As Greek 1 Year Bonds Rise to 88%…

Mark Noonan7 Comments

…the Eurozone dimwits prescribe “more of the same”.  From the New York Times:

…As Europe struggles to contain its government debt crisis, the greatest fear is that one of the Continent’s major banks may fail, setting off a financial panic like the one sparked by Lehman’s bankruptcy in September 2008.

European policy makers, determined to avoid such a catastrophe, are prepared to use hundreds of billions of euros of bailout money to prevent any major bank from failing…

It is getting rocky for Europe’s banks, to be sure – it is getting harder and harder to secure those short term loans banks need to keep operating.  If any one of the major European banks fails to obtain the necessary operating capital, then that will be the end of the global financial system.  Given this, you can understand why the bureaucrats and banksters want to do something…the problem is that they are planning on doing what has already been done, and failed.   Most people were suckered by the bailout of the “too big to fail” banks in 2008 and 2009 – we bought the story that if we just did this, all would be made well.  Turns out it didn’t work…so now we’re back to square one in 2011 but with much higher debt and greatly devalued currencies.  To try it a second time is asinine…but not trying it means default, and that scares the Ruling Class.

And it mostly scares them not because of the loss of wealth (someone who is worth millions or billions and loses 50% of his wealth is still pretty darn rich, after all) but because it could spark political revolutions all across the world…it won’t be a matter of a financial shark like Soros or Buffett taking a hit on the balance sheet, but of the whole political-economic structure being overturned…and thus our financial sharks will lose their power to influence government.  That is what scares them – that is what is making them attempt what they know will fail, but which just may keep the global economy out of recession until late 2012 or 2013…by which time they hope that something else will come up to preserve them in power.

Personally, I don’t think they’ll be able to pull it off – a round of printing money (which is the only way they can keep the insolvent banks afloat) would so increase inflation that it would kill off whatever economic activity we currently have.  People would be forced to spend an ever increasing part of their income on necessities, thus leaving ever less for the frills…more money on food, less money on electronic gadgets.  Gadget makers feel the pinch and start laying people off (mostly because that is the corporate drill..profits down?  Lay people off…never even think about using them more efficiently; that would take effort and some basic, human decency).  It spirals down from there.  Whatever “puff” they can put in to the economy by another round of bail outs will be so damaging that the net result would be worse than if they let things just crash…including “worse” in the Ruling Class sense, as people are on to the scam and another round of it leading to even worse times will just make the revolution burn hotter.

And, “burn, baby, burn”, is all I have to say…I’m heartily sick of things as they are and a little revolution, now and then, is a good thing.

 

 

Can America Tolerate Sharia?

Mark Noonan17 Comments

Eliyahu Stern in a New York Times Op-Ed argues that Americans have nothing to fear from the importation of Sharia law in to the United States – he likens laws banning Sharia to past attempts at excluding Jews from full civil rights:

…The suggestion that Shariah threatens American security is disturbingly reminiscent of the accusation, in 19th-century Europe, that Jewish religious law was seditious. In 1807, Napoleon convened an assembly of rabbinic authorities to address the question of whether Jewish law prevented Jews from being loyal citizens of the republic. (They said that it did not.)

Fear that Jewish law bred disloyalty was not limited to political elites; leading European philosophers also entertained the idea. Kant argued that the particularistic nature of “Jewish legislation” made Jews “hostile to all other peoples.” And Hegel contended that Jewish dietary rules and other Mosaic laws barred Jews from identifying with their fellow Prussians and called into question their ability to be civil servants…

This argument does strike a chord – not just in someone familiar with the history of anti-Semitic persecution in the Christian West, but even for those – like myself – who are Catholics and know how our ancestors were considered unsuited for American citizenship as we allegedly owed loyalty to a foreign prince, the Pope.  Of course it was always nonsense to hold that Jews and Catholics couldn’t be good citizens of the United States – such views were just a hold-over of Protestant bigotries from centuries prior.   And, of course, once Jews and Catholics became numerous in the United States and demonstrated their loyalty again and again, it became absurd for anyone to hold to those old bigotries.  Is it the same for people of the Muslim faith?  Are we just rushing to judgment before we’ve given Islamic Americans a chance to prove themselves?

Perhaps – but here is the difference:  anti-Semitism and anti-Catholicism pre-date the founding of the United States of America.  Indeed, the Puritans who founded Massachusetts and set the stage for the growth of American liberty were, to a man and woman, ferociously opposed to any manifestation of Catholicism.  When those Puritans came from Europe to America, the war between Protestantism and Catholicism was still raging in Europe (when the Puritans landed at Plymouth Rock Europe was in the second year of what would become the Thirty Years War which was just a horrific war made even worse by sectarian animosities being used as a cloak for greed and cruelty).  We, as it were, inherited a bigotry…but Islam never felt such animosity in America until people of the Muslim faith started to massacre Americans for no justifiable reason whatsoever.

Remember that – it is key:  there is not and has not been an iota of justification for Muslims to feel hostility towards the United States.  Indeed, the proper feeling among Muslims should be gratitude…gratitude that American influence was set against the European colonial powers; gratitude that when Muslim States started to steal Western assets via nationalization the United States refused to coerce Islam in to restoring the stolen property; gratitude that the United States has restrained Israel from occupying Cairo and Damascus; gratitude that we pressured Israel to give up the Sinai and the West Bank even though Israel had no cause to do so; gratitude that we have helped to topple tyrants ruling over Muslim States; gratitude that time and time again the United States has rushed aid to Muslim States stricken by disaster.  The hatred felt by Muslims towards the United States is unreasonable…and the murder of Americans by people claiming to act in the name of Islam is a blot upon Muslim honor.  This blot is compounded by the fact that Americans have yet to see a vigorous, Muslim campaign to stamp out the people who murder Americans.

The words “bigotry” and “mistrust” are not synonymous.  We would be nothing more than bigots if we asserted that all Muslims are bad – but if we express mistrust of Muslims, the question must be asked – why?  Because Muslims have unjustifiably attacked Americans.  Because we have many examples of Sharia-advocates using it as a tool for persecution.  Because some of the most fervent advocates for Sharia have connections to the most vile, anti-American groups.  Certainly no American will object to a Muslim going to an Islamic court to clarify matters of faith and morals – no more than any American, of whatever belief, objects to a Catholic getting a ruling on the validity of a marriage.  But there is enough evidence in the actions of some Muslims who advocate for Sharia to convince Americans that Sharia is not compatible with American ideals.

It doesn’t have to remain this way – in fact, in just a few, short years American attitudes can be vastly altered.  All Americans will need to see is action on the part of Muslims to go after those who attack the United States and/or use Sharia as an excuse to brutalize their fellow human beings.  It won’t do the least bit of good for 10,000 people to swear that 99.9% of Muslims would never dream of attacking Americans or using Sharia as a means to oppress…words are meaningless unless matched to action.  It shouldn’t take American special forces and drone attacks to kill radical Islamists – Muslims should be doing it.  The sort of people who carry out terrorist attacks and use Sharia for oppression are not fit for decent company…no rational, well-meaning people would tolerate such in their midst.  But just as long as Islam at least appears to tolerate those sort, so will American mistrust of Islam remain, and likely grow.

You can’t excuse yourself from the act of building civilization by simply accusing others of being bigots.  We, as non-Muslims, have our duties to perform…to be tolerant of differences, to show love towards our fellow men and women, to fight for what is right.  Muslims have these same duties.  And I say to all Muslims who wish to have a world in which mistrust of Islam is a thing of the past – get busy:  you’ve a lot of work to do.  Once you’ve done it, you won’t have to ask for tolerance of Sharia…it will be automatic; in fact, you’ll find Christians and Jews to be willing collaborators in helping Muslim observance of Sharia…provided it is, as some claim, just a matter of adjudicating Muslim religious practices.

IDF General: War Clouds Gathering

Mark Noonan3 Comments

From Y Net:

Recent revolutions in the Arab world and the deteriorating ties with Turkey are raising the likelihood of a regional war in the Middle East, IDF Home Front Command Chief, Major General Eyal Eisenberg warned Monday.

“It looks like the Arab Spring, but it can also be a radical Islamic winter,” he said in a speech at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv…

The “Islamic Winter” is pretty much what I expect.  We are about to reap an ill harvest…sown since 9/11 by our political inability to carry on the fight with sufficient determination.  As it turns out, our campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq have proven strategic dead-ends – because we did not follow up with the next, logical steps.

Not being privy to strategy sessions of the Bush White House  – and none of us will be for at least 50 years – I don’t know if there was a plan for follow-up to Iraq…but I perceive that there was, at least, a desire to leverage the fall of Baghdad in to a general offensive against all the Islamists of  the middle east.  Syria likely the best post-Iraq target, but it could have been Iran, as well…but we didn’t do it.  There was that moment in the summer of 2003 when Islamism was tottering and ready to fall…but we allowed ourselves to get hamstrung in Iraq, giving the Islamists a breather where they could regain their confidence and bog us down in a  counter-insurgency campaign…a campaign which never would have been possible for the enemy to conduct in Baghdad if we were threatening Damascus and Tehran.

What hamstrung us immediately was not the Islamists, themselves, but the American left…fearful that a continuing series of American victories would cement American supremacy and worse (for the left) relegate the left to political irrelevancy, the left decided that procuring American defeat in the war was necessary…so they began to fire up the anti-war movement, nit-pick every military error and slander the men and women who were fighting the battle.  The rest, as they say, is history…President Bush, whatever his desires might have been, was capable in the end of only holding on…refusing to fold as Johnson did in Vietnam, but being unable to resume the offensive and bring the war to a victorious end.

And now the Islamists are on the march – certain that in President Obama we have a leader who will not strike at the heart of the problem, the Islamists have stepped up their terrorism and their subversion.  Countering our efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Islamists are poised to gain control of Egypt; Turkey is slipping in to the Islamist camp, Libya’s Islamists are making a bid for power…and Iran continues to build towards a nuclear force.  As this virulent form of Islam strides from victory to victory, the number and confidence of the adherents grows…they are feeling their oats and thinking they only need keep fighting a bit longer and harder for total victory to be theirs.  This, I think, is where General Eisenberg’s fear comes from…these nuts might start to think they can beat Israel and/or the United States in a stand-up fight.

They misjudge – Israel is still immensely powerful and even President Obama, if forced by circumstances, will fight.  But it must be remembered that aggressive powers routinely miscalculate the balance of forces.  Time and time again they discount the reserves of strength in their opponents…especially if they are tyrants and their opponents are free people.  Always keep in mind that it was sheer impertinence for Imperial Japan to attack the United States…the total balance of forces between the two nations was such that for Japan it worked out to national suicide…as anyone thinking clearly in Japan would have figured out in an instant…but no one thought about it; they counted on our weakness and their supposed spiritual superiority to carry the day.  Our Islamist enemies are thinking like that…give them control of a couple more nations, and they might think that it is time for war…full scale, conventional war.

We might be heading or a bloody mess in the middle east – literal  millions of lives are at stake.  It is to be hoped that things will work out differently.  But their working out differently is mostly dependent upon people of the Moslem world deciding against Islamism…a cool, rational understanding that war cannot achieve Islamist ends, and so should not be tried.  I doubt there is that sort of sense building in the Moslem world.

Let this be yet another lesson for us – and one I pray we finally learn:  if we’re going to go to war, at all, go all the way to war.  Identify all the enemies and destroy all of them as swiftly as possible.  Leave no sanctuary…no place where the enemy can retreat to regain strength and strike us again.  American war can only be war to the knife…to the utter destruction and unconditional surrender of the enemy.  If we aren’t willing to do that, we’d better not fight, at all.  If another war comes, let it be the last war we have to fight against Islam…just as the war against Japan was fought to the point where it was clearly the last war we’d ever have to fight with that nation.

Maxine Waters: Tax Banks Out of Business

Mark Noonan20 Comments

Sort of the liberal gift that keeps on giving – from ABC:

…Waters also wants to help by putting more pressure on the big banks to help with mortgages.

“If they don’t come up with loan modifications and keep people in their homes that they’ve worked so hard for, we’re going to tax them out of business,” Waters said…

And suppose you do tax them out of business – who does the banking, then?  I guess that Waters would just set up some sort of government-funded entity and put her family members in charge…in keeping with her past actions.

There is an extra spice of weirdness growing on the left – as things get worse and Obama’s failures become manifest, the left is retreating in to a socialist cocoon where all that is required is the application of more liberalism.  Long time readers know I have no love for our banks – in fact,  I hold them in contempt…but to talk of taxing them out of business if they essentially don’t just give away the houses they hold mortgages on is stupid…counter productive; it would make the housing market even worse.

Things can be done to help those who are upside down on their mortgages (in fact, I started advocating them in 2008…but also feel that by now it might just be too late).  Lots of things can be done to reform banks.  But we need banks and we need to have mutual accountability between lenders and borrowers…Waters and the left only wants accountability from the banks, or she’ll tax them out of existence.  Boiled down, as liberalism fails the left is insisting that we destroy everything rather than admit to the failure.

But the failure is unmistakable…and while Waters and others will be calling for the end of the banks, I think that the voters in 2012 will call for an end to the left.

HAT TIP:  Tax Prof Blog

The Romney Plan: Good, But…

Mark Noonan11 Comments

Mitt Romney lays out the broad outlines of his 59-point economic plan over at USA Today and I have to say that I am unimpressed.

To be sure, Romney’s plan does have a lot of really good things in it – but it always falls short of the revolution we need.  For instance, Romney calls for a tougher stance with China…but doesn’t lay out what that tougher stance would be (in my view, it should be a phased-in trade embargo).  Romney says he wants to review Obama’s regulatory record and then remove those which “unduly burden” job creation…why not just sign an executive order on January 20th, 2013 voiding all Obama-era regulations?  Does anyone seriously think that any regulation enacted since January 20th, 2009 has been vital to preserve the freedom and safety of the United States?

Given how lousy Obama is becoming, this 59 point plan of Romney’s may prove sufficient to get him in to the White House, but it simply does not go far enough…we need a revolution if we are to save our nation.  The left conducted its “long march” through our institutions and has created a Big Government/Big Corporation monster which is crushing the American spirit…morally, intellectually and economically we are being destroyed, and turning this around won’t be accomplished by tinkering with the tax code to stimulate job creation.

Before Romney can get my primary support, he’s going to have to show me that he’s not just running to be President because it would be a cool thing…I need to see a man who knows what we face and is willing to do whatever is necessary, including ensure a lost re-election bid in 2016, to get it done.

China’s Thug Government Armed Gaddafi

Mark Noonan11 Comments

From Strategy Page:

…During the recent fighting in Libya, the rebels complained of encountering government troops armed with new Chinese weapons. Accusations were made that China was selling weapons to the (Gaddafi) dictatorship despite a UN embargo. A little investigating found that this was indeed the case, and that Chinese arms merchants had approached the Libyan government earlier in the year, offering to sneak the weapons in via Algeria and South Africa. The last shipments appear to have arrived in July…

Why?  Because the Chinese government is a corrupt, inhuman dictatorship which simply does not care about human suffering.  If there was a dollar to be made and some influence to be bought, China is right there…acting the rogue while we pretend they are a rational member of the community of nations.

Until the Chinese government is destroyed, this sort of thing will just get worse and worse.  Remember that – and we must start demanding that our leaders treat China as the standing threat it is.

Bachmann: Why is There a Dept. of Education?

Mark Noonan35 Comments

From CNN Political Ticker:

Painting herself as a “constitutional conservative” Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann told Sen. Jim DeMint’s forum Monday that if elected president she would look to get rid of the Department of Education, among other things.

“Because the Constitution does not specifically enumerate nor does it give to the federal government the role and duty to superintend over education that historically has been held by the parents and by local communities and by state governments,” she said, responding to a question by DeMint, a popular figure among the tea party movement…

To be sure, the DNC/MSM will play this up as Bachmann being anti-education, but I don’t think that will fly here in 2011…we’ve been told for decades that in order to be “pro” anything, you had to be in favor of spending federal money on it…well, that is just about all played out.  Anyone who looks at education knows it is lousy…and any Democrat who tries to defend the lousy education system will come up the loser in the debate.

Now is the time to really press hard – I hope that Bachmann doesn’t get scared off this position.  Doesn’t try to “clarify” it away…yes, let’s abolish the Department of Education and use the money to actually help educate…by using the money for school vouchers.  Hit and hit and hit again…the Ruling Class and it’s Big Government are on the ropes…time to go in for the kill.

Hoffa Expresses Democrat “New Tone”

Mark Noonan27 Comments

From Real Clear Politics:

Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa had some profane, combative words for Republicans while warming up the crowd for President Obama in Detroit, Michigan on Monday.

“We got to keep an eye on the battle that we face: The war on workers. And you see it everywhere, it is the Tea Party. And you know, there is only one way to beat and win that war. The one thing about working people is we like a good fight. And you know what? They’ve got a war, they got a war with us and there’s only going to be one winner. It’s going to be the workers of Michigan, and America. We’re going to win that war,” Jimmy Hoffa Jr. said to a heavily union crowd.

“President Obama, this is your army. We are ready to march. Let’s take these son of bitches out and give America back to an America where we belong,” Hoffa added.

The trouble is that I don’t think union rules allow fighting after 5 pm unless the party bosses start paying double time…and as fighting opens up the prospect of injury, the unions might have a huge problem with disability claims.  And just what is the Davis-Bacon “prevailing wage” for union goonery?

Message to Hoffa – there are vastly more of us than there are of you…and, if you really want a fight, our side is much better armed…I’m not at all worried about the outcome of a fight between unionized government bureaucrats and the regular folks of the TEA Party…a huge number of whom are former military, after all.

Postal Service Going Broke

Mark Noonan29 Comments

From the New York Times:

The United States Postal Service has long lived on the financial edge, but it has never been as close to the precipice as it is today: the agency is so low on cash that it will not be able to make a $5.5 billion payment due this month and may have to shut down entirely this winter unless Congress takes emergency action to stabilize its finances…

In 2010, the US Postal Service had revenues of $67 billion.  Even if we want to assume that revenues have fallen in 2011, there still has to be in the $65 billion-range of revenues…in other words, quite a lot of money.   Any company earning $65 billion a year can’t be worthless…other companies with that level of revenues are Apple, Microsoft, Boeing, Target, Walgreen and Johnson & Johnson. That puts the USPS in some pretty elite company on the revenue end – so, what gives?

Don’t know for certain without doing an audit, but it should be noted that the USPS employs about 574,000 people…far more than, say, McDonad’s, which is also a labor-intensive corporation.  My bet is that the USPS probably employs far more people than it needs to, probably at higher wages than needs be paid, and you can figure they probably get fat pensions and benefits.  The bottom line is that the USPS does not need to go out of business, nor does it need more taxpayer hand outs…but it does need to massively cut costs.

It is time for the USPS – which does enjoy a monopoly on first class mail delivery – to join the real world.  Sink or swim – either figure out how to make itself profitable off of $65 billion in revenue, or fold and let UPS and FedEx compete for shares of that $65 billion in revenue.  Not one thin dime of taxpayer money!

Labor Day Open Thread

Mark Noonan61 Comments

I hope that everyone has a delightful day today – as for me, I have to work.  Being a mindless cog in a faceless, corporate entity does have its draw backs.  Seems that the bosses have a misconception of what “labor day” is about.  Ah, well.  On the other hand, I’ll be earning double time and a half…and my vacation starts after work today!  Two weeks off…including a trip up to Reno to see the new grandson!  This does means that from the 9th on blogging might be a bit light, but we’ll make it all work.

We are, of course, all waiting in breathless anticipation of Obama’s jobs speech…while my leg hasn’t quite started to tingle over it, I’m sure I’ll be fainting dead away when The One tells us how he’s going to undo all the garbage he’s done up to this point.  I’m sure you all feel the same way – so, you can discuss that.  Or, if that proves a bit boring, you can go on to more exciting subjects, like how to clean lint out of the dryer.

So, have at it.