusion than a Latina woman who hasn't lived that life' -- and had proceeded to speak of 'inherent physiological or cultural differences.' "
Her ethnicity aside, Sotomayor is a conventional choice. The court will remain composed entirely of former appellate court judges. And like conventional liberals, she embraces identity politics, including the idea of categorical representation: A person is what his or her race, ethnicity, gender, or sexual preference is, and members of a particular category can be represented -- understood, empathized with -- only by persons of the same identity.
Democrats compounded confusion by thinking of the court as a representative institution. Such personalization of the judicial function subverts the rule of law.
In the 1978 Bakke case involving racial preferences in admissions to a California medical school, the opinion written by Justice Lewis Powell said race can be a "plus" factor for certain government-preferred minorities. But according to Powell's biographer (John Jeffries of the University of Virginia Law School), when the justices conferred on the case and Thurgood Marshall said such preferences would be needed for another century, Powell was "speechless." In 2003, affirming the constitutionality of racial preferences in university admissions, Sandra Day O'Connor, writing for the majority, said such preferences would be unnecessary in 25 years -- 19 years from now. How long does Sotomayor think they will be necessary? What are her criteria of necessity?
Perhaps Sotomayor subscribes to the Thurgood Marshall doctrine: "You do what you think is right and let the law catch up" (quoted in the Stanford Law Review, summer 1992). Does she think the figure of Justice should lift her blindfold, an emblem of impartiality, and be partial to certain categories of persons? A better jurisprudential doctrine was expressed by a certain Illinois state legislator in a 2001 radio interview: "The Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. . . . It says what the federal government can't do to you, but it doesn't say what the federal government or the state government must do on your behalf."
By George F. Will
Wednesday, May 27, 2009 ~~ More Guns, Less Violent Crime as the Bad Guys Run or Die
More guns, less crime: Thanks to the Founding Fathers, we're as safe as in our mothers' arms
By Ted Nugent
Water, water, everywhere water. Know it, embrace it, manage it, or drown. Same goes for cars, trucks, chainsaws, knives, crowbars, blowtorches, and guns. Based on the inept, clumsy, irresponsible failure of brain-dead, uncoordinated numbnuts, I will not be denied the pragmatic, functional utility of anything.
I will not drown, nor will I drink and drive, chainsaw-massacre anyone, stumble, slice, burn, or shoot myself, nor will I ever hold up a bank. So the best advice would be to think, improvise, adapt, and overcome, man up, but by all means, leave me the hell alone. You don't ban electric guitars just because someone may have a lapse in logic, goodwill, and decency and spontaneously break out into country and western music. The vast majority of sensible people will use electric guitars as God intended and whip out good, sexy rock-n-roll licks.
I need my water, cars, trucks, chainsaws, knives, crowbars, blowtorches, and guns. I have mastered them all; they are all wonderful ingredients for my American Dream of rugged individualism, declared independence, and self-sufficiency. They all serve me well, and I am not giving any of them up. Ever.
The masses must never be controlled for the sake of the lunatic fringe. Remember "Don't Tread on Me"? Don't.
America has spoken. With guns and ammo sales and concealed weapons permits surging at unprecedented rates, never in the history of mankind have more people possessed more firepower and most significantly, carried more concealed weapons on their persons than today across America. And as FBI crime reports and law enforcement and academic studies conclude, the self-evident truth is that more guns clearly equals less crime. Where there are more guns per capita, violent crime goes down, particularly crimes of assault, like rape, burglary, and robbery. This is good.
It is indeed Ted Kennedy's gun ban dream of GunFreeZones that have proven to be the guaranteed slaughter zones where the most innocent lives are lost. Think Columbine, VA Tech, Lane Bryant, NW IL University, Luby's Cafeteria, NJ, Salt Lake City, and Omaha malls, Calgary University, Toronto, Chicago, Boston, Flight 93, the mayor's office in San Francisco, ad nauseam. Peace and love will get you killed, and unarmed helplessness is bad. Unless of course your anthem goes baaa..... baaa...... baaa.
So why in God's good name would any human being wish to force unarmed helplessness on another? That level of cruel indecency and forced victimization is incomprehensible to me and about 100,000,000 Americans who own guns. Self-defense is the most powerful, driving instinct of good people everywhere. To deny this is evil personified. Write this down—GunFreeZones are a felon's playgrounds. Ban GunFreeZones now.
Good people don't want the rapist to succeed. We want him dead. We don't want our homes invaded. We want invaders dead. We don't like carjackers. We like them dead. We don't like armed robbers. We like them dead.
We have examined all the evidence we need to know that calling 911 is a joke, unless of course they bring a dustpan and a mop to clean up the dead monster we just shot while protecting our family.
The choice is clear: Gun control as forced by the Chuck Schumers of the world is complicit in every violent crime committed. Conversely, gun control a la Ted Nugent is putting the second shot through the same hole as the first shot, where innocent lives are saved and recidivistic maggots come to a screeching halt, felled by the lovely ballet of good over evil we call the Double Tap Center Mass Boogie. Learn it, know it, love it, shoot it. Good guys should live, bad guys not so much.
It is reassuring, and ultimately convenient, that fresh from escaping the scourges of tyranny, slavery, kings, and emperors, our brilliant, sensible Founding Fathers knew it was important to write down the self-evident truth that the right to self-defense is surely a God-given individual right to keep and bear arms. Write this down, too—"keep" means it is mine, you can't have it. "Bear" means I've got them right here on me. "Shall not be infringed" echoes that beautiful "Don't Tread On Me" chorus.
I like the U.S. Constitution and our sacred Bill of Rights but, quite frankly, I don't really need them in order to know in my heart and soul the list of self-evident truths therein. Those came from thinking, common-sense men who refused to be helpless, dependent slaves to anyone or anything. These truths are all burned forever on my soul. I live them, no matter what.
Meanwhile, in order to stop the drownings, I will work on banning water; Obama can try to ban guns. Good luck.
Gun Ownership in Texas
A woman was called in front of a Texas grand jury for manslaughter after she
shot a mugger 6 times in the back as he was running away with her purse.
He grabbed the purse and ran, she had her hand on the gun in it, and was left
with the revolver in her hand.
When asked by the grand jury why she shot the man 6 times in the back as he
was running away, she replied under oath:
"Because when I pulled the trigger the 7th time it only went click"
No-billed on all charges.
~~ Out of my past .. 
Scary, isn't it? ~~~
The Distemper of the Times
by Patrick J. Buchanan
With reports circulating of its imminent demise, The New York Times announced in January that it had found a white knight.
Sort of. For the knight in question, who already owns 6 percent of the sinking Times and was investing $250 million in notes carrying 14 percent interest, was Carlos Slim. Reputedly the richest man in the world, taking the title from Bill Gates in 2007, Carlos is not so highly regarded in his own country.
In Mexico, according to Forbes, "the media and the masses long have held a sneaking suspicion that there is something shady about Slim. He is described as a rapacious monopolist who built his empire on cozy ties to Mexican presidents ... ."
For this column, however, the issue is not how Carlos bought up the Mexican telephone monopoly, but whether this Big Enchilada has bought up Andrew Rosenthal's editorial page.
For, two weeks after Carlos' bailout cash arrived, Rosenthal's page launched a hysterical attack on the patriots' movement that seeks to halt the invasion of the United States from Mexico.
Targets: my sister Bay; our American Cause foundation and its executive director, Marcus Epstein; Peter Brimelow, the author of a seminal work on U.S. immigration, "Alien Nation"; Jim Pinkerton of Fox News, a White House aide to Bush I; Fox's Bill O'Reilly; and this writer.
In the Times' editorial, "Return of the Nativists," Brimelow is said to run an "extremist Website" (VDARE.com) where he and I post "musings about racial dilution and the perils facing white people." Pinkerton was behind the "racist Willie Horton ads." Epstein holds "white-supremacist" views. And we all are into "racialist extremism" and "Latino-bashing," which
calls to mind "the days of the Know-Nothings and the Klan."
Racism "is all around us," wails the Times. And the nation has a "perpetual need for vigilance," even in this new "age of Obama."
What occasioned this wilding attack? A news conference at the National Press Club, where the Times reporter failed to show, and release of a dry report by Epstein that contends that GOP defeats in 2008 had nothing to do with the strong stand most Republicans took for border security.
The Times calls the report "nonsense." But the case is open and shut. Of 26 House Republicans who lost, Epstein found only one who was a strong border-control candidate defeated by a pro-amnesty Democrat. In every other GOP defeat, either the Democrat was tough on amnesty and border security or the Republican was wimpish.
That John McCain, who led the effort to put illegal aliens on a path to citizenship, got less than a third of the Hispanic vote shows that being pro-amnesty does not necessarily win the Hispanic vote. And the 70 percent of New Yorkers who rejected Eliot Spitzer's proposal to give driver's licenses to illegals, forcing Hillary Clinton to abandon her own governor, should tell even the obtuse Times which way the wind is blowing.
But rather than argue with us, the Times chose to slime us as racists and white supremacists. This is of a piece with the Times' sliming of the Californian electorate that voted against state recognition of homosexual marriage. To the Times, that 52-48 vote meant "right-wing forces, led by the Mormon Church," had "enshrined bigotry in the state's Constitution."
Both diatribes reveal much about the fall of a great newspaper and the degeneration of a political philosophy that was once hegemonic in America. Liberalism has hardened into an ideology, a rabid religion that anathematizes any and all heretics.
To the Times' editorial writers, dissent from orthodoxy on illegal aliens or gay rights can only be explained by bigotry, hatred,
racism or xenophobia in the hearts of the dissidents. To oppose the Times' agenda on social or moral issues is ascribed to mental illness or moral sickness.
Yet, as these negative views on homosexual marriage and illegal immigration remain mainstream views, the Times comes off, as it did in Sunday's sophomoric editorial, as loathing Middle America.
In its own mind, the Times is battling heroically the forces of hatred. Can it not, by rereading its own words, see the hatred in its own heart?
As Christ Himself said, Andrew, "Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye."
Let it be said. There is nothing wrong about Americans fighting to preserve the culture and country they grew up in. That is what patriotic conservatism is all about. And if the Times can understand and support the right of native tribes like the Navajo and Apache to preserve their unique character and culture, why this viral hatred of those of us who wish to preserve the Western and Christian character of America?
Why does the Times want to see our America destroyed? From what poisoned well comes this hatred of the America we love?
~~~ Hundreds Should Go to Jail
by Tom Gardner
"The law may not change the heart, but it can restrain the heartless."
-- Martin Luther King
For years now, heartless people have been running many of our world's banks and investment houses, and our laws have been insufficient to restrain them. Boards of directors, CEOs, and their leadership teams created incentive systems that rewarded self-interest, impatience, and bottomless greed.
That's a deadly three-punch combo that can flatten employees, customers, and shareholders alike. And it has. So we should not be surprised to find that even as banks have toppled, even as tens of thousands of workers have lost their jobs, even as shareholders have been wiped out, and even as taxpayers are on the hook for trillions via future higher taxes or hyperinflation, the "leaders" of these organizations have continued to pay themselves obscenely. How obscenely? Despite losing $35 billion in 2008, Wall Street firms paid out $18 billion in cash bonuses!
Specific examples are more enlightening still.
Exhibit A
Washington Mutual CEO Kerry Killinger took home $88 million in the seven years preceding the collapse of the bank, which was later handed over to JPMorgan Chase (NYSE: JPM) at a 95% discount to prior highs. Killinger apparently designed a gimme-gimme culture fueled by reckless urgency and deceit. He hasn't returned a dime of his compensation.
Exhibit B
After leading AIG's (NYSE: AIG) credit-default swap unit, which lost $11 billion in one year, Joseph Cassano was allowed to keep $34 million in bonuses for the year. He was then hired for $1 million per month to consult the company on its maze of transactions. In total, Cassano was rewarded with more than $280 million for helping to destroy the world's largest insurer.
Exhibit C
During a 15-year period as CEO of Lehman Brothers, Richard Fuld lapped up hundreds of millions in rewards. That includes a $22 million retirement pay package in the year his company went under.
Exhibit D
A year ago, John Thain was given a $15 million signing bonus to take over at Merrill Lynch; in 2008, the company posted losses of $27 billion. Today, Merrill is widely considered a bankrupt subsidiary of Bank of America (NYSE: BAC). Yet this December, Thain lobbied hard to be paid a $10 million bonus. And why not? His predecessor, Stanley O'Neal, received a $160 million retirement package after posting writedowns of $8 billion in a single quarter.
Hard as it may be to believe, there is no law that mandates the return of compensation when an executive's actions destroy a corporation. There's also no law that says you can't be heartless. Being soulless isn't criminal. And having no shame isn't actionable. To take legal action, federal authorities have to prove that these and other bankers had an intent to deceive. For example, if they can prove that Thain misled Bank of America before the acquisition, or that Thain and BofA misled regulators about the condition of the bank to secure bailout money, those points would be cause for prosecution.
But in the many cases in which regulators won't be able to prove anything, we won't see orange jumpsuits on the hundreds of bankers for whom they would fit.
Hundreds? Yes, certainly. At least that many. Remember that the banking sector has wiped out its investors, is decimating companies that rely on credit, and is primarily responsible for our rising unemployment.
So what are we left with, in terms of people who may go to jail? Well, there's Bernard Madoff -- whose deceit has spanned decades -- as well as what is certainly a team of shills. Early analysis of the accounting suggests that Madoff actually executed few, if any, trades. And in a true show of heartless cruelty, when Madoff was arrested, he had $170 million set aside not for the clients he had destroyed, but for friends, family members, and select employees. His lawyer is now being paid $1,000 per hour with client capital.
The search for confidence
What the markets need now, we hear every day, is confidence. Master investor David Swensen, head of Yale's endowment, said as much on The Charlie Rose Show last week. And of course, he's right.
As we saw with the falls of Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Washington Mutual, and Wachovia, lack of confidence leads to bank runs, bailouts, and bankruptcy. And when our banking system is crippled, there isn't enough confidence left for investors to fairly value even the most honorable organizations -- names such as Costco (Nasdaq: COST), Procter & Gamble (NYSE: PG), Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK-B), and Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ).
But until there are new regulations in finance, there will be no rebound in investor or consumer confidence. Until the rules for the TARP plan restrict banks from paying bonuses during the deepest recession in decades, taxpayers will not stop getting angry. Until we see clear evidence that those who destroy companies will not benefit from their actions, we will continue to suffer the consequences of moral hazard. In short, until the market system looks meritocratic and constrained by ethics, why should we expect the mainstream investor and consumer to demonstrate confidence?
© 1995-2008 The Motley Fool. All rights reserved.
~~~~
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But then I repeat myself.
-Mark Twain
A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man ....a debt he proposes to pay off with your money.
-G. Gordon Liddy
Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.
-P.J. O'Rourke
I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.
-Will Rogers
In general, the art of government consists of taking as much money as possible from one party of the citizens to give to the other.
-Voltaire (1764)
The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools.
-Herbert Spencer, English Philosopher (1820-1903)
A government big enough to give you everything you want is strong enough to take everything you have.
-Thomas Jefferson
~~~
WHITE GUILT IS DEAD
By Tom Adkins Look at my fellow conservatives! There they go, glumly shuffling along, depressed by the election aftermath. Not me. I'm virtually euphoric. Don't get me wrong. I'm not thrilled with America 's flirtation with neo socialism. But there's a massive silver lining in those magical clouds that lofted Barak Obama to the Presidency. For today, without a shred of intellectually legitimate opposition, I can loudly proclaim to America : The Era of White Guilt is over.
This seemingly impossible event occurred because the vast majority of white Americans didn't give a fluff about skin color, and enthusiastically pulled the voting lever for a black man. Not just any black man. A very liberal black man who spent his early career race-hustling banks, praying in a racist church for 20 years, and actively worked with America-hating domestic terrorists. Wow! Some resume! Yet they made Barak Obama their leader. Therefore, as of Nov 4th, 2008, white guilt is dead.
For over a century, the millstone of white guilt hung around our necks, retribution for slave-owning predecessors. In the 60s, American liberals began yanking that millstone while sticking a fork in the eye of black Americans, exacerbating the racial divide to extort a socialist solution. But if a black man can become President, exactly what significant barrier is left? The election of Barak Obama absolutely destroys the entire validation of liberal white guilt. The dragon is hereby slain.
So today, I'm feeling a little "uppity," if you will. From this day forward, my tolerance level for having my skin color hustled is now exactly ZERO. And it's time to clean house. No more Reverend Wright's "God Damn America ," Al Sharpton's Church of Perpetual Victimization , or Jesse Jackson's rainbow racism. Cornell West? You're a fraud. Go home. All those "black studies" programs that taught kids to hate whitey? You must now thank Whitey. And I want that on the final.
Congressional Black Caucus? Irrelevant. Maxine Waters? Shut up. ACORN? Outlawed. Black Panthers? Go home and pet your kitty. Black separatists? Find another nation that offers better dreams. Go ahead. I'm waiting.
Gangsta rappers? Start praising America . Begin with the Pledge of Allegiance. And please…no more ebonics. Speak English, and who knows where you might end up? Oh, yeah…pull up your pants. Your underwear is showing. You look stupid.
To those Eurosnots who forged entire careers hating America? I'm still waiting for the first black French President.
And let me offer an equal opportunity whupping. I've always despised lazy white people. Now, I can talk smack about lazy black people. You're poor because you quit school, did drugs, had three kids with three different fathers, and refuse to work. So when you plop your Colt 45-swilling, Oprah watchin' butt on the couch and complain "Da Man is keepin' me down," allow me to inform you: Da Man is now black. You have no excuses.
No more quotas. No more handouts. No more stealing my money because someone's great-great-great-great grandparents suffered actual pain and misery at the hands of people I have no relation to, and personally revile.
It's time to toss that massive, obsolete race-hustle machine upon the heap of the other stupid 60s ideas. Drag it over there, by wife swapping, next to dope-smoking. Plenty of room right between free love and cop-killing. Careful…don't trip on streaking. There ya go, don't be gentle. Just dump it. Wash your hands. It's filthy.
In fact, Obama's ascension created a gargantuan irony. How can you sell class envy and American unfairness when you and your black wife went to Ivy League schools, got high-paying jobs, became millionaires, bought a mansion, and got elected President? How unfair is that??? Now, Like a delicious O'Henry tale, Obama's spread-the-wealth campaign rendered itself moot by its own victory! America is officially a meritocracy. Obama's election has validated American conservatism!
So, listen carefully…Wham!!!
That's the sound of my foot kicking the door shut on the era of white guilt. The rites have been muttered, the carcass lowered, dirt shoveled, and tombstone erected. White guilt is dead and buried.
However, despite my glee, there's apparently one small, rabid bastion of American racism remaining. Black Americans voted 96% for Barak Obama. Hmmm. In a color-blind world, shouldn't that be 50-50? Tonight, every black person should ask forgiveness for their apparent racism and prejudice towards white people. Maybe it's time to start spreading the guilt around.
Tom Adkins is the publisher of CommonConservative.com
~~~ Harry Truman, from Missouri, was a different kind of President. He probably made as many important decisions regarding our nation's history as any of the other 42 Presidents. However, a measure of his greatness may rest on what he did after he left the White House. Historians have written the only asset he had when he died was the house he lived in, which was in Independence Missouri. On top of that, his wife inherited the house from her Mother.
When he retired from office in 1952, his income was a U.S. Army pension reported to have been $13,507.72 a year. Congress, noting that he was paying for his stamps and personally licking them, granted him an 'allowance' and, later, a retroactive pension of $25,000 per year.
After President Eisenhower was inaugurated, Harry and Bess drove home to Missouri by themselves. There were no Secret Service following them.
When offered corporate positions at large salaries, he declined, stating, 'You don't want me. You want the office of the President, and that doesn't belong to me. It belongs to the American people and it's not for sale.'
Even later, on May 6, 1971, when Congress was preparing to award him the Medal of Honor on his 87th birthday, he refused to accept it, writing, 'I don't consider that I have done anything which should be the reason for any award, Congressional or otherwise.'
He never owned his own home and as president he paid for all of his own travel expenses and food.
Modern politicians have found a new level of success in cashing in on the Presidency, resulting in untold wealth. Today, many in Congress also have found a way to become quite wealthy while enjoying the fruits of their offices. Political offices are now for sale.
Good old Harry Truman was correct when he observed, 'My choices early in life were either to be a piano player in a whore house or a politician. And to tell the truth, there's hardly any difference.'
~~~
~~~
China's Path to World Power
by Patrick J. Buchanan
For decades, before a heedless congregation, some of us have preached the old Hamiltonian gospel.
Great nations do not have trade partners. They have trade competitors and rivals. Trade surpluses are superior to trade deficits. Tariffs on foreign goods are preferable to taxes on U.S. producers. Manufacturing, not finance, is the muscle of the nation.
Economic independence is vital to political independence.
Following Hamiltonian precepts, the United States grew from 13 rural and agricultural colonies into the greatest industrial power in all history, producing 42 percent of the world's manufactured goods. We were the awe and envy of mankind, the self-sufficient republic, maker of half of the armaments produced by all the nations in World War II.
That is the America we grew up in -- that has now vanished.
Chrysler, Ford, perhaps GM, may be dying. Manufacturing has sunk to 10 percent of U.S. employment, a level unseen since before the Civil War. Europeans and Asians are to assemble in Washington this week to impose upon the United States a New World Economic Order like the one we imposed on them at Bretton Woods in 1944.
Such are the fruits of free-trade ideology.
Across the Pacific, a nation that studied how America rose, and watched as America declined, chose a different path. China adopted and pursued a China First policy of economic nationalism.
In July, Charles McMillion of MBG Services testified to the U.S-China Economic and Security Review Commission on China's progress.
Beijing began its astonishing rise by devaluing its currency 45 percent in 1994, slashing the prices of exports in half and making imports twice as expensive. As America threw open her market and invited China to come in and capture it, China had erected a Great Wall around her own.
Results: China's worldwide trade surplus in manufactures, $31 billion in 2001, hit $401 billion in 2007, a 1,300 percent increase, and may reach $500 billion in 2008. China has shoved Germany aside to become the world's greatest exporter and now leads the world in the export of manufactured goods to Japan and the European Union, as well as the United States.
While running trade deficits with Asian neighbors like Taiwan, to tie them politically to Beijing, China is running record trade surpluses with the European Union and the United States, making America and the West as dependent upon China for our manufactures as we are on OPEC for our oil.
Chinese auto production has quintupled since 2001. She now produces more cars than Germany and may exceed the United States in 2009. While Chinese auto exports are still heavily in parts, finished cars are coming soon to a dealer near you. The Chinese will likely run the sword through the last standing member of America's Big Three.
Before 2004, China's manufacturing trade surplus with America was largely in textiles and apparel. But, since then, China's rocketing trade surplus in electronics, computers and parts has far exceeded her surplus in textiles and apparel.
China's trade surplus in computers and components rose from $8.1 billion in 2001 to $73.5 billion in 2007. In cellular phones and parts, her worldwide trade surplus grew from $3 billion in 2003 to $50 billion in 2007, and may reach $60 billion by year's end.
China still imports commercial airliners. But she now has a large and growing trade surplus in airplane parts. This follows the pattern in textiles, computers and autos. First, the Chinese learn by assembling parts in factories in China. Then, China begins to produce the parts. Then, China produces the finished products and goes out to capture the world market, while protecting her own by keeping her currency cheap.
On items the Commerce Department categorizes as advanced technology products, America began running a trade deficit for the first time early in the George W. Bush years. China now exports to us four times as much, in dollar value, in ATP items as we sell to Beijing.
As America mothballs the shuttle, relying on Russian rockets to get our astronauts back up to a space station we built, China is putting men into space and heading for the moon.
Since America ushered China into the World Trade Organization in 2002, Beijing's growth rate has been four times that of the United States, accelerating from an average 10 percent of gross domestic product to 12 percent in 2007.
With her immense trade surpluses, China's reserves have surged from $200 billion in 2002 to $2 trillion. Awash in dollars, Beijing now waits patiently, writes McMillion, to cherry-pick the crown jewels of America's industrial empire -- "patents, talents, natural resources, brands" -- at fire-sale prices in the global crash.
As America plunges into recession and our industry hollows out, while China is still growing at 9 percent, as the 20th century's greatest creditor nation now borrows from Beijing to pay for booster shots for its sick economy, may we hear once again the Bush-Clinton refrain about how the terrible danger we all face is from "protectionism."
~~~
What was the reason given for developing the Department of Energy during the Carter administration?
We have spent multi billions of dollars in support of this agency and I am willing to bet not one person who reads this will remember the reason given. It was very simple:
THE DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY WAS CREATED TO LESSEN OUR DEPENDENCE ON FOREIGN OIL.
IN 2008, THE BUDGET FOR THIS DEPARTMENT IS $24.2 BILLION A YEAR. THEY HAVE 16,000 FEDERAL EMPLOYEES AND APPROXIMATELY 100,000 CONTRACT EMPLOYEES.
Question: What in the hell do they do? ~~ “There are new studies and new polls that strongly suggest that we are breeding increasingly stupid kids here in America. Like our tasteless tomatoes, they merely look good and healthy. But of course there is more than one way to test intelligence. So, while only 43% of our 17-year-olds know that the Civil War took place between 1850 and 1900, as opposed to, say, 1750-1800 or after 1950, they are very good at text-messaging. They also probably know the names of Britney Spears’ kids, which is more than Ms. Spears does at any given moment, but they have no idea why December 7, 1941, was a day of infamy. They also don’t know what ‘infamy’ means. What makes the situation even more pathetic is that these kids, for the most part, have a terrifically high opinion of themselves. To be fair, nothing much has ever been asked of them, let alone demanded, and yet they are constantly being told how special they are. Hardly any of them are expected to do chores, and as teachers have been ordered by craven school boards to pass along any student who’s breathing, D’s are frowned upon and F’s are verboten. As a result, 18-year-olds, who can barely count up to 18 without taking off their shoes, automatically get their high school diplomas... However, the greatest danger of this backsliding into the abyss of ignorance, this 21st century version of the Dark Ages, where emotions and self-satisfaction constantly trump logic and intelligence, is that Democrats may never again lose a presidential election.” —Burt Prelutsky ~~
According to a news report, a certain school in Livonia, MI was once faced with a unique problem. A number of 13-year-old girls were beginning to use lipstick and would put it on in the washroom. That was fine, but after they put on their lipstick they would press their lips to the mirror leaving dozens of little lip prints. Every night, the maintenance man would remove them and the next day, the girls would put them back. Finally the principal decided that something had to be done. He called all the girls to the washroom and met them there with the maintenance man. He explained that all these lip prints were causing a major problem for the custodian who had to clean the mirrors every night. To demonstrate how difficult it had been to clean the mirrors, he asked the maintenance man to show the girls how much effort was required. He took out a long-handled squeegee, dipped it in the toilet bowl, and cleaned the mirror with it. Since then, there have been no lip prints on the mirror.
THE MORAL OF THIS STORY....
There are teachers, and then there are Educators
~~ 
Recently, I came across a quote from the President of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Klaus, which I think hits the nail on the head.
"The largest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy, and prosperity at the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st century is no longer socialism. It is, instead, the ambitious, arrogant, unscrupulous ideology of environmentalism." ~~~
By WALTER E. WILLIAMS | Posted Tuesday, May 06, 2008 4:30 PM PT
Now that another Earth Day has come and gone, let's look at some environmentalist predictions they would prefer we forget.
At the first Earth Day celebration, in 1969, environmentalist Nigel Calder warned, "The threat of a new ice age must now stand alongside nuclear war as a likely source of wholesale death and misery for mankind."
C.C. Wallen of the World Meteorological Organization said, "The cooling since 1940 has been large enough and consistent enough that it will not soon be reversed."
In 1968, professor Paul Ehrlich, former Vice President Al Gore's hero and mentor, predicted that there would be a major food shortage in the U.S. and "in the 1970s . . . hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death."
Ehrlich forecast that 65 million Americans would die of starvation between 1980 and 1989, and that by 1999 the U.S. population would have declined to 22.6 million.
Ehrlich's predictions about England were gloomier: "If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000." (Mr. Gore can sure pick 'em, can't he!?)
In 1972, a report was written for the Club of Rome warning that the world would run out of gold by 1981, mercury and silver by 1985, tin by 1987 and petroleum, copper, lead and natural gas by 1992.
Gordon Taylor, in his 1970 book "The Doomsday Book," said Americans were using 50% of the world's resources and "by 2000 they (Americans) will, if permitted, be using all of them."
In 1975, the Environmental Fund took out full-page ads warning, "The World as we know it will likely be ruined by the year 2000."
Harvard biologist George Wald in 1970 warned, "Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind." That was the same year that Sen. Gaylord Nelson warned, in Look magazine, that by 1995 "somewhere between 75% and 85% of all the species of living animals will be extinct."
It's not just latter-day doomsayers who have been wrong; doomsayers have always been wrong.
In 1885, the U.S. Geological Survey announced that there was "little or no chance" of oil being discovered in California, and a few years later they said the same about Kansas and Texas.
In 1939, the U.S. Department of the Interior said American oil supplies would last only another 13 years. In 1949, the secretary of the interior said the end of U.S. oil supplies was in sight. Having learned nothing from its earlier erroneous claims, in 1974 the U.S. Geological Survey advised us that the U.S. had only a 10-year supply of natural gas. The fact of the matter, according to the American Gas Association: There's a 1,000- to 2,500- year supply.
Here are my questions:
In 1970, when environmentalists were making predictions of man-made global cooling and the threat of an ice age and millions of Americans starving to death, what kind of government policy should we have undertaken to prevent such a calamity?
When Ehrlich predicted that England would not exist in the year 2000, what steps should the British Parliament have taken in 1970 to prevent such a dire outcome?
In 1939, when the Department of the Interior warned that we only had oil supplies for another 13 years, what actions should President Roosevelt have taken?
Finally, what makes us think that environmental alarmism is any more correct now that they have switched their tune to man-made global warming?
~~ And, since we're still speaking of environmental expert Al Gore, consider the following. Mr. Coleman, a meterologist for over 50 years and founder of the Weather Channel, says Gore and Co. are nothing more than scam artists. By John Coleman (jcoleman@kusi.com)
It is the greatest scam in history. I am amazed, appalled and highly offended by it. Global Warming... it is a SCAM.
Some misquided scientists with environmental and political motives manipulated long term scientific data back in the late 1990's to create an illusion of rapid global warming. Other scientists of the same environmental-extremism type jumped into the circle to support and broaden the "research" to further enhance the totally slanted, bogus global warming claims. Their friends in government steered huge research grants their way to keep the movement going. Soon they claimed to be a consensus.
Environmental extremist, notable politicians among them then teamed up with movie, media and other liberal, environmentalist journalists to create this wild "scientific" scenario of the civilization threatening environmental consequences from Global Warming unless we adhere to their radical agenda.
Now their ridicules manipulated science has been accepted as fact and become a cornerstone issue for CNN, CBS, NBC, the Democratic Political Party, the Governor of California, school teachers and, in many cases, well informed but very gullible environmental conscientious citizens. Only one reporter at ABC has been allowed to counter the Global Warming frenzy with one 15 minutes documentary segment.
I do not oppose environmentalism. I do not oppose the political positions of either party.
However, Global Warming, i.e. Climate Change, is not about environmentalism or politics. It is not a religion. It is not something you "believe in." It is science; the science of meteorology. This is my field of life-long expertise. And I am telling you Global Warming is a nonevent, a manufactured crisis and a total scam. I say this knowing you probably won't believe me, a mere TV weatherman, challenging a Nobel Prize, Academy Award and Emmy Award winning former Vice President of United States. So be it.
I suspect you might like to say to me, "John, look the research that supports the case for global warming was done by research scientists; people with Ph.D's in Meteorology. They are employed by major universities and important research institutions. Their work has been reviewed by other scientists with Ph.D's. They have to know a lot more about it than you do. Come on, John, get with it. The experts say our pollution has created an strong and increasing greenhouse effect and a rapid, out of control global warming is underway that will sky rocket temperatures, destroy agriculture, melt the ice caps, flood the coastlines and end life as we know it. How can you dissent from this crisis? You must be a bit nutty.
Allow me, please, to explain how I think this all came about. Our universities have become somewhat isolated from the rest of us. There is a culture and attitudes and values and pressures on campus that are very different. I know this group well. My father was a Ph.D-University types. I was raised in the university culture. Any person who spends a decade at a university obtaining a Ph.D in Meteorology and become a research scientist, more likely than not, becomes a part of that single minded culture. They all look askance at the rest of us, certain of their superiority. They respect government and disrespect business, particularly big business. They are environmentalists above all else.
And, there is something else. These scientists know that if they do research and the results are in no way alarming, their research will gather dust on the shelf and their research careers will languish. But if they do research that sounds alarms, they will become well known and respected and receive scholarly awards and, very importantly, more research dollars will come flooding their way.
Remember the United Nations had formed the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in the late 1980's with the mission of accessing and countering manmade climate change. The UN had established this global bureaucracy on climate change. It had become the "world series" or "olympics" for Climatologists and Meteorologists and scientists in related fields. You had to strive to be accepted, invited to present and review papers and travel to international meetings of the committee. Otherwise you were a nobody in your field.
So when these researchers did climate change studies in the late 90's they were eager to produce findings that would be important and be widely noticed and trigger more research funding. It was easy for them to manipulate the data to come up with the results they wanted to make headlines and at the same time drive their environmental agendas. Then their like-minded Ph.D colleagues reviewed their work and hastened to endorse it without question.
There were a few who didn't fit the mold. They did ask questions and raised objections. They did research with contradictory results. The environmental elitists berated them and brushed their studies aside.
I have learned since the Ice Age is coming scare in the 1970's to always be a skeptic about research. In the case of global warming, I didn't accept media accounts. Instead I read dozens of the scientific papers. I have talked with numerous scientists. I have studied. I have thought about it. I know I am correct when I assure you there is no run away climate change. The impact of humans on climate is not catastrophic. Our planet is not in peril. It is all a scam, the result of bad science.
I am not alone in this assessment. There are hundreds of other meteorologists, many of them Ph.D's, who are as certain as I am that this global warming frenzy is based on bad science and is not valid.
I am incensed by the incredible media glamour, the politically correct silliness and rude dismal of counter arguments by the high priest of Global Warming.
In time, a decade or two, the outrageous scam will be obvious. As the temperature rises, polar ice cap melting, coastal flooding and super storm pattern all fail to occur as predicted everyone will come to realize we have been duped.
The sky is not falling. And, natural cycles and drifts in climate are as much if not more responsible for any climate changes underway.
I strongly believe that the next twenty years are equally as likely to see a cooling trend as they are to see a warming trend.
~~ A few days ago, I received an email from an old friend, a fellow who spent his career in the oil business in the Middle East and Europe. I found it very interesting .. "Can you believe this ?
Here a couple links worth checking in case you are interested in potential oil reserves - in the case of 'oil shale', this was a hot item for discussion when I was in school back in the 1950's then was a big thing in Colo. in the 1980's in Colo. when Exxon and Shell were trying to do something with it - not economic and they quit. The other one on the Bakken fm in N. Dakota is also interesting - this is a thin [20' or so] shale fm between two much harder fm's and is drilled horizontally with the drilling bit bouncing back and forth between the two hard layers
Bob
***************************************************************
Just poking around the Internet recently, I simply 'Googled' a search for 'Untapped U.S. Oil Reserves,' and the result (like the current price of a gallon of gas - BLEW ME AWAY! Go ahead, take a minute and see for yourself! Never mind, I'll share some of the highlights I found.
1. Ever heard of the Bakken Formation? GOOGLE it. I did, and again, BLEW my mind. The U.S. Geological Service issued a report in April ('08) that only scientists and oilmen/women knew was coming, but man was it big. It was a revised report (hadn't been updated since '95) on how much oil was in this area of the western 2/3 of North Dakota; western South Dakota; and extreme eastern Montana ... check THIS out:
The Bakken is the largest domestic oil discovery since Alaska's Prudhoe Bay, and has the potential to eliminate all American dependent ce on foreign oil. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates it at 503 billion barrels. Even if just 10% of the oil is recoverable... at $107 a barrel, we're looking at a resource base worth more than $5.3 trillion.
'When I first briefed legislators on this, you could practically see their jaws hit the floor. They had no idea.' says Terry Johnson, the Montana Legislature's financial analyst.
'This sizeable find is now the highest-producing onshore oil field found in the past 56 years,' reports The Pittsburgh Post Gazette. It's a formation known as the Williston Basin, but is more commonly referred to as the 'Bakken.' And it stretches from Northern Montana, through North Dakota and into Canada. For years, U.S. oil exploration has been considered at a dead end. Even the 'Big Oil' companies gave up searching for major oil wells decades ago. However, a recent technological breakthrough has opened up the Bakken's massive reserves... and we now have access to up to 500 billion barrels. And because this is light, sweet oil, those billions of barrels could cost Americans just $16 PER BARREL!
That's enough crude to fully fuel the American economy for 41 years straight.
2. And if THAT didn't throw you on the floor, then this next one should - because it's from TWO YEARS AGO, people!
U.S. Oil Discovery- Largest Reserve in the World!
Stansberry Report Online - 4/20/2006 Hidden 1,000 feet beneath the surface of the Rocky Mountains lies the largest untapped oil reserve in the world is more than 2 TRILLION barrels. On August 8, 2005 President Bush mandated its extraction.
They reported this stunning news: We have more oil inside our borders, than all the other proven reserves on earth. Here are the official estimates:
-8-times as much oil as Saudi Arabia
-18-times as much oil as Iraq
-21-times as much oil as Kuwait
-22-times as much oil as Iran
-500-times as much oil as Yemen - and it's all right here in the Western United States.
HOW can this BE!? HOW can we NOT BE extracting this!? Because we've not D E M A N D E D Legislation to come out of Washington allowing its extraction, that's why!
James Bartis, lead researcher with the study says we've got more oil in this very compact area than the entire Middle East -more than 2 TRILLION barrels. Untapped. That's more than all the proven oil reserves of crude oil in the world today, reports The Denver Post.
Don't think 'Big Oil' will drop its price - even with this find? Think again! It's all about the competitive marketplace, and if they can extract it (here) for less, they can afford to sell it for less - and if they DON'T, others will. It will come down - it has to.
Got your attention/ire up yet? Hope so! Now, while you're thinking about it .... and hopefully P.O'd, do this:
Take 5-10 minutes and compose an e-mail; fax or good old-fashioned letter to our elected officials in Washington . and their respected leaders. We'll start with them, and here's how you can send them your e-mail/fax, DEMANDING the immediate Legislation/an Energy PLAN that calls for tapping into these (OUR OWN!) Reserves, as well as allowing for the offshore drilling for OUR oil, in OUR offshore waters and Inter-continental shelf ... not to mention Alaska. Technology ain't what it used to be people (ever had arthroscopic surgery?). They can surgically extract OUR oil, and get us on the way to at least some measure of Energy independence.
Take another few minutes and browse http://ostseis.anl.gov/guide/oilshale/index.cfm then go to:
http://www.fossil.energy.gov/programs/reserves/publications/Pubs-NPR/40010-373.pdf There's enough oil here to last 400-500 Years.
If you don't take a little time to do this, then you should stifle yourself the next time you want to complain about gas prices ... because by doing NOTHING, you've forfeited your right to complain. Then let's declare Open Season on some of Americas E.P.A. idiots. Bob" ~~~ As we watched the news coverage of the massive flooding in the Midwest with over 100 blocks of the city of Cedar Rapids, Iowa under water, levees breaking, what amazed me is not what we saw, but what we didn't see...
1. We didn't see looting.
2. We didn't see street violence.
3. We didn't see people sitting on their rooftops waiting for the government to come and save them.
4. We didn't see people waiting on the government to do anything.
5. We didn't see Hollywood organizing benefits to raise money for people to rebuild.
6. We didn't see people blaming President Bush.
7. We didn't see people ignoring evacuation orders.
8. We didn't see people blaming a government conspiracy to blow up the levees as the reason some have not held.
9. We didn't see the US Senators or the Governor of Iowa crying on TV.
10. We didn't see the Mayors of any of these cities complaining about the lack of state or federal response.
11. We didn't see or hear reports of the police going around confiscating personal firearms so only the criminal will be armed.
12. We didn't see gangs of people going around and randomly shooting at the rescue workers.
13. You didn't see some leaders in this country blaming the bad behavior of the Iowa flood victims on "society" (of course there was no such lawlessness to require excuses).
To further compare Iowa vs. Louisiana:
Where were all of the Hollywood celebrities holding telethons asking for help in restoring Iowa and helping the folks affected by the floods?
Where was all the media asking the tough questions about why the federal government hasn't solved the problem? Asking where the FEMA trucks (and trailers) are?
Why wasn't the Federal Government relocating Iowa people to free hotels in Chicago?
When will Spike Lee say that the Federal Government blew up the levees that failed in Des Moines?
Where were Sean Penn and the Dixie Chicks?
Where were all the looters stealing high-end tennis shoes and big screen television sets?
When will we hear Governor Chet Culver say that he wants to rebuild a "vanilla" Iowa, because that's the way God wants it?
Where was the hysterical 24/7 media coverage complete with reports of cannibalism?
Where were the people declaring that George Bush hates white, rural people?
How come, already, you know you will never hear about the Iowa flooding again?
~~
Mathias Dapfner, Chief Executive of the huge German publisher Axel Springer AG, wrote a blistering attack in DIE WELT, Germany's largest daily paper, against the timid reaction of Europe in the face of the Islamic threat.
EUROPE - THY NAME IS COWARDICE
by
Mathias Dapfner
CEO, Axel Springer, AG)
A few days ago Henry Broder wrote in Welt am Sonntag, "Europe - your family name is appeasement." It's a phrase you
can't get out of your head because it's so terribly true.
Appeasement cost millions of Jews and non-Jews their lives, as England and France, allies at the time, negotiated and hesitated too long before they noticed that Hitler had to be fought, not bound to toothless agreements.
Appeasement legitimized and stabilized Communism in the Soviet Union, then East Germany, then all the rest of Eastern
Europe, where for decades, inhuman suppressive, murderous governments were glorified as the ideologically correct alternative to all other possibilities.
Appeasement crippled Europe when genocide ran rampant in Kosovo, and even though we had absolute proof of ongoing mass-murder, we Europeans debated and debated and debated, and were still debating when finally the Americans had to come from halfway around the world, into Europe yet again, and do our work for us.
Rather than protecting democracy in the Middle East, European Appeasement, camouflaged behind the fuzzy word "equidistance," now countenances suicide bombings in Israel by fundamentalist Palestinians.
Appeasement generates a mentality that allows Europe to ignore nearly 500,000 victims of Saddam's torture and murder machinery and, motivated by the self-righteousness of the peace movement, has the gall to issue bad grades to George Bush. Even as it is uncovered that the loudest critics of the American action in Iraq made illicit billions, no, TENS of billions, in the corrupt U.N. Oil-for-Food program.
And now we are faced with a particularly grotesque form of appeasement. How is Germany reacting to the escalating violence by Islamic Fundamentalists in Holland and elsewhere? By suggesting that we really should have a "Muslim Holiday" in Germany?
I wish I were joking, but I am not. A substantial fraction of our (German) Government, and if the polls are to be believed, the German people, actually believe that creating an Official State "Muslim Holiday" will somehow spare us from the wrath of the fanatical Islamists. One cannot help but recall Britain's Neville Chamberlain waving the laughable treaty signed by Adolph Hitler and declaring European "Peace in our time."
What else has to happen before the European public and its political leadership get it? There is a sort of crusade underway, an especially perfidious crusade consisting of systematic attacks by fanatic Muslims,focused on civilians, directed against our free, open Western societies, and intent upon Western Civilization's utter destruction.
It is a conflict that will most likely last longer than any of the greatmilitary conflicts of the last century - a conflict conducted by an enemy that cannot be tamed by "tolerance" and "accommodation" but is actually spurred on by such gestures, which have proven to be, and will always be taken by the Islamists for signs of weakness. Only two recent American Presidents had the courage needed for Anti-appeasement: Reagan and Bush.
His American critics may quibble over the details, but we Europeans know the truth. We saw it first hand: Ronald Reagan ended the Cold War, freeing half of the German people from nearly 50 years of terror and virtual slavery. And Bush, supported only by the Social Democrat Blair, acting on moral conviction, recognized the danger in the Islamic War against Democracy. His place in history will have to be evaluated after a number of years have passed.
In the meantime, Europe sits back with charismatic self-confidence in the multicultural corner, instead of defending liberal
society's values and being an attractive center of power on the same playing field as the true great powers, America and China.
On the contrary - we Europeans present ourselves, in contrast to those "arrogant Americans", as the World Champions of "tolerance", which even (Germany's Interior Minister) Otto Schily justifiably criticizes. Why? Because we're so moral? I fear it's more because we're so materialistic, so devoid of a moral compass.
For his policies, Bush risked the fall of the dollar, huge amounts of additional national debt, and a massive and persistent burden on the American economy - because unlike almost all of Europe, Bush realizes what is at stake - literally everything.
While we criticize the "capitalistic robber barons" of America because they seem too sure of their priorities, we timidly defend our Social Welfare systems. Stay out of it! It could get expensive! We'd rather discuss reducing our 35-hour workweek or our dental coverage, or our 4 weeks of paid vacation. Or listen to TV pastors preach about the need to "reach out to terrorists; To understand and forgive".
These days, Europe reminds me of an old woman who, with shaking hands, frantically hides her last pieces of jewelry when she notices a robber breaking into a neighbor's house.
Appeasement? Europe, thy name is Cowardice. God Bless America. ~~~ The purpose of fighting is to win.
An armed man will kill an unarmed man with monotonous regularity. The man who carries a gun to a knife fight will win with the same regularity.
If you find yourself in a fair fight, you haven't planned ahead.
A reporter did a human-interest piece on the Texas Rangers. The reporter recognized the Colt Model 1911 the Ranger was carrying and asked him "Why do you carry a .45?" The Ranger responded, "Because they don't make a .46."
The old sheriff was attending an awards dinner when a lady commented on his wearing his sidearm. "Sheriff, I see you have your pistol. Are you expecting trouble?" "No Ma'am. If I were expecting trouble, I would have brought my rifle."
As John Steinbeck once said:
Beware the man who only has one gun. He probably knows how to use it.
And remember, don't pick a fight with an old man. If he is too old to fight, he'll just kill you. ~~~
(Paul Craig Roberts is an economist and a nationally syndicated columnist for Creators Syndicate. He served as an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration earning fame as the "Father of Reaganomics". He is a former editor and columnist for the Wall Street Journal, Business Week, and Scripps Howard News Service. He is a graduate of the Georgia Institute of Technology and he holds a Ph.D. from the University of Virginia. He was a post-graduate at the University of California, Berkeley, and Oxford University where he was a member of Merton College.
In 1992 he received the Warren Brookes Award for Excellence in Journalism. In 1993 the Forbes Media Guide ranked him as one of the top seven journalists in the United States.) Digging a Hole to China
Paul Craig Roberts
Early this morning China let the idiots in Washington, and on Wall Street, know that it has them by the short hairs. Two senior spokesmen for the Chinese government observed that China's considerable holdings of US dollars and Treasury bonds "contributes a great deal to maintaining the position of the dollar as a reserve currency."
Should the US proceed with sanctions intended to cause the Chinese currency to appreciate, "the Chinese central bank will be forced to sell dollars, which might lead to a mass depreciation of the dollar."
If Western financial markets are sufficiently intelligent to comprehend the message, US interest rates will rise regardless of any further action by China. At this point, China does not need to sell a single bond. In an instant, China has made it clear that US interest rates depend on China, not on the Federal Reserve.
The precarious position of the US dollar as reserve currency has been thoroughly ignored and denied. The delusion that the US is "the world's sole superpower," whose currency is desirable regardless of its excess supply, reflects American hubris, not reality. This hubris is so extreme that only 6 weeks ago McKinsey Global Institute published a study that concluded that even a doubling of the US current account deficit to $1.6 trillion would pose no problem.
Strategic thinkers, if any remain who have not been purged by neocons, will quickly conclude that China's power over the value of the dollar and US interest rates also gives China power over US foreign policy. The US was able to attack Afghanistan and Iraq only because China provided the largest part of the financing for Bush's wars.
If China ceased to buy US Treasuries, Bush's wars would end. The savings rate of US consumers is essentially zero, and several million are afflicted with mortgages that they cannot afford. With Bush's budget in deficit and with no room in the US consumer's budget for a tax increase, Bush's wars can only be financed by foreigners.
No country on earth, except for Israel, supports the Bush regimes' desire to attack Iran. It is China's decision whether it calls in the US ambassador, and delivers the message that there will be no attack on Iran or further war unless the US is prepared to buy back $900 billion in US Treasury bonds and other dollar assets.
The US, of course, has no foreign reserves with which to make the purchase. The impact of such a large sale on US interest rates would wreck the US economy and effectively end Bush's war-making capability. Moreover, other governments would likely follow the Chinese lead, as the main support for the US dollar has been China's willingness to accumulate them. If the largest holder dumped the dollar, other countries would dump dollars, too.
The value and purchasing power of the US dollar would fall. When hard-pressed Americans went to Wal-Mart to make their purchases, the new prices would make them think they had wandered into Nieman Marcus. Americans would not be able to maintain their current living standard.
Simultaneously, Americans would be hit either with tax increases in order to close a budget deficit that foreigners will no longer finance or with large cuts in income security programs. The only other source of budgetary finance would be for the government to print money to pay its bills. In this event, Americans would experience inflation in addition to higher prices from dollar devaluation.
This is a grim outlook. We got in this position because our leaders are ignorant fools. So are our economists, many of whom are paid shills for some interest group. So are our corporate leaders whose greed gave China power over the US by offshoring the US production of goods and services to China. It was the corporate fat cats who turned US Gross Domestic Product into Chinese imports, and it was the "free trade, free market economists" who egged it on.
How did a people as stupid as Americans get so full of hubris? ~~~ "The American Indians found out what happens
when you don't control immigration." ~~ "In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the person's becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American...There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag... We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language... and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people." Theodore Roosevelt, 1907 ~~ The Rape of Europe By Paul Belien The German author Henryk M. Broder recently told the Dutch newspaper, "De Volkskrant," (12 October) that young Europeans who love freedom, better emigrate. Europe as we know it will no longer exist 20 years from now. Whilst sitting on a terrace in Berlin , Broder pointed to the other customers and the passers-by and said melancholically: "We are watching the world of yesterday."
Europe is turning Muslim. As Broder is sixty years old he is not going to emigrate himself. "I am too old," he said. However, he urged young people to get out and "move to Australia or New Zealand. That is the only option they have if they want to avoid the plagues that will turn the old continent uninhabitable."
Many Germans and Dutch, apparently, did not wait for Broder's advice. The number of emigrants leaving the Netherlands and Germany has already surpassed the number of immigrants moving in. One does not have to be prophetic to predict, like Henryk Broder, that Europe is becoming Islamic. Just consider the demographics.
The number of Muslims in contemporary Europe is estimated to be 50 million. It is expected to double in twenty years. By 2025, one third of all European children will be born to Muslim families. Today, Mohammed is already the most popular name for newborn boys in Brussels , Amsterdam, Rotterdam , and other major European cities.
Broder is convinced that Europeans are simply not willing to oppose islamization. "The dominant ethos," he told De Volkskrant, "is perfectly voiced by the stupid woman author with whom I recently debated. She said that it is sometimes better to let yourself be raped than to risk serious injuries while resisting. She said it is sometimes better to avoid fighting than run the risk of death."
In a recent op-ed piece in the Brussels newspaper, "De Standaard," (23 October) the Dutch (gay and self-declared "humanist") author Oscar Van den Boogaard refers to Broder's interview. Van den Boogaard says that to him, coping with the islamization of Europe is like "a process of mourning." He is overwhelmed by a "feeling of sadness." "I am not a warrior," he says, "but who is? I have never learned to fight for my freedom. I was only good at enjoying it."
As Tom Bethell wrote in "American Spectator," "Just at the most basic level of demography the secular-humanist option is not working." But there is more to it than the fact that non-religious people tend not to have as many children as religious people, because many of them prefer to "enjoy" freedom rather than renounce it for the sake of children. Secularists, it seems to me, are also less keen on fighting. Since they do not believe in an afterlife, this life is the only thing they have to lose. Hence they will rather accept submission than fight. Like the German feminist Broder referred to, they prefer to be raped than to resist.
"If faith collapses, civilization goes with it," says Bethell. That is the real cause of the closing of civilization in Europe. Islamization is simply the consequence. The very word Islam means "submission" and the secularists have submitted already. Many Europeans have already become Muslims, though they do not realize it or do not want to admit it.
Some of the people I meet in the U. S. are particularly worried about the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe. They are correct when they fear that anti-Semitism is also on the rise among non-immigrant Europeans. The latter hate people with a fighting spirit. Contemporary anti-Semitism in Europe (at least when coming from native Europeans) is related to anti-Americanism.
People who are not prepared to resist and are eager to submit, hate others who do not want to submit and are prepared to fight. They hate them because they are afraid that the latter will endanger their lives as well. In their view everyone must submit.
This is why they have come to hate Israel and America so much, and the small band of European "islamophobes" who dare to talk about what they see happening around them. West Europeans have to choose between submission (Islam) or death. I fear, like Broder, that they have chosen submission - just like in former days when they preferred to be red rather than dead.
Europeans apparently never read John Stuart Mill: "War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things; the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing worth a war, is worse. A man who has nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety is a miserable creature who has no chance at being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself." Here's some indication that at least some of our friends across the pond understand what's really happening. Click here, sound up! http://www.dotsub.com/films/moredemands/index.php?autostart=true&language_setting=en_1618
~~~ “Why is it that many, if not all, of us think twice before we say what we really think or believe? Have we been silenced by the popular hecklers? Are we afraid? Is there a cultural inquisitor who stalks us all? Then, why is it that so many of us who know better about so much that we see around us cower and speak in hushed, mousy voices?” —Justice Clarence Thomas ~~~ Do you know why we have the Second Amendment? Why gun ownership is guaranteed by our Constitution? Really? It isn't so that we can hunt ducks, you know ... http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4069761537893819675&pr=goog-sl ~~ "An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life." —Robert Heinlein "What country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit (and means) of resistance. Let them take arms!" - Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1787 That, friend, is what the Second Amendment is all about .. people have the right to protect themselves. In America, the Second Amendment guarantees we'll always have the means to do so. Those of us who believe the Second Amendment means what it says are beginning to see a little light at the end of the tunnel. The Supreme Court has ruled the Second Amendment means exactly what it says. After decades of mind-boggling foolishness, the anti-gun crowd is showing signs of unraveling. (At least, for the moment. The gun banners will always be with us, especially now, with the Democrats back in the saddle in Washington.) Why unraveling? Whither Gun Control If you're still interested in the general subject, and have some time to spend, please visit Guns in America . Other excellent sources include the Texas State Rifle Association, at http://www.tsra.com and the National Rifle Association (the much-maligned NRA) at http://www.nraila.org/issues/ "All truth, in the long run, is only common sense clarified." Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895); English biologist. What Huxley doesn't note is, a lot of people, including too many in the news media, have no interest whatsoever in the truth .. they're the ones you have to watch out for. ~~~ "The media are so full of themselves—among other things that they are full of—that they act as if the government exists to provide them with something to publicize. The time is long overdue to put these people in their place." —Thomas Sowell Some of you know that, once upon a time, I was a television reporter and anchor. Pretty good anchor, adequate reporter on occasion. Mostly, I spent my most productive time keeping the bean counters at bay while some fantastic young people on staff honed their skills, did marvelous work and moved on to bigger and better things. Dennis Murphy, at NBC News, comes to mind. Gene Allen, Houston Hall, Dave Burrington, Bruce Halford, Linda Ellerbee and Jessica Savitch .. and so many more. Real pros. I must tell you I am appalled at the puffed up, self-important, self-aggrandizing phonies who regularly find employment as network television reporters today. The incredibly incompetent press .. ~~~ "The 'offense to Islam' ruse is merely an excuse for Muslims to revert to their default mode: rioting and setting things on fire. These people have a serious anger management problem. So it's not exactly a scoop that Muslims are engaging in violence. A front-page story would be 'Offended Muslims Remain Calm'." —Ann Coulter ~~~ "Remember democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide." — John Adams ~~ "When the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic." - Benjamin Franklin ~~ "They're terrible people, liberals. They believe -- this can really summarize it all -- these are people who believe you can deliver a baby entirely except for the head, puncture the skull, suck the brains out and pronounce that a constitutional right has just been exercised. That really says it all. You don't want such people to like you!" --Ann Coulter ~~ "Whatever became of the Republican Party? ... Too many Republicans in the House and Senate are afflicted with one or both of two problems. Either they don't believe in much of anything or they are afraid to fight for what they do believe in." --the late Lyn Nofziger, whose moral compass the GOP sorely misses ... ~~ "A recently reprinted memoir by Frederick Douglass has footnotes explaining what words like 'arraigned,' 'curried' and 'exculpate' meant, and explaining who Job was. In other words, this man who was born a slave and never went to school educated himself to the point where his words now have to be explained to today's expensively under-educated generation." - Thomas Sowell ~~~ "This court seems incapable of admitting that some matters are none of its business." - Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia ~~~ I Hate "hate crime" Legislation .. "Leaders from both parties -- Republican Senator Orrin Hatch and Democrat Ted Kennedy -- have vowed to push through a new, wide-reaching federal 'hate crimes' bill. a 'hate crimes' law which would make crimes motivated by enmity toward blacks, gays or other protected groups into a special federal offense....The proposed law declares that criminals motivated by a government-designated set of intolerable ideas -- racism, sexism, religious sectarianism, anti-homosexuality -- deserve special prosecution and additional punishment. But to subject someone to trial and punishment on the basis of his ideas -- regardless of how despicable those ideas might be -- constitutes a politicization of criminal law.... A 'hate crimes' law would expand the law's concern from criminal action to 'criminal thought.' It would institute the premise that the purpose of our legal system is not to defend the rights of the victim, but to punish socially unacceptable ideas. This is a premise that should be abhorrent to a free society....It is an attempt to import into America's legal system a class of crimes formerly reserved only to dictatorships: political crimes. Instead, we should insist on the one principle that forms the foundation for the protection of all rights, i.e., that the purpose of law is to punish criminals for initiating force against others, not for holding bad ideas." - Robert Tracinski As I've already noted, I abhor so-called "hate crime" legislation. If possible, I care even less for "diversity." Both are being used anew to silence the freedom to speak one's mind in England, Sweden and Canada .. and, most importantly, right here at home. Consider this Christmas gets one day. Kwanzaa gets seven. Martin Luther King - who was NOT a president of the United States - gets his own, individual holiday...but Washington, Lincoln and every other president shares a single day. The Irish get St. Patrick's Day, Mexicans get Cinco de Mayo and Germans get Oktoberfest. But African-Americans get an entire Black History Month. There isn't even a White History day, let alone a month. I guess it's "racist" to point this out. You've gotta be exhausted if you've actually made your way through the foregoing ... thanks for visiting. Some sanity here .. (although, like all of us, they go overboard on occasion ..) http://PatriotPost.US/subscribe/ More to come ..
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