Al Gore blows a gasket:
This is the left – furious that we’re not buying their lies any longer.
Keep calm, have fun – we’ve got them cornered and will crush them.
HAT TIP: Hot Air
The Obama Downgrade
Instapundit has a small round up of disappointment among liberals about Obama, and has this to say:
It’s as if, in some sort of national spasm of carelessness and self-deceit, we elected a guy entirely unqualified by experience or personal characteristics to the single most important office in the land, to serve during a period of unusual troubles that he was not equipped to address.
And now liberals are starting to realize that things aren’t getting better and that Obama will be their standard-bearer in 2012. They’ve already lost the House, lost massively at the State level and will probably lose the Senate next year…and Obama is the guy who will symbolize the whole party. This is not looking good for our liberals.
To be fair to Obama, a President McCain may have made a lot of mistakes, too. McCain might also have bought the siren song of government spending and money printing. But there is this difference we can see – McCain is a man of long experience in practical affairs and would have seen by the end of 2010 that it wasn’t working…that something different needed to be tried, and having a fund of conservative and libertarian beliefs, he would have opened his mind to those who proposed a different course. Obama can’t do that – he lacks the knowledge to see an alternative to the liberal worldview he imparted in college. It may well be that Obama has never read a single, conservative book; that he’s never listened to a conservative thinker; his whole idea of us might really be summed up in his “bitter clingers” remark…and you don’t go to “bitter clingers” in search for ideas. But where do you go, then, when your liberal ideas have failed?
This triumph of hope over experience we had in 2008 is now on auto-pilot. Incapable of changing course for lack of intellectual ability to see a different course, it is only concerned with the mechanics of re-election…give a speech, have a fund-raiser; lather, rinse, repeat. There will be no change until after the election – rumor has it that Bernanke might print up a bag of money to sustain the market (that is why it is up to much so early)…and so complete collapse might hold off for a while, perhaps even until after the election. So, this may be it – Obama is downgraded – from “Hope and Change” to “Prolonged Situation” and we get to keep our fingers crossed that nothing bad happens for 15 months, because we’ve got a President who is incapable of dealing with it.
Gold Hits $1,750 an Ounce
From Bloomberg:
Gold futures exceeded $1,750 an ounce for the first time as the global rout in equities and commodities deepened on concern the economic slowdown will worsen after Standard & Poor’s cut the U.S. credit rating.
Gold for December delivery in New York advanced 2.5 percent to a record $1,756.80 an ounce and traded at $1,752.60 at 1:17 p.m. in Melbourne. Immediate-delivery gold rose as much as 2 percent to $1,754.63, also an all-time high…
Meanwhile, the Asian markets are getting slaughtered (Hong Kong was down more than 7% at one point, but it has bounced back a bit), while London looks for a bad day, partially fueled by the increasingly out of control riots.
What will happen tomorrow? Beats the heck out of me…could be that stocks will surge a bit as some people figure they’re beat down enough and its time to buy. Could be that Bernanke will announce right at market opening that he’s firing up the printing presses. Could be that it drops another 500 points in the first hour. We’ll have to just see. But as I keep saying – even if we dodge this bullet, we won’t dodge them all…the crash is coming, because there is simply too much debt.
Riots in Britain
From Reuters:
Rioting and looting spread across London on Monday as hooded youths set buildings and cars ablaze, smashed shop windows and hurled bottles and stones at police in a third night of violence in Britain’s worst unrest in decades.
Prime Minister David Cameron cut short his holiday to fly home to tackle the violence, which appeared to be led by youths alienated by years of underemployment which left them feeling marginalized even before the economic downturn…
Marginalized youth? Certainly – but also a civilization which has lost the will to defend itself. 70 years ago the people of London would have known what to do with people who – regardless of grievance – are really just using the incident as cover for a rampage of looting…they would have beaten them down.
It would be different if these people were trying to do something – if, that is, they were trying to conduct a revolution. Overthrow Parlaiment, set up a Republic…heck, re-establish absolute monarchy. Something, anything…but all they are doing is burning things and stealing. And the Brits are just wringing their hands over it…and even if the British people wanted to do something about it, they really can’t: Britain’s gun control laws have ensured that if ever some thousands of people want to loot and pillage, there is no way for the citizenry to stop them.
It is such a sad end for a once-great nation. Keep it in mind – and don’t let it happen here.
Just Released: Obama’s 2012 Bumper Sticker!
Via Instapundit:
On the Economy: What to do Now
It is clear to all, it is hoped, that the US and global economy is on the verge of collapse. While we might dodge the bullet this week, it is only a matter of a short time before all possible Big Government and fiat money expedients are exhausted, if they aren’t, already. We need bold, firm action – to do what needs to be done, endure the pain we’ll have to endure, and get on with the job of building American prosperity.
While there are no silver bullets, we can take some concrete steps which will ensure that the United States, at least, weathers the storm without too much pain. In light of the extreme danger, I suggest the following:
1. An immediate, across the board spending cut of $50 billion for the FY 2011 budget…that means what we’ll spend between now and October 1st. Every department, sparing only social security and military pay, gets cut in proportion as necessary to produce $50 billion in spending reduction.
2. For the FY 2012 budget, a reduction in spending – once again across the board and only sparing social security and military pay – of $500 billion.
3. An elimination of the corporate income tax on corporations employing 500 or less employees; a 50% reduction in the corporate income tax on corporations employing 501 to 1,000; a 25% reduction on all other corporations.
The cuts in spending are necessary to demonstrate to the world that even with the downgrade, the United States is deadly serious about reducing spending and thus restoring our bond rating in short order…in other words, to make certain that as the global economy goes “plop” that the United States is seen as a safe haven for money. And this feeds in to the tax reductions – the reductions in corporate taxes will not only spur domestic investment, it will also massively encourage the inflow of foreign capital as well as capital held by US corporations overseas. This could amount to trillions more dollars being injected in to our economy over the next 12 months, thus spurring the growth necessary to repair the damage already done, and that which is about to happen.
Because make no mistake about it: there is no easy way out. We are going to go through hard time. How hard depends on us – hope for more money printing and government spending and the reward may be a couple more quarters of “growth” but then a collapse which will make the Great Depression look like a picnic. Or we can take the adult course and realize that the free ride is over…that we will have to have a bit less nanny State and a bit more hard work on our part.
The choice is ours. We can do this, now; or we can flub it, and pay the price.
UPDATE: Asian stocks continue to slide. I’m less and less certain that anyone will be able to figure out how to dodge the bullet, even for a little while…but, we shall see.
UPDATE II: From Mish:
…being the ever-optimist, I prefer to look at the bright side of things. Get your party hats ready. Another DOW 10,000 party may be on the way…
If the only thing you can do is weep, then you might as well laugh…God is still there, and all will be well.
UDPATE III: From Instapundit:
PRESIDENT DOWNGRADE: Dow Finishes Down 634 Points. Obama’s speech certainly did nothing to slow the drop, though I suppose the White House will argue that it would have been 734 without the speech, meaning that Obama saved or created 100 Dow points . . . .
A friend of mine did note it rather amusing to watch the Dow drop 100 points while the Bamster was speaking…
Yet Another Incursion By the Mexican Military
From the Houston Chronicle:
A Mexican military helicopter landed Saturday afternoon at Laredo International Airport by mistake, said a spokeswoman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
Mucia Dovalina, the uniform public affairs officer for the Laredo Port of Entry, said the helicopter landed about 3 p.m., but she couldn’t share details such as the number of occupants or whether they were armed.
Dovalina said that, following protocol, CBP officers checked out the helicopter’s occupants, then allowed them to return to Mexico in the aircraft.
“The only thing that I can tell you is that they did land here,” she said. “It was by mistake. They were processed and they were returned to Mexico.”…
We seem to be getting a lot of mistakes by the Mexican military…seems the poor guys can’t tell north from south and often find themselves on our side of the border. The airport, itself, is two or three miles north of the Mexican border…which is, of course, the Rio Grande river..one does wonder how the pilot missed that in the old landmarks? Not like the river moves around a lot…unless this was the pilot’s first flight – and he didn’t have a compass – I’m mighty suspicious of this “mistake”.
My concern is that these incursions of the Mexican military are actually to assist the criminal element in Mexico – basically challenging our forces to stay out of the way so that the drug cartels can gain de-facto control of the ground. The next time a Mexican military force crosses, we should hold the men and the materials until we’ve had a chance to thoroughly investigate the matter…and we should insist upon compensation from the Mexican government for the violation of our national sovereignty (yes, we do have that…just like all other nations, we really do have a right to keep foreign military forces out of our nation).
Enough is enough, already…time to let the Mexicans know there is a border, and they can’t cross it without our permission.
Defending the TEA Party
From NRO’s The Corner:
Sen. John McCain defended the Tea Party against Sen. John Kerry’s “tea party downgrade” remark on Meet the Press this morning.
“We could have reached an agreement a lot earlier, but the members of the House of Representatives had a mandate last November, and it was jobs and the economy and it was spending. And for them to then agree to tax increases and spending increases was obviously a repudiation of the mandate they felt they had from last November,” McCain said.
He said that much of the “dysfunction” in the current political system could be attributed to “the failure of the president of the United States to lead.”…
Some times John McCain can be infuriating, other times he’s just so right. And gutsy – right now, the MSM/DNC drumbeat is that the TEA Party caused the problem. Here is a chance for “moderate” GOPers to flee and mumble their agreement. Not for John McCain – he just told it like it is: the TEA Party is about cutting government spending. To have agreed to tax hikes in lieu of serious spending cuts (and what we got in the deal was no where near “serious” enough to warrant signing off on revenue increases) would have been a rank betrayal.
To be sure, Democrats are all about that – in fact, over the past 40 years Democrats have mostly managed to advance their cause by gift of GOPers betraying principle and go along with whatever liberal flapdoodle is the fashion of the moment. Remember Arlen Specter – that was the sort of “Republican” who was forever cutting the GOP off at the knees. And that is precisely the sort of Republican the TEA Party people will not be.
Ultimately, we may have to obtain higher revenues in order to get out of this mess – but the fact of the matter is that Democrats will just lie about the spending cuts and greedily spend any increased revenue on their special interests. In a very real sense, the Democrat leadership in the United States doesn’t care about the United States. If they did, they would have proposed a real cut in next year’s spending – even if it were a symbolic cut of 10 or 20 billion. I mean, of course, real cuts – not reductions in the rate of growth, but an actual spending of less money next year than we did this year. Until Democrats show a real change of heart – show that they care more about America than they do about their own power and wealth – then we simply cannot go along with them…and thus the TEA Party standing firm against any tax hikes was an act of sublime patriotism. It took away from those who are destroying the United States part of their ability to keep doing it.
McCain sees it; I see it, too. Eventually, the whole country will see it – and I do believe that this growing understanding of what is really happening will destroy liberalism in 2012.
UPDATE: In Canada, Saskatchewan gets a “TEA Party upgrade” to it’s bond rating:
…Rather than quickly spending its newly-earned wealth, the provincial government has put its tax revenue toward paying the bills. S&P gave special credit to Saskatchewan for its “low-and-declining debt burden.” As of March 31, the province’s fiscal year-end, Saskatchewan’s debt totalled $4.6-billion, representing 38 per cent of this year’s projected operating revenues and only 8 per cent of its gross domestic product. Canada’s federal debt-to-GDP ratio sits at around 35 per cent…
Rational tax and regulatory policies, a pro-business environment, fiscal responsibility which puts a premium on living within means and paying debt. This isn’t rocket science, people…
Gold Goes to $1,700 an Ounce
The signal of absolute no confidence in the fiat money, usury-based economy…from Reuters:
Gold vaulted above $1,700 an ounce for the first time on Monday, after the respective pledges by the G7 and the European Central Bank to quell the turbulence in the financial markets did nothing to put investors at ease…
Of course it didn’t, because the ECB if bankrupt, all its money already having gone to shore up Greece and Portugal and there not being enough money in Europe to bail out Spain and Italy.
Going to be an interesting day – in the “Chinese curse” sense of the word.
Municipal Bonds on the Chopping Block?
From Zero Hedge:
While the impact on Treasuries as a result of the downgrade may be limited (after all the other side of the Atlantic is about as ugly as the US, so where could $8 trillion in marketable USTs practically go… at least for now), the same may not be said about the far smaller, $2.9 trillion municipal market, which is about to see a blanket downgrade tomorrow as S&P warned on Friday night, and of which Matt Fabian of Municipal Market Advisors earlier said that “There will be hundreds and hundreds of municipal downgrades, which will not do well to bolster investor confidence.” The scary bit: “Treasuries may be able to shake off a real impact from the downgrade. Munis I’m less sure about…
This could be devastating to the already stressed budgets of municipalities – many of them, burdened under bloated pension budgets and other foolhardy spending, are just an ace away from bankruptcy, as it is. Put a bit more pressure on them and a lot could fail. And even if they manage to scrape through, this will mean less money for police, fire and schools…and likely further rounds of government worker layoffs (which, in a macro sense, aren’t bad, but are plain and simple lousy for the people losing their jobs).
Learn the lesson – debt is poison. No government should ever carry any of it – certainly not for anything less important than fighting a World War. To mortgage the future under the best of circumstances is foolish..to mortgage it in order to keep up a bloated, wasteful government entity is criminal. The change must come, and we might as well get over the worst of it right away…slash budgets until no more bonds need to be sold, and then rebuild from there.
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