From CNBC:

…Greenspan seems to view gold as an important indicator of what’s going on in the global economy, especially as central banks around the world jump into the gold rush.

“What the price of gold is saying is essentially that there are elements within the marketplace which feel very uncomfortable with respect to what’s going on generally,” the former Federal Reserve chairman said. “It’s not an accident that you’re finding that central banks are going in to buy gold.”…

To translate from the Bankerese – fiat currencies (like our dollar) are perfectly worthless these days and anyone who wants to have value on the other side of the crash is buying gold.

We’re in a world of trouble what with revolutions spreading and prices spiking and a US government which either cannot or will not exercise any control over events. We’re just sitting here, now, waiting for it all to blow up.

Democrats getting ready to cave in Wisconson? The story has it that Democrats will come back because their work is done….Walker is so unpopular that once the bill passes, Democrats will be well positioned to win it all back. This is what is known in more vulgar circles as BS. If they come back, it is because they know they’ve lost.

Gold continues to surge in price because no one trusts Uncle Ben’s little slips of green paper, anymore. For as long as I can remember, the US dollar was worth a significant amount more than either the Australian or Canadian dollar…now, their dollars are worth more than ours. This is what happens when you print up money – essentially, Bernanke is picking our pockets so that he can prop up the banks. How does that taste, Americans?

More on Ben Bernanke being a fiscal moron.

Archbishop Dolan calls out Obama on failure to defend DOMA. If any of you out there were looking for a Christian leader who Christian leader to offer a robust yet loving rebuke to the President, here it is.

Calling on Nevada’s Democrats to listen to the will of the people – an admirable attempt, but as in all States, Democrats really only listen to their paymasters…especially in the unions.

Some bad American habits. No, they are not all, entirely the fault of liberals…not completely and strictly and sure some other influences are there…but they are bad habits and, my goodness, wouldn’t be nearly as bad if liberals weren’t around…

From the Washington Post:

No office space has yet been rented. No committee has been formed. No official announcement date has been locked down. But by sometime next month, the president’s team is likely to be a functioning, legal entity with a plan.

That should send a message to potential Republican candidates, who have spent the winter trying to convince themselves that they can wait and wait and perhaps wait some more before they get moving. Obama’s team believes otherwise. They know what time and effort are required to build a robust organization capable of winning a general election – and how important the work done this year will be…

…Start with money. Obama raised about $750 million in his 2008 campaign, an astounding amount. There has been talk, still speculative, that he might be the first $1 billion candidate in 2012.

While grass-roots money will continue to be significant, one of the Obama team’s first priorities is to build up its stable of major donors and fundraisers…

Make no mistake about it, fellow Republicans, the organization Obama’s handlers will put together will astound the world. They will fund raise like mad – and it won’t matter if illegal fund raising is in the mix: the Obama people figure if their man wins, then there won’t even be an investigation in to illegal fund raising…and if their man loses, they are counting on us GOPers to let bygones by bygones. They will dig up every ounce of dirt they can find an all potential GOP Presidential and Vice Presidential candidate…and probably on likely campaign aids, as well. They will (once again, quite illegally…but, who cares?) coordinate their effort with a host of left wing interest groups and, very likely, with the MSM (don’t let any MSM sniping at Obama fool you – come 2012, the lapdog MSM will be just that). They will lie, cheat and steal – they will smear and spread fear and hatred. They are going to come after us relentlessly and without the slightest sense of honor or decency.

So, get ready for it – and, also, remember that they are going to spend the bags of money and become completely gutter politicians because they have no ideas, and their man Obama is an empty suit. The left can’t win clean; they know it and so are determined to win it dirty. They will appear far more fearsome than they are, and MSM spin will make it always appear that things are going better for Obama (and worse for the GOP) than the actual facts indicate. Our job is to withstand it, not lose heart and just keep hammering right back at them.

It is crucial that we rank-and-file types do our part – because our man (or woman) will be outspent at least two to one and simply won’t have the resources to put together a duplicate of the Obama machine. They hope to win it by fooling and/or buying the people – we must win it by earning the trust of the people…but we can’t do that if we’re all wringing our hands and getting all nervous because a tracking poll isn’t going our way, or an Obama ad buy is getting a lot of MSM attention. Concentrate in 2012 on what matters – telling the truth, and convincing people to vote. If we do that, we’ll win, no matter what.

An article over at NRO has both saddened and angered me:

Copts in Egypt are begging for Egyptian Armed Forces protection today after a Muslim mob of several thousand attacked their church in the village of Soul, about 30 kilometers from Cairo, last night. The Church of St. Mina and St. George was torched, and its clergy are unaccounted for. The fire department and security forces failed to respond to Coptic pleas for help during the arson attack.

According to a report from the Washington-based Coptic American Friendship Association, the mob, chanting “Allahu Akbar,” pulled down the church’s cross and detonated a handful of gas cylinders inside the structure. The ensuing fire destroyed the church and all its contents, including the sacred relics of centuries-old saints. It is reported that a romantic relationship between a Christian man and a Muslim woman, which sharia forbids, and the refusal of the woman’s father to kill her to restore the community’s “honor,” aroused the Muslim ire…

They are attacking my brothers and sisters and shouting “Allahu Akbar” while they do it. Someone tell me – how many more murdered Christians and desecrated churches am I supposed to put up with? How many more months and years am I to wait patiently for an alleged Moslem majority to stamp out a tiny minority of extremists who are causing the problem? Is there any limit to the amount of brutal attacks? Or are we Christians supposed to just sit there and take it until we are totally destroyed? Please, someone, tell me – what is the answer to the question?

Nearly a thousand years ago, in response to a long string of completely unprovoked attacks, the Christians of the West rose up and carried war in to the Moslem world. A lesson was administered and it was centuries before the Moslems made another try at brutalizing Christians – and when they did, we once again waited centuries before really responding…but, brothers, did we ever respond…Moslems still weep over what was done to them at Lepanto by Don Juan of Austria, and by Jan Sobieski at Vienna (and that last action took place in 1683…on 9/11); and for centuries thereafter, we had peace with Islam.

Now they are attacking us again – and just as in the past, with no justification whatsoever. Its one thing to dislike the United States, but to attack a Christian church and murder parishoners cannot be explained except as a manifestation of blood lust. I just want to know, how long will we put up with it? We, too, once upon a time had our battle cry – Deus vult. Eventually, Moslems might have to hear it again, before we have peace.

Excellent pair of articles over at Iowahawk – normally a premier humor blog, but rather ticked off at an absurd Krugman claim (that union-controlled schools do better than non-union schools), Iowahawk let him have it – and then, when criticized, beat the liberals up a second time. The conclusion:

…The short recap to Michael’s NAEP results is that after controlling for ethnicity, compared to the running-dog Gang of Five non-collective bargaining states (TX, VA, SC, NC, GA), Wisconsin is a (1) middling performer for white students; (2) below middling for Hispanic students, and (3) an absolute disaster for black students…

The short story here is that if anyone ever tells you that a unionized organization is doing better than a non-union organization, then that person is a fool or a liar. It isn’t possible for unionized workers to out perform non-unionized because the purpose of a union is not efficiency, but to ensure that the largest number of people are doing the least amount of work for the highest wages possible. There is no upside to a union – on the organizational side, where the bosses of the union pull down the fat paychecks – in efficiency. It doesn’t pay a union boss to do it right…in fact, all the incentives are to make it worse and worse and then claim even more highly paid union workers are necessary to get it right.

We are faced in the public sector unions, especially, with a gigantic effort to defraud the American people for the purpose of perpetuating a corrupt and destructive ruling class. In order to reform America it is absolutely necessary that the power of the unions – especially the public sector unions – be curbed (and before anyone blows a gasket; yes, the power of the large corporations must also be curbed…but they don’t pose the immediate threat that the unions do).

There is no downside for our side to fight this out. Suppose the people abandon us – suppose, for instance, that those union-led recalls of Wisconsin State senators get off the ground and Democrats are returned to a Senate majority in Wisconsin…big deal. If that is what the people want because they have been stampeded and bamboozled in to running away from us, then so be it. As soon as the Democrats get back in, they’ll do the union’s bidding…and that means tax increases because all the talk of unions willing to take cuts to pay is just a tactical retreat…they mean to not only keep their pay, but increase it as soon as they can get the power to do so. As Wisconsin teeters on the edge of insolvency, such an outcome would just ensure a complete smash up…and then the people will have to turn back to us.

They are lost, these liberals: remember that. They have no ideas and, in fact, don’t even care about what is really happening. They just want their power and their wealth and have no conception of the deluge which is heading our way. We do – and we, as patriots, must fight to prevent it…and if we lose the power and can’t do it, then it is still better to have lost on principle because then, in the by and by, we’ll get it all back. Fight, fight and then fight some more – no retreat, no surrender.

Money McBags over at Zero Hedge lets us know where it really is (a bit of a language warning if you decide to check out the entire article):

…if the labor force participation rate had just been at 64.5% like it was 3 months ago and thus 812k more people had been in the labor force, the unemployment rate would have been 9.5%. If the labor force participation rate had been at its ten year average of 66%, ~4.4MM more people would have been labeled as unemployed in the labor force and thus the unemployment rate would have been 11.8%…

And what was the unemployment rate three months ago? 9.4%. In other words, there has been no improvement in the employment picture…just a bit of playing around with the numbers until it comes out as good news for Obama. We can expect this sort of thing to continue – Democrats seem to believe that if unemployment drops below 8% then the economy ceases to be a negative for Obama’s re-election effort. And, so, the data will be massaged as far as possible without becoming laughably out of relation to truth.

Trouble with this plan, however, is that gasoline and food prices are spiking and that will drag down the economy – unemployment will start to rise again. Massaged data or no, I don’t think Obama will get below his magic number before November of 2012.

Naturally:

Watch the latest video at video.foxnews.com

Because decent people don’t go in to the peoples house and trash it – they come in and clean it up, because you have to respect what is there…and treasure it because it symbolizes all those who gave their lives, fortunes and sacred honor to make it happen. Liberals don’t understand this.

Our Country Deserves Better PAC is putting it out. Want to help get it on the air? Go here.

From International Business Times:

Moammar Gaddafi has reportedly hired the services of hundreds of Tuaregs from the nation of Mali and Niger as mercenaries in Libya.

A BBC report stated that members of the Tuareg community in Mali confirmed that a large number of their fellow tribe journeyed to Libya in the past week to help Gaddafi fight protesters.

“About 200-300 have left in the last seven days,” said a senior elected Tuareg official from the Kidal region in northern Mali where many Tuareg live, according to BBC. “They are being paid about $10,000 to join up and then I’ve heard they are being told that they will get $1,000 a day to fight.”…

I’ve suspected this for a while – its hard to get soldiers to gun down their own and if Gaddafi is really determined to hold power, he’s going to need someone who won’t be squeamish about massacring Libyans. Foreigners willing to fight for pay would do the trick – and if he’s really offering $1,000.00 a day for killers, then he will never lack for troops, as long as the money doesn’t run out.

More than ever, this is the time for us to intervene – to demonstrate that $1,000.00 a day won’t do a corpse any good. The Libyans can clear out Gaddafi, but they probably won’t be able to withstand well armed men who simply don’t care who or how many they kill…but our forces in the area can provide the disincentive necessary to keep the mercenaries out. We just need the will to act.

Meanwhile, I heard that Obama is out golfing today…

Worried about the spreading, global revolution:

Saudi Arabia said Saturday it would ban all protests and marches after minority Shiites staged small protests in the oil-producing eastern province.

Security forces would use all measures to prevent any attempt to disrupt public order, the interior ministry said in a statement carried by state television…

Can they keep a lid on it? Perhaps – but it is balanced on a knife edge at the moment. One of the dirty, little secrets of the oil States is how not everyone shares in the fabulous riches…if your a member of the royal family in Saudi Arabia or among their close friends, you’re doing very well. If you’re not connected like that, then its a bit more dicey…and for those who hew the wood and carry the water for the Ruling Class, its not very good at all. And here’s the real kicker – most of those doing best out of Saudi Arabia are members of the Sunni majority; the Shiite minority doesn’t come off nearly so well and that Shiite majority mostly lives where Saudi Arabia’s oil comes from. Its a powder keg, and there are lit matches flying around like mad.

Personally, I don’t think that the Saudis will be able to keep control of the situation. You’ve just got to figure that Shiite Iran is stirring the pot (the Iranian and Saudi governments very much dislike each other). We’ll just have to wait and see – but if it blows up, then we’ll be pining away for $4 a gallon gas before too long.

UPDATE: China’s anti-human tyrants chime in with condemnations of the protests in the Arab world. Got them scared spitless, that is for sure…