President Obama’s support among blacks and Hispanics has fallen to new lows according to a Gallup poll. Black support declined by 7% and among Hispanics by 11%, farther than at any point since his inauguration. Gallup says “it is not clear what is behind blacks’ and Hispanics’ less positive evaluations in March than in prior months. The major events of the month were the U.S. involvement in military action in Libya and the negotiations over the federal budget.”
But there’s another possible reason besides Libya and the deficit: inflation, starting with energy prices. The poor, including and especially blacks and Hispanics, are being hardest hit by increasing energy costs:
Lower-income households are paying nearly a quarter of their income for energy costs. … Minority households are disproportionately impacted by higher energy costs. … Senior citizens living on fixed incomes are particularly vulnerable to energy price increases. Seniors have the highest per capita residential energy consumption among all age categories.
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The poor, the elderly, and minorities are being hurt, not just by energy prices, but across the board. There are concerns that inflation is back, despite very low Fed rates. Although the Bureau of Labor Statistics says “inflation is flat” after declining markedly after the economic meltdown in late 2008, it may now be on the rise again. Recently, Bill Simon, the CEO of Walmart, said that serious consumer price inflation lay just ahead:
embedded by Embedded Video“Every single retailer has and is paying more for the items they sell, and retailers will be passing some of these costs along. Except for fuel costs, U.S. consumers haven’t seen much in the way of inflation for almost a decade, so a broad-based increase in prices will be unprecedented in recent memory.”
…
Along with steep increases in raw material costs, John Long, a retail strategist at Kurt Salmon, says labor costs in China and fuel costs for transportation are weighing heavily on retailers. He predicts prices will start increasing at all retailers in June.
YouTube Direkt
Today the president told us all how to deal with higher energy prices. We are to trade in our cars for new, more efficient models from GM, Ford and Chrysler.
The problem with the super-smart class is they still believe what they were taught in college. So, if in the basket of consumer goods housing makes up the largest share and if housing is collapsing then there must be no inflation. But in the real world, the consumers’ mortgages are not collapsing and the price of everything else per unit is skyrocketing (example what used to be a 6.5 oz can of tuna a year ago is now a 4.5 oz can of tuna and water but same price–still 30% inflation per annum, worse for toilet paper and just about everything else). And Obama golfs, plays basketball, and waits for another speech arrive so he can deliver it. Or he tells us to get smaller cars. What’s scary is how unconcerned he seems about being re-elected, or anything else for that matter.
I do read in the trade news that the price of uranium has stabilized.
So Obama’s new rallying cry can be….
“Let them eat yellow cake!”
I wonder which is worse, suffering deprivations as a result of tendering support to a regime that never cared about you in the first place, or the inevitable psychological, emotional, and physical disaster once it’s impossible to prop up the impending collapse from collapsing anymore?
One would think the former, because once the nickels turn out to be wooden, you might just have to rub them together to get a fire going on a chilly night.
Lot’s of sizzle but no steak never fed a hungry child.
Doug 1. Take on new car debt to be able to afford to pay for gas. Yes sir, that makes perfect sense to spend crazy no budget progressives.
Doug 1. Take on new car debt to be able to afford to pay for gas. Yes sir, that makes perfect sense to spend crazy no budget progressives.
The future will rescue everything. In the world of the Left, all succor comes from two sources, expanding the context of a problem and “investing” in the future. They are the party of big; they are the party of the future. The problem is that there are no returns on their investments, so the NPV of their “investments” is negative. The “big” turns out to be a “big mess” and the “future” turns out to be dystopia.
Spending on pet rocks doesn’t actually help, whatever the New Dealers think about the virtues of digging holes and filling them up again.
So when the President talks about “Carbon caps” there is no NPV in it, except some looney tunes one in which the imaginary externalities are factored into to create some sort of bogus return.
The President is far enough into his term for his earlier decisions to start returning negative cash flows. And we are seeing those cash flows. In the beginning his constituencies may have given him the benefit of the doubt, a la Kevin Drum “I trust Obama’s judgment more than my own”.
But at some point some will begin to notice they can’t afford to eat out any more; then the lattes go; then the weekend roast vanishes, then it is hamburger helper then no hamburger; finally it is Ramen noodles all the way. But what happens when you can’t afford the Ramen noodles? What happens when you have to drive 100 miles round trip to work any more and you can’t afford to work?
Then maybe even the true believers will start to wonder. But they will wonder too late. The damage by that time will be very severe. Yet that is what is going to have to happen. Not until people experience for themselves, like the folks in North Korea or Cuba, just what the what the Future actually looks like will they wake up.
Waking up to a nightmare is the definition of the Socialist experience.
Alec Baldwin captures the thought perfectly.
You “fix” things by spending. The problem is that the financial crisis is preventing the President from spending and thereby “fixing” things. There is no awareness than the spending itself may be related to the problem; that the fix is the wrecking ball. In this world view, the economy is a given. It just happens. There’s something out there to tax, like a state of nature, given and forever. So the President is a “victim” of bad luck. The wrong bracket choice in the tournament of life. If only he were lucky enough to have the money, he could fix things.
This is Third World thinking. “Evita! Evita! Dame pan Senora! Que, no hay? Como es posible? Alguien habra sacado. Que mala suerte.”
Hopey Changy sat on a wall
Hopey Changey had a great Fall
All the One’s toadies
and all the One’s friends
Couldn’t put Hopey Changey back together again
And there are unsubstantiated rumors that the arch-villain Reality was in the area at the time and there is some suspicion that he may have been responsible for pushing Hopey Changey off the wall, but these rumors cannot be confirmed at the present time.
In the meantime, be on the alert for Mr. Reality. The authorities want him– dead or alive. Preferably dead.
The diseases of our time are unorthodoxy and blasphemy. If allowed to spread they will destroy the goodness of Diversity as we know it. This cannot be allowed to happen. We need to kill all intolerant people–without exception.
#8Tcobb – heh. Nice. Yes, I agree; I suspect that Hopey Changey did indeed fall off the wall due to the presence of that ‘arch-villain Reality’. Reality will give the Imaginary a swift kick – every time.
What’s Obama’s solution? Spend imaginary money! That is, money we don’t have! On imaginary projects, or bridges-to-nowhere…and public sector salaries.
As for buying a new car so that you can ‘save on gas’…heh..who has the money for the new car?
And Obama also, in his patronizing, sermonizing, scolding manner, also told us to ‘get used to higher gas prices’. Obama speaks to everyone as if they were young children – and as if all problems were due to their own ignorance and/or inability to do..whatever.
Meanwhile, Obama is throwing Congress under the bus, scolding them for not coming up with a budget. Despite he, himself, having done nothing a year ago to come up with one! Obama is totally unable to devise a policy or program much less a budget – and can only campaign on amorphous imaginary future-oriented scenarios of ‘hopeandchange’. He has realized that the current fiscal crisis in the US might, just might, be blamed on his lack of leadership…a lack that is being touted more and more in the public.
So- he’s doing his usual. Blaming Others. It can’t be Bush this time. His other focus of blame is usually ‘the people’..whom he has at various times scolded as ‘unaware, partisan, ignorant, biased, racist’…Obama has no respect for The People..and certainly has shown his indifference to their representatives, Congress, with his insistence on Congress passing bills without reading those same bills. But now, Obama is distancing himself from Congress – both Democrats and GOP – by blaming them for the lack of a budget. Heh…He’s not working for America or Americans. His focus is on Himself…he’s trying to distance himself from the lack of a budget..and will even ensure a shutdown..to divert anger from him..to Congress.
An interesting argument being floated in the financial markets is “Has crude oil become the new Fed Funds rate?” Since the Fed is intent on pumping liquidity into the system and refuses to raise rates to combat inflation, the free market is filling this vacuum of leadership by inflating the price of oil.
The interesting argument about easy money is that it simply extends the pain by keeping the cost of money artificially low and thus keeps zombie borrowers (personal and commercial) alive longer. Until the weak fall over and are absorbed by the strong, we will continue to economically limp along here. It’s so aggravating to watch this process knowing full well that our President doesn’t have a clue of how this natural culling process actually works. And these are the same guys who have the most admiration for Darwin.
“Well the old folks will have to eat pet food again. Apparently you haven’t looked at the price of pet food lately.”
“Sir, I can not eat an Ipod.”
My son’s been unemployed for some time. I’ve helped him examine his options. Some jobs cost more for transportation, to and from, than they can be justified for.
In other words; It costs more to take and keep some jobs, than it does not taking that job and staying home. Fuel, food, transportation costs overwhelm the returns, making the job cost more to keep than it’s worth.
And if you have child care to add to this cost, you sometimes end up paying more than you get in return from your employer.
Perhaps if people face up to these realities, they can get an inkling of what a “budget” is all about.
The Doublethink to be worked this time around: “We have a strong recovery, but you all are worse off because the rich don’t contribute.”
“You’re not sharing in the recovery, because they are not sharing with with the country. Together we’ve started on the road back from the Bush economy, but the people who did well because of Bush won’t let you have your part of what you have made. We have to stay together. We have to get you all your fair share of America.”
We will see the Marxist Messiah of Class Struggle. Whoever the opponent is will be the whitebread dupe of big money, which is why the Messiah took so much cash from capital around the world, to keep the big money in its place.
You’re already seeing, in this budget test, the unloading of new bales of Doublethink. By November 2012 he’ll have both sides frothing with anger in a hall of mirrors. The only solution in that dilemma is to break all the mirrors.
this is the inevitability of all statist endeavors
misery is a by-product and desirous result for the totalitarian teetotalers in play today
it is the poorest that are hit hardest in their endeavors for power
if we can maintain the country’s foundation as more and more people FEEL what democrat POLICIES do then we have a fighter’s chance
Even liberal[?] morons have to buy oil and gas, as well as pay the price for that $600 billion of funny money Bernanke dumped on the world. Things like that don’t lie & can’t be hidden. Obama may have to hurry in his plans to either abort or steal the election, it’s getting tougher for the media to cover for him.
Of course we are in a period of inflation and stagflation. Compare all prices from a year ago. The core inflation only includes housing and wages, and betrays us by not including oil and food.
The number to watch is the debt ceiling which is predicted to be reached on May 18th.
steeple…
You are NOT looking at ‘easy money.’
Easy money is when credit is widely — even excessively — available for the broad swathe of society.
In hyperinflation the ONLY ones with ‘easy money’ are those closest to the fountain: direct recipients of the Federal Government.
The Money Trust ™
Federal employees
Federal contractors
Federal direct un-depositors ( Food Stampers, WIC, etc.)
And at the next remove
The medical sector — entire, to include its hangers on…
——–
By comparison hyperinflation slaughters general construction and manufacturing. It wipes out all and every who are extending credit. Hence commerce is bled white.
The ability of China to absorb the Obamanation is now gone. Chinese export prices are starting to ramp — massively.
Walmart knows this for a certainty.
——-
Crude oil pricing vs Fed Funds is gibberish. One correlates to how the Fed wants to rig the market. The other correlates to how the speculators want to game the market AND how bad the economic climate is.
Japan was a major oil importer. The tsunami has so screwed up her export engine that her imports are off. ( And she lost a refinery, too. )
When, not if, Red China hits the wall her imports will back off. Higher export prices + poorer America = reduced volume for both import and export.
BTW, the 64,000,000 unoccupied condos tell us that a large amount of her imports are being deployed to no useful purpose.
Bubbles are only obvious to all AFTER the big slide towards reality.
We’re looking at Peak muslim, Peak islam, and Peak leftism.
The normal curve after such peaks is a waterfall drop.
So the low-income folks and the elderly are hit hard by energy costs? No problem! Just legislate energy subsidies for them! Problem solved, right? I mean we just go to that big stash of Chinese Monopoly money and grab some more of the pink and the blue denominations, or something.
Hey, better yet: people above a certain income level have to pay an energy surcharge on their 1040 returns, to help Joe Kennedy Jr.’s “constituents.”
Wow, I think I’m getting this “progressive” thing down to a groove. Congratulate me.
OBAMA MOUNTS HIS HOBBY HORSE AND DREAMS OF AUSTERLITZ
We press them hard and fiercely, a l‘outrance
We do not let them think or speak or breathe
We pull the strings and watch the puppets dance
And soon they’ll love the system we bequeath
A system foreign to the USA
But one that fills my tender soul with pride
Battalions cheering as they march my way
Vast numbers of good people by my side
Like Soros and Pelosi, Harry Reid
Chuck Schumer, Farrakhan and Jesse too
My first term is but just a springtime seed
The sun of Austerlitz is now in view
There will not be a Moscow filled with ice
We’ll not retreat, we’re blessed with soft warm rain
We win and let the losers pay the price
And bow the head to Emperor Hussein
We would all be better off if we remember: we do not necessarily need a federal Government. 50 state governments with interstate compacts will suffice when push comes to shove (hat tip to Mr. Larsen) Its well past time to remind the Corruptocrats of that lesson.
Forget gold and silver; Stock up on food, water and Ammo. A “victory garden” couldn’t hurt either.
Train Wreck! Inflation with low growth equals that dreaded economic state–Stagflation. Here it comes… fuel, transportation and food prices raise…business passes along the inflation and then more inflation and more inflation and more inflation….will somebody please wake up the dumb ass SOB in the White House…oh he’s not there you say…at the golf course…no? out dining with Al Sharpton…oh that’s good I feel better now that I know he’s got some experts to assist him to get us out of the pending “double dip”. When the proletariat wake up, breakfast will be over!
#12. Cybergeezer
Yes. And a lot of it is due to regulation. I know a young mother who would like to work (her husband does) but the fact is that the price of child care is so high that the net yield of her working after deducting the price of child care would be virtually nothing. So she doesn’t, and I don’t blame her.
But back in the day there were a lot of old ladies who made a living taking care of the children of working moms while the moms were at work. Back then they were known by the title of “babysitters.” Now they have to be licensed and regulated. Its too expensive for them to do this, so they don’t. After all, everyone knows that politically unconnected Rubes need to be regulated for the common good, and squeezed for as much money as you can hope to get out of them.
That has become the purpose of government. The things that government was intended to do in the beginning seem to have become of little or no value to the government we have today. Where is the profit in prosecuting rapists or burglars? None. Now when it comes down to fining someone who is driving without a seat belt $500, the profit potentials are huge.
More and more government is not the answer–it is the problem.
the drudge report had the trump msnbc today show interview headlined this morning. much of the dc political class reads drudge with their morning joe.
http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/42469703/ns/today-today_people/
the libyan business has seriously scrambled all political compass in a way that can’t be underestimated. the donald’s timing is impeccable in this regard.
imho the fed could even do qe3–with no more damaging inflation than already infliced — if the fiscal policy were curbed >=ryan’s proposed bill for next fiscal year–and obamacare were repealed and the EPA was curbed.
But that’s a lot of ifs. So beatings will continue until morale improves.
Transportation cost directly impacts the lowest income members. It has far less marginal cost on the upper third and above.
For some time I puzzled over the high speed rail plan. Now I get it. Given higher gas prices it makes sense. Create a permanent class of worker under bees. They can get to work on the cheap with heavy subsity from the public trough. Then the upper class are forced to pay for the inane idea that we can get into our highly wasteful personal vehicles and go wherever whenever we want and still pay for the transportation of the bees. Old school euro socialism.
To some extent this might make sense in a small nation like Israel or Belgium. Makes no sense in Montanna.
They have maxed out beer and cigarettes next is fuel. Next is food and then what. income? Pray not.
Rail plan is gonna fail. Should have focused on domestic energy. Nobody wants to give up their Mustang or SUV they have worked so hard to attain. A small margin in P/E ratio can tip the balance now.
We lost our faith in ability to learn to live underwater.
We’ve lost our country.
That’s not a cry of despair, just a sobering assessment of the situation we face, so that knowing what action(s) to take can be done rationally.
Tim Carney at the Examiner touches on one of the huge problems with reigning in government: Big business has switched to the statist dark side
http://washingtonexaminer.com/politics/2011/04/budget-battle-business-odds-tea-party
Nothing new. It’s just that, like everything else about Obama’s administration, everything is being happening at an accellerated pace and a grander scale than before. More and more, big business is dependent on government contracting and subsidies for its bottom line.
T/22—You’re right about the regulation; it’s hurt virtually everything and in ways that are often invisible to the ordinary person.
My wife grew up in the Rockies and had an Italian aunt who loved children and didn’t speak very good English. Over about 50 years she probably helped raise 20% of the children in that town, maybe more.
One day arrives the regulator, Dept of Children’s Something-or-other and plans to shut her down unless she does this and that, etc, etc.
Among the children she was sitting were the grandchildren of the mayor, who had also been with her as a child. Before long she got her permit and no further trouble.
This was a while back and I’m not sure what would happen now.
“As a historian, it always occurred to me the smart thing for government was always to pay the guys with guns first.”
-Secretary of Defense Robert Gates
I’m by no means a Gates fan but That is a very astute statement. Like any good bureaucrat he is trying to protect his cow.I’m sure that statement make sense to a boy from Chicago.
Recently it has been reported that clothing prices will be going up significantly.
And prior to that, I read of a major reason for that increase. Much of US cotton production has been switched over to growing corn. Corn is easier and cheaper to grow than cotton and is more profitable due to the use of corn to make ethanol for fuel. And that in turn has caused a reduction in the industrial capability to process cotten, and of course a loss of jobs as well as increased dependance on foreign sources of cotton.
“What happens when you have to drive 100 miles round trip to work any more and you can’t afford to work?”
Read where some auto workers are driving well over 1000 miles to get to work. The auto plants where they started working in the upper midwest have closed and they have had to get jobs at plants in the south and west. They can’t afford to sell their homes and move and don’t want to displace their families, some of whom have local jobs, so they rent apartments, get roommates and make that long, long drive home only on the weekends. With the price of fuel going up as much as it has I’ll bet it is now maybe only once a month they see their families. I wonder how they view the UAW now.
#2. Talnik,
My favorite thing I learned at the university I attended came from an economics professor. She stated that it was okay for a nation to run up any amount of debt it wanted, because states have “unlimited powers of taxation”.
My favorite thing I learned at the university I attended came from an economics professor. She stated that it was okay for a nation to run up any amount of debt it wanted, because states have “unlimited powers of taxation”.
During the Great Leap Forward or the Collectivization campaign in Russia, I forget which, the Commissars set the state’s share of grain so high that they left nothing for the farmers to eat or keep back for seed corn.
When farmers tried to hide food to survive, they were spied upon and then punished. This quite naturally led to a countryside in which the farmers died from starvation and there was no seed left to plant. Then the Commissars could collect nothing at all.
You would have thought they would anticipate this. But the truly amazing thing about leftist ideologues is they were actually incapable of foreseeing this possibility. Yes, the State has “unlimited” powers of taxation. You can tax at 200% of production! Three hundred percent! I learned it at the university!
Once this is taught and accepted as religious dogma, nothing, especially not common sense, can persuade them otherwise. About the best thing in socialism is the look of surprise on a Commissar’s face when he sees that 3-5 is a negative number. It’s almost worth becoming Communist for.
Just been reading a great and comprehensive history of Rome. The author traced the end of the empire to the increased taxation burdens on the populace for support of the army and the bureaucracy. Guess Gates learned from the last Roman emperors.
To extract so much of the GDP meant that the lower orders came to think of the imperial government as a problem worst than the threat of barbarians. Even the defending armies had no faith in their government and just let the Huns and the Vandals in.
Lots of lessons about liberals for us in that book.
From 7. wretchard:
“So the President is a “victim” of bad luck. The wrong bracket choice in the tournament of life. If only he were lucky enough to have the money, he could fix things.”
If we had some ham, we could have a sandwich. If we had some bread.
For Obama what you or I do to put down food on our table or insure our college aged daughter is fungible. Less than that really. None of that matters.
He might as well be handing out plastic keys to heaven.
Meanwhile Israel took a big risk and employed Iron Dome around Beersheva. Two missiles destroyed by the battery. One outside range hit a bus with a child and driver. Both injured, child seriously.
Spindok
Spindok…
Rail doesn’t even pencil out in TOKYO. (!)
Lost upon the West, even the single most favorable environment for commuter trains to be found on the planet is uneconomic.
Their national government had to bail out the system through the back door.
Their bullet train is a money loser on most routes. They lost entire trains to the quake. ( Imagine ripping along at 120 kph and then the ground heaves you clean off the rails — the train entire! Then while the train crashes across the countryside it is repeatedly thrown back up into the air. Yep. No one gets out alive.
Compare and contrast to nuclear power.
Obviously high speed rail travel is suicide during earthquakes.
———
The problem with all MODERN train construction is that one must rip out too much existing construction to create the right-of-way. In urban centers this effort ALWAYS goes insanely over budget.
Reno, a rail town pure and simple, spent hundreds of millions of dollars just to drop the mainline down into an acoustic tunnel. The purpose was to unlock urban street traffic which had built up over the decades. The price ballooned 20 times over original projections as time went by.
And it was the construction budgets that wiped out the Japanese railroads.
Railroads as commuter machines are uneconomic to build, period. Even light rail is a pure boondoggle.
The only advantage found with light rail is that it permits drug addicts economic opportunities in the suburbs while the office workers are away from their possessions. Once the Sacramento light rail extension reached Folsom even the prison guards were burgled. Sweet.
Meaning that whitopia has to flee all over again.
Yeap, big savings on motor fuels… NOT.
Someone up-thread failed to close their italics and the setting is running on.
#31. Whitehall
If the history of the 20th century has anything to teach us, it is that those who style themselves as “Bolsheviks,” “communists,” “socialists,” “liberals,” or “progressives” are incapable of learning. To them Reality is just a small town in Oklahoma.
Looks like the vote is not going against prosser in wisconsin afterall.
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/264209/breaking-computer-error-gives-prosser-7381-more-votes-almost-certain-victory-christian
Might be a good idea for pubbies to wait until the last moment to release their votes so the dems don’t have a chance to bring out their dead.
Hmmm. Interesting that the states with the highest rates of income tax (New York, NJ, CT, Illinois) are seeing net out- migration. States with no or low income tax (Florida, Texas) are seeing net in-migration. This is called the tipping point. The people who are most vulnerable to extortionary taxes are also the wealth creators. When taxes get too high, either they stop working–”Why work for someone who is robbing me? Do I look stupid?”–or they move somewhere else–”Sayonara, suckers!” This obviously has the effect of slamming state revenues, just the opposite of what the dimwits now insisting on taxing the rich think will happen. So far the country as a whole hasn’t quite reached a tipping point, but the way we are going, we could. A common after-dinner discussion topic in my upper middle-class circle is “What countries would you consider moving to if things get too bad in the US?” This is the simple reason why it is smart of the Republicans to reform the federal budget without raising taxes.
steeple@10
The interesting argument about easy money is that it simply extends the pain by keeping the cost of money artificially low and thus keeps zombie borrowers (personal and commercial) alive longer. Until the weak fall over and are absorbed by the strong, we will continue to economically limp along here.
I think the Fed is trying to compensate for very bad policy from Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank, Chuck Schumer, Harry Reid and the entire White House Economic so-called team (more like a Cauldron of teeming economists).
These people intensely dislike the Free Enterprise/Free Market economic system along with the Federal Political structure with real State and local control. They do not care if it functions well and prefer if it functions poorly. If the strongest economic system in history with the happiest and most prosperous population the world has ever known is functioning well — why change it? Why would “sweeping and fundamental change” be called for?
In fact they create many of the Zombie borrowers. It’s policy. If we had a robust, growing economy — many of the Zombie borrowers would be Zombies no more — and have no need of their nostrums. The truth is those folks down in Washington don’t give a crap about your current house, car, job, family, town. It all should be traded in for something you owe them for. Then you’ll be a good zombie — their zombie.
The Fed greatly increased the money supply to compensate for a fall in the velocity of money (i.e. money would sit in the bank rather than circulate). Perhaps a big chunk of that was needed but I won’t be sticking up for the Fed the way Ramesh Ponnuru did over at NRO.
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/263668/not-enough-money-ramesh-ponnuru
Obama should have remembered that a lot of the bitter clingers actually run businesses — many of them fairly large (hundreds of workers). They had every reason to be suspicious of the Left Democrats and his early moves could have only made them more wary. Twas “uncertainty” that killed the recovery. With owners bitterly clinging to their businesses, they were not doing much hiring. They were trying to do more with fewer workers and would naturally focus on improving their profits through cutting cost and raising prices rather than investing, hiring, and trying to sell more — The stuff that would get the economy growing robustly.
Repeating from the prior thread because it is that important, US 10 year Treasuries were yielding 13 basis points over German 10 year Bunds today. The market is speaking about the quality of US debt and our leaders better start damn well listening. They, and thus we, are on a very slippery slope.
And since the average duration of the US Treasury portfolio is under 4 years now, the risk of refinancing is greater than that of the UK where their duration is over 13 years.
The gnomic Wretchard: “Waking up to a nightmare is the definition of the Socialist experience.”
That bears repeating.
Which reminds me, back in days of yore, didn’t Lenin promise them something like “peace, land, and bread” but ended up giving then “blood, gulags, and starvation”?
#32
Hey Snake, did you forget to close your italic code?
Don’t know if that’s causing the problem, but everything after your comment is italicized.
Nope, not you.
I’ve edited the defective closing tag. Fixed.
Hey Blert! Dramatic post! Actually, the bullet train does not run where the tsunami was. I think the closest is Koriyama, not sure. Those trains that were lost were just ordinary commuter trains. The bullet train (Shinkansen) actually has a sensor that predicts quakes and rapidly slows it down–pretty amazing, no? I am not aware that any bullet trains were lost. You are right though that the Japanese rail system is not completely self supporting. And I agree that the train ideas mooted by Obama for Florida, etc were just plain dumb. At the same time, I wonder what will happen as the baby boom generation gets too old to drive. There will be millions of old codgers and codgerettes stuck in the suburbs with no wheels! For me, I think I will live in NYC where I can always hail a cab… assuming I can afford it, ha ha, ha<=bitter laughter. Unfortunately, there are not too many cities in America where one can conveniently exist without a car. In Japan and Europe, there are many. You may have a new perspective on this issue when your children take your car keys away!
Hummm, I wonder if some Sr. Citizen who spent time on the race gun circuit and shooting for money is someone you want to piss off?
Walt,
You are the Kipling of our age.
Prosser ends up winning and it will be time to turn the lights out, the party is over.
Democratic party that is. no more 300 million dollar bribes er… campaign contributations. Since the donks have no ideas for today’s world, they have been buying and stealing elections. Tke that away from them and they have nothing left.
Except changing their name to Republicans and running as a croney capitalist like Mitt is doing.
Like my grandpa told me during the Truman administration; “Congress is a zoo. Elephants, Donkeys and cockroaches. Your duty is to kill cockroaches while avoiding being stepped on by the Elephants, or shat on by the donkeys”.
Old, trite cliches to the rescue: “limbo”, “a dead man walking”.
What is underneath these cliches? What will surface?
The cliches (speaking of Lisbon) omitted: earthquake, tsunami.
“That evening Portugal entered political limbo – and became the financial-market equivalent of a dead man walking.”
“Lisbon surrenders to the markets”
http://www.presseurop.eu/en/content/article/589071-lisbon-surrenders-markets
obama is trying zimbabwe or venezuela logic on Americans. I think they are a lot smarter then he gives them credit for. many now see that he has hardly ever spoken the truth.
it maybe his undoing. he will fail if the fuel/food prices climb and if the jobs picture doesn’t improve.
I doubt that he can mobilize enough voter fraud at this time. but I also don’t sell him short …maybe he can get re-elected on voter fraud alone.
And just think, folks, if Obama got his Cap and Trade Scam approved our electricity prices would be “spiraling upwards” (as in out of control) but it would not matter because we would have “changed all our light bulbs.” I wonder if anyone ever explained to that idiot the difference between the rating on a light bulb and that on an air conditioner, as in 100 watts versus 4500? Not that he would understand. Nor would it matter; they needed that Cap and Trade money for Obamacare.
As for the farmers in the USSR, the government there decided that it was best to allow farmers on the collective farms to grow their own crops and cattle in addition to working for the state; over half the food in the country came from those privately run farm plots. Then in the 80’s, faced with severe grain shortages, the government subsidized the price paid for grain and subsidized the cost of bread. The farmers sold the grain from their private plots and fed their privately owned cows government subsidized bread.
As for light rail, I rode the Metro in DC the whole time I was there; did not drive to work at the Pentagon more than 3 or 4 times. And I noticed that the cost to ride the Metro always closely matched the cost to drive your car; this is called “thermodynamics.”
Also, there is late breaking news from Wisconsin. The Union favored judge candidate was 204 votes ahead of the incumbent, Judge Prosser. But they just found out that they failed to count the votes for a whole town, a small rural town. Prosser is now 7000 votes ahead. And yesterday the AP described the election results as a stinging rebuke of the governor’s policies.
In March Madness vernacular that this President can understand, his rhetoric is always soaring, but his programs are always crashing, or in other words:
He rules like he’s king, but he scores like he’s Butler.
I don’t think Obambus grasps the difference between fixed and marginal, capital versus cash, hype versus reality. Doesn’t know any of those are issues. Has never dealt with any. Was never taught the difference. Must have skipped Econ 1.
As for support, well yeah, reality bites, as they say.
Remember, Obambus has always been very off-putting, the only reason he’s potus is that Hildabeast was worse, and John McCain was old and crazy, as his picking of the way green Palin established too firmly. Obambus’ hype only extends to the MSM, and the MSM have become somewhat disenchanted, and the MSM flows downhill.
About mid 2009 I saw a document from from the Western Governors Association discussing various green energy proposals. I recall that they were the typical sort of green fantasy schemes that would necessarily cause the cost of electricity to skyrocket. That isn’t what keeps that document in my memory, however.
It was the frequent repetitive mention about how low income people would, should, and must be exempt from the expensive new requirements or would simply be given cash to compensate. Everyone else could just go to blazes- where I suppose they’d at least have free heat.
That continues to amaze me, although I know it shouldn’t. The idea that the poor should be exempt from the disastrous policies their votes enable seems to be a basic philosophy of the US government today, and perhaps to every welfare state everywhere. So I hear stories from people shocked to discover that welfare recipients have better health insurance than they do, and don’t have to pass a drug test to get benefits either. Oh- and no taxes. Nice work- ha ha- if you can get it.
Forgive me for repeating the obvious, but this won’t last- no matter how much hopey changey nonsense the commissar dishes up.
“he will fail if the fuel/food prices climb and if the jobs picture doesn’t improve.”
They will and not fast enough. Some are crediting the Bush tax cut extensions with the drop in unemployment (actually it wasn’t so much a drop as a halt in the increase). The ‘Battle of Wisconsin’ put a large hole in his funding. He still has more money then his Republican candidate will. One of the downsides about having so many Republicans running is it reduces the amount each candidate can raise. Not a lot but enough.
I’m typical, I think in that I’m sitting on my wallet until after the first primaries. I may close it up entirely if a certain RINO looks to be in the lead.
The Obominations best chance is for the Repubs to select another crony capitalist RINO to run for POTUS. He will have to do it without the Conservatives. I hope the days of conservatives letting the left(MSM) pick Republican candidates are over.
It is certain they will try. It is up to the alternative media to stop them.
Meteor to destroy the earth Sunday, women and minorities worst hit.
Meteor to destroy the earth Sunday, women and minorities worst hit.
Of course–and its all some white males’ fault. Its a definitional thing.
obama once told bankers HE was the only thing standing between standing between them and angry pitchforks.
it is still true.
but soon the angry pitchforks will soon test obama’s agility.
can obama jump out of the way in time to avoid the first thrust?
stonewall jackson was unlucky.
obama has other liabilities.
The Cannibals gather at the breach.
Must have skipped Econ 1.
Twernt necessary. He took Stashonomics instead.
“Oh the minstrel boy has gone to war and on the links of golf you’ll find him”
“With his Biden strapped to his side and the media sucking up behind him.”
So that is what, about 2 million dollars down the drain in Wisconsin? Even the New York Times is bad mouthing bio-fuels. A self promoter like weird hair Trump is throwing mud and it looks like it is sticking. Oh How cruel a Spring is a cummen ain. The Ides of March and the Farts of April are being most cruel to the green oil anointed king.
As for the high speed trains, in Japan I assume the train(s) destroyed in the tsunami were destroyed by first being thrown off the track by the earthquake, and then 10 to 15 minutes later, the wave came and drowned any survivors. I think the train is completely missing, which means to me that every single passenger on the train is dead and their bodies are washed out to sea.
In Florida, the state made the best possible decision to turn down the offer of money to build high speed rail between Tampa and Orlando. This train would never make sense. Tampa Bay metropolitan area is incredibly spread out, see there’s this Bay (call Tampa Bay) which separates the population in half. For example, it would easily cost $40 just to take a cab from say Clearwater Beach to Downtown Tampa, then you would get on the high speed train, and pay what, say $100 (maybe much much more) to buy a ticket to Orlando. Then when you get the Orlando train station (say the Orlando Convention Center) now you got to pay another $40 for a taxi to say visit your friend in Winter Park. (Orlando is one of the most spread out cities in the USA for its population size). Or you could just put $30 bucks of gasoline in your car, and drive over to Winter Park and back and still have gas left in your car when you are done.
The high speed train for Central Florida did not make any sense from a Travel Time point of view, a Travel Flexibility point of view, a Cost to the Passengers point of view, or a Cost to TaxPayers point of view. Again, thank goodness that people in Florida realized what Gigantic Boondoggle the high speed train would have been.
And IMHO, all programs pushed by Obama (Cap & Trade, ObamaCare) are as stupid, reckless and wasteful as the Central Florida High Speed Train.
BTW, back in 2008 right before the general election, a then-friend (now ex-friend) & I were having a debate re: Obama.
part of it went like thus:
Friend: Name ONE policy of Obama’s that would negatively affect you.
Me: His cap & trade scheme. He said during an interview that it would cause electricity rates to skyrocket. I can’t afford that.
Friend: You don’t make enough money for that to affect you. I PAY MORE MONEY IN TAXES ….!!
Me: Is this about how much money you make, or is this about how much money I make?
Friend: Oh, it’s ALWAYS about how much money you make! It’s ALWAYS about YOUR money!!
To appreciate the delicious comedy in this, you need to understand a few points of context:
1) At the time I was making about $42K a year working 2 jobs, 70 hours a week.
2) At the time, Friend had just taken a new job making $92K per year as a college administrator. Friend’s previous job for 17 years prior had been college professor at a state school — i.e., a unionized state employee. “I PAY MORE MONEY IN TAXES” had been a constant gripe all those years that Friend spent as a state employee.
3) At no time did I ever tell Friend that they made too much money. In fact I always responded to the “I PAY MORE MONEY IN TAXES” gripe with the reply, “I agree, you pay too much in taxes. So do most people who are paying taxes. The government taxes too much and spends too much. The government is too d@mn big.”
4) A short time later that same friend confessed to me that they thought I was secretly jealous of the amount of money they made. In all honesty this had never once crossed my mind. My friend was an exceptionally hard worker, very organized & effective, and I had always viewed their success as a result of that hard work.
5) Friend has a Ph.D. and is very intelligent.
So, yah, try to unravel THAT Gordian knot of human psychology:
A person who has known you for 20 years accuses you of having secretly resented their income all along.
And tosses out an economic whopper, that your hanging-on-by-your-fingernails lower-middle-class income isn’t *high* enough to be affected by skyrocketing electricity rates. WTF???
IOW, I wasn’t just a treacherous covetous bastard, I was a too-comfortable one to boot.
What liberals project onto the rest of us never ceases to amaze me.
Good evening all,
Did anyone see the interviews that The Donald did on NBC with and CNN Today? He made a reasonable argument regarding o’s lack of documentation; explained the difference between a colb and a real certificate and explained the other points as well.
What is interesting is in the CNN interview, which occurred after the NBC interview, the host was actually challenging The Donald and making the argument on behalf of o. I appreciate how deeply the media has burrowed into o’s pocket and how much they have invested in his success, however, it was very interesting to see the “reporter” arguing with The Donald about the value of the proof offered by o. It makes more sense for the reporter to be asking o for his document instead of arguing with The Donald. The burden in this instance should be o’s since the two requirements for the office are both dependent upon questions settled by his certificate.
Anyway, I have long thought that when it was shown that the emperor had no clothes that this would gain traction. O has lied and dissembled about so much that it is much easier to believe he would lie about this.
Two more thoughts. First, if he is found to be ineligible it is going to be a disaster, he will not go easily and his supporters will become violent. If those who suggest he is a narcissist are correct it may be a very dangerous time. Second, if he is found to be ineligible, any “reporter” and politician excusing his decision not to provide the paperwork needs to have that fact tied around their neck like an albatross and mentioned at the beginning of every interview and/o comment they make for the balance of their careers.
#30
“During the Great Leap Forward or the Collectivization campaign in Russia, I forget which, the Commissars set the state’s share of grain so high that they left nothing for the farmers to eat or keep back for seed corn.
When farmers tried to hide food to survive, they were spied upon and then punished. This quite naturally led to a countryside in which the farmers died from starvation and there was no seed left to plant. Then the Commissars could collect nothing at all.”
It was the collectivization of the Kulack class in the Ukraine. A recent book called “Bloodlands” does a superb job of describing what happened. Also another book about Stalin called “Court of the Red Czar” details this too. Fascinating reading. But the best short book about Stalin I have read is by Martin Amis called “Koba the Dread”. The first 20 pages are worth the cost of the book.
All of this comes down to the basic view of mankind. Either man is inherently good or evil. Totalitarians believe the former. And when a person is not up to their vision of the “new Soviet man” or the “Aryan” race then they become less than human and are far game for destruction.
http://www.amazon.com/Bloodlands-Europe-Between-Hitler-Stalin/dp/0465002390/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1302233637&sr=1-1
http://www.amazon.com/Stalin-Court-Simon-Sebag-Montefiore/dp/0307291448/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1302233694&sr=1-3
http://www.amazon.com/Koba-Dread-Laughter-Twenty-Million/dp/1400032202/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1302233737&sr=1-1
Slartibartfast -
Obama, the man, is a creation of liberal white women and their homocon effeminate counterparts in government service and the attendant outlets of media. Obama is the quintessential “Magic Negro” in the wings, ready to sweep them away, both hoary woman and hoary man child on a Unicorn ride into the future of girly phallic fantasy.
Wiki
“The magical negro is typically but not always “in some way outwardly or inwardly disabled, either by discrimination, disability or social constraint,” often a janitor or prisoner. He has no past; he simply appears one day to help the white protagonist. He usually has some sort of magical power, “rather vaguely defined but not the sort of thing one typically encounters.” He is patient and wise, often dispensing various words of wisdom, and is “closer to the earth.””
They will cry that they are entitled, it was promised, but he went on to that European hussy, wooed a prince of frogs and a duke of ducks they stand in white waiting for words that do not come.
The game is about gaming and lying while being technically correct, that is if you know what is is. Time bandits are not stealing from you. Your dead babies have no rights nor do the foreign campaign contributors neither dishwashers unite.
Obama plays the part perfectly to the woman who dreamed of the dark rapist in the night, after the hormone induced shudders of abandon, there is a breakfast to be cooked, a cat to be pampered, and a finicky American car that will need to be jump started to make it work, after a hot bath and an hour smudging makeup, applying diversionary scents, and a modest adjustment of cloths new suitors must be sought on the claims of justice, before a judge, where art mine next victim daddy war bucks? For somebody needs to be blamed for this evil intrusion and there are no shortage of male suspects who fit the description. Let us cleave our memories towards the most deserving of all foul beasts; it is time to point out the perpetrator from the blotter. And the name of the prince of the nanny state shall not be blamed; George stole my Bush baby and robbed me of my innocence! Throw another fetus onto the barby and shrug, all mine, all mine in flames at last.
…and thus came down a sentence of life, purgatory and sacrifice with no way in ‘cept the doin’ of time and the abandonment of family, the next hero will have to come from a good and ample government pension and kids too dead to interfere might make right and any voter in a perfect storm will do. Don’t matter so much ‘bout tomorrow, I’m gonna get me mine and retire from the mire.
All your future are belong to us.
Bogie-#60
It is my considered opinion that no one employed by the government pays any tax. If the source of the money, and it’s destination as a tax, are one and the same, no “tax” has been paid- the person merely received a lower salary, and the sleight of hand with the “tax”, is simply a ploy to keep the rest of us from revolting. If I give a man five dollars, and then take one back, how much did I give him?
and another thing,
regarding the government shut-down. I really would not want to be the one that has to explain how soldiers/marines/airmen paid for our freedom with their lives while not getting paid by o.
The Donks believe, really believe, that they suffer unfairly from unforeseen and unpredictable consequences to their policy that must be explained as being the results of some plot cooked up by the Koch brothers and Rupert Murdoch in some seekrit meeting. The Donks without a trace of irony pass this story around at secret meetings along with justifications for overcoming the nefarious plots against Justice and History by corrective plots, err plans, to circumvent campaign finance laws or voting fraud laws or immigration laws. That is all OK though because it is for the children and is in the service of Justice and History and was only done in response to what must of been a plot in a seekrit meeting by those darn Koch brothers and Murdoch where they dined on caviar, but not Wagyu beef because that is reserved for The Won.
Good news today:
1. Iron Dome works,
2. Prosser pulls it off.
The serious lesson from Wisconsin and the prior stolen Frankel election in Minnesota and the NBPP case under Holder and what is happening to the military is that we cannot be complacent about those we depend on in law enforcement or the armed forces just because we assume that they are politically sympathetic. Our assumptions may be misplaced and the consequences of corruption, especially in the Federal and State law enforcement leadership, can be truly devastating. Governor Walker was facing a nightmare scenario, which hopefully the margin of Prosser’s lead will now spare us. What if the election is called for the Democrats because of obvious fraud? Walker would have to look at his phone and wonder just who in hell could he call? The unionized State Law Enforcement are now suspect after their conduct during the siege of the State Capital and also due to reported instances of partisan misconduct during the election. The fall of the Fed is like a passage from Paradise Lost. Under both Democrats and Republicans it was always a given that any local misconduct would be subject to appeal to a professional and impartial Fed. That image is now shattered. The US is much farther along the road to “normal” that is Third World status because of that change than anything in the Europeanization of national finances could accomplish.
–one thing about rail, everybody goes to where the train goes and maybe nobody goes where it doesn’t. Or if someone in Boss Country wants it to go nowhere, nowhere is where it will go. Like airliners anywhere our TSA union cockwalks the concourse, no go if Boss say so.
Not like all those damn cars and trucks in Libya, which go anywhere they want anytime, which is not good for the drivers’ own good, or NATO’s neither as you can readily see.
USA just has too many roads, smooth wide suckers with shoulders and gentle EZ repair gradients.
And hell there’s vehicles all over the place, and oil in the ground scattered all over so many states! Really, how are we going to keep all this under control?
Seriously, crowds can assemble, big ones, off in the countryside, at night, anytime anywhere, just like they have some sort of right to.
This really sucks, how is anybody in DC going to get the people’s work done?
No, this mobility stuff is all turdles, all the way down. What we need is that high speed rail, or just rail, so we can finish sending the personal vehicle fuel necessarily through the roof.
Yes, internal passports, too, will help create some order (the terrorists you know, BOO!).
Travel permits, natch, until the emergency is over, which it will never be but shhhh, never mind.
Ahh, yes, travel permits, and closing down those unsafe small farms and gardens (S-510, remember, my faithful dogs?), and government food ration cards, will keep people where they belong!
Instead of all that moving to other places trying to cheat their own country (not me, i have the fifty American flags as you see, onstage behind me) out of staying put their fair share.
But none of these beautiful Progressive improvements can happen (well, not without a lot of bloodshed anyway –and who knows whose blood –with the bitter klingons unconstitutionally armed to the teeth stumps) unless and until we can get those damned personal vehicles off the night time back roads.
I mean, how many more drilling rigs can we blow up, anyway –it ain’t easy no more, with them damned vigilantes tea partisans like wolverines out there.
@63 raven
You are entirely correct in your math: government employees do not pay taxes, they have lower salary.
Similarly, if you “tax” unemployment or SS outlays, then you are in fact just giving less. This is of course one way to approach a reduction in SS costs…. California already taxes unemployment, as I’m sure other states do.
Regarding Gates and paying the military: you always, always, always pay the professionals with guns first. If you do not, then you soon will not be in a position to pay anyone–possibly because there is a least six feet of dirt between you.
–JC
RE: Prosser
Looks like Prosser might pull it off. Seven thousand votes is a lot of juice. It also, if he wins, should cast a bit of doubt on the ubiquitous claims of election fraud. I don’t doubt that it happens, but I do doubt the constant claims of election fraud made by conservatives. I don’t think it happens nearly as often as some claim. In Chicago? Yeah, probably. But not in a lot of places.
I love Williamsburg, Va. You ever been there? It’s fantastic. I’m kinda alone on that opinion within my own family, tho. Strangely, they find it quite boring. Williamsburg is all about history, old craft, the functioning of a bygone age. It’s irresistable to the engineer in each of us, to figure out how all that fantastuc stuff worked.
Man I love going down the street, dodging into the shops, getting the lay of the land, then darting in to the inn at dusk and living it up!
It’s really tragic that the Colonial Williamsburg version of peanuts and pineapples is so horrific. Every great great adventure extracts a price when the gov’ment runs it.
Funny, I never thought to take the family to this treasured place while all eyes were upon my moves regarding the fiscal health of a nation.
Call me old fashioned.
At what point do higher transportation costs affect the trend to outsource manufacturing? Will offshoring slow due to uncertainty in transportation costs?
For most of our history trans costs were very high, many times they were multiples of the actual cost of the product at its origin. That’s changed recently, and those costs have been almost negligible, unless you’re buying something for “$19.95 plus shipping and handling” from one of those TV ads.
What happens when they start taking a more significant piece of the pie, and the advantage of cheap labor used to produce a widget in China is (at least partially) offset by the cost to get the product here?
@62
Heh. Koba the Dread. I’ve got a review on that Amazon page that I wrote several years ago. I’m pleased to see that I wrote the following in that review:
There should have been no debate. We should have wiped communism from the face of the earth back in 1917, and definitely should have done so at the end of World War II.
Whenever I think of Stalin, though, I think of a section in a book by Robert Conquest (I think it was Conquest) who wrote about a recorded Stalin speech released on a vinyl double LP. One side contained the speech and the other three sides consisted of nothing but applause from the audience. That tells you all you need to know about the insanity of Communism.
#19
Nice one Walt,
I attach the following link for your listening pleasure.
One thing is certain; Obama is no Napoleon
http://napoleon.thepodcastnetwork.com/audio/tpn_napoleon_20061129_014.mp3
68. Dack Thrombosis
Not sure fraud is the correct word here. Donks that were claiming victory after it looked like their gyrl won by 200 votes now have to tack and claim it was rigged. That is a long reach when there is no wind in your sails.
As LBJ was heard to remark; “politics ain’t beanbag”. What happened in the Battle of Wisconsin was sneaky (clever), underhanded (effective) but it wasn’t illegal or fraudulent. A good American held back a ‘reserve’ of enough votes to trump any ballot box stuffing until the Donks thought they had won and there was no need to stuff any ballot boxes or find a compliant Judge. Once the Donks declared victory and the election fair and honest, the “accident” was discovered and the actual results released.
It made me think of D. Rose. Giving the defender a head fake, then removing his shoes with a cross over and getting to the rim for the dunk.
Liberals, who are not very bright to begin with, were abused. Their propensity for cheating in elections was used against them. That is not fraud. It may not be ‘nice’ but if they weren’t cheating AND stupid it never would have happened.
Politics isn’t beanbag. Elections have consequences.
Ignatieff is O’s Harvard buddy.
Ignatieff: “Just Visiting”.
…-
“Ignatieff and oil”
“Demonizing oilsands shows a lack of political leadership”
“Two years ago, Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff defended Alberta’s oilsands to a group of business students in Montreal. “The stupidest thing you can do (is) to run against an industry that is providing employment for hundreds of thousands of Canadians, and not just in Alberta, but right across the country,” he told his audience at HEC Montreal, a management school affiliated with the University of Montreal, adding: “all questions of energy policy are a question of national unity.”
Last week on the campaign trail, Ignatieff sang a different tune, referring to Alberta’s “dirty oil.” He used the pejorative while referring to the need to clean up the oilsands. Most Albertans wouldn’t disagree on his point -developing the resource to the highest environmental standards is in everyone’s best interests. But Ignatieff does a disservice trotting out the “D” word.
The oilsands have a much smaller carbon footprint than the collective impact of coal. Technology is on the verge of eliminating tailings ponds and vastly reducing the amount of water used in the extraction process. Penn State University researchers recently announced a method they believe could make tailings ponds disappear. Canadian companies are exploring similar processes.
Yet, rather than touting promising technologies, Ignatieff and NDP Leader Jack Layton are using the oilsands as a political punching bag. They both decry Alberta’s “dirty oil,” yet seem to love our filthy money.”
http://www.calgaryherald.com/opinion/Ignatieff/4580374/story.html
…-
“Corn prices hit record highs in Chicago”
“In January, the Environmental Protection Agency sharply expanded the pool of vehicles eligible to use the blended fuel — adding to the demand.
But this could mean hardship for the world’s consumers of corn, a staple particularly in Africa and Latin America, said said Shenggen Fan, head of the International Food Policy Research Institute, based in Washington.
“Most maize is used for biofuel production, so there is less to export and other countries have less to import.”
He warned that higher corn prices carry a heavy social cost, affecting poor people where corn is a major element of their diets.
“Higher food prices will make them poorer and make them hungry,” he said.”
http://www.france24.com/en/20110408-corn-prices-hit-record-highs-chicago
OT:
The school shooter in Rio – religion of peace
http://www.guelphmercury.com/news/world/article/513603–at-least-11-dead-in-massacre-at-rio-de-janeiro-school
The suspect left behind a letter, in which he anticipated committing suicide after the attack. Beltrami, however, gave no details of any possible motive.
Beltrami described the letter as “the words of a person who no longer believes in anything, full of sentences that made no sense and references to Islamic fundamentalism.”
“He had no friends, and he spent all his time on the internet,” she said.
In recent months, she said, he appeared to have got closer to Islam.
Police stressed, however, that there was no concrete evidence that the attack had either a religious or a political motive.
“And now the small mammals, nearly forgotten and trodden underfoot, are pouring out of their burrows and may eventually end the reign of the dinosaurs.”
– great writing there, wretchard!
B-b-but I thought he gonna pay my bills?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P36x8rTb3jI
68. Dack Thrombosis
RE: Prosser – Looks like Prosser might pull it off. Seven thousand votes is a lot of juice. It also, if he wins, should cast a bit of doubt on the ubiquitous claims of election fraud. I don’t doubt that it happens, but I do doubt the constant claims of election fraud made by conservatives. I don’t think it happens nearly as often as some claim. In Chicago? Yeah, probably. But not in a lot of places.
Unfortunately, that simply isn’t the case. There are plenty of indications of election fraud in Wisconsin, not only in this election but in previous ones as well for a long time. This single incident (the genuine clerical error in which the votes for a single town didn’t get reported to the AP news service). In the follow-up cross-checking before submission to the official state agency tally the error was duly discovered and reported, by the Democrat county election officials, no less. It has nothing to do with nor is any sort of contra-indicator of fraud. It was simply a lucky break, and even a cursory analysis of elections nationwide over the last several decades shows it to be a lonely statistical outlier.
Election fraud is one of those “Through the Looking Glass” issues where the comfortable reality/myth we all want to believe in holds only so long as one doesn’t start to investigate too deeply. Once you do start researching the topic and step through that looking glass you’re quickly in an alternate universe of mind-boggling corruption, deceit and subversion of representative government and the rule of law.
The reality is our current electoral system, aka “representative democracy” is currently structured, and has been for decades, to facilitate massive fraud. Admittedly, while electoral fraud has always been a part of American politics, going back to the founding of the country, the advent of modern technology in synergy with mass media has enabled it to be implemented far beyond the simple methods of old.
A thorough discussion of this is O/T to the thread, but if you decide to walk through the glass and investigate you’ll find that yeah, it happens, a lot, and not just in Chicago but nationwide.
73. stoicheion & 68. Dack Thrombosis
While your scenario is possible, at this point there is no evidence that any sort of head fake was employed in Wisconsin. It is my understanding that the local county election officials who ran the confirmation checks and discovered the clerk’s error were Democrats and have stated it was a simple clerical error.
Waking up to a nightmare is the definition of the Socialist experience. – Wretchard
What the hell, Richard? Are you “my brother from another mother” or something?
That’s the best quote I’ve seen in years, and your overall conclusion regarding what it’ll take to change the true-believing American leftist, i.e. reality based pain, is again, spot on. However, I fear that the last act of many, as they slowly starve and the light fades from their eyes, will be shaking their fists upwards “… it’s those damn ‘bitter-clingers’ … figgin dubya .. the right wing whackos … damn Limbaugh … if only they’d had hope and change … where’s goddess now?”
You’re definitely ready for prime-time somewhere. Interested in back-filling a spot on FoxNews. I understand they’re hiring to replace a nice Mormon guy …
- Old Salt
Since somebody brought it up, it astounds me no end that there are a couple of civic frauds that are lightly punished: Election fraud and jury tampering. ACORN got caught in CA and walked out with a $5000 fine. People get caught with jury tampering and go off for 5 years. Election fraud should be good for 20 years hard time, from a corporate standpoint it should get a fine of $5000 per fake vote. (There’s no way no person in the organization knew it was illegal) Jury tampering should be good for 20 years, too.
“Barack Obama elected; poor, minorities hardest hit.”
m@74:
Ignatieff sang a different tune, referring to Alberta’s “dirty oil.”
Agreed – “dirty” this and that is a conversion tell – the old stick ‘em in the neck with a needle routine.
“Most maize is used for biofuel production, so there is less to export and other countries have less to import.”
Ah yes, the old poke ‘em in the eye with a stick and lie through your teeth routine:
In the US more than one billion acres of agricultural land is lying fallow.
The real problem is poverty.
Gallup says “it is not clear what is behind blacks’ and Hispanics’ less positive evaluations in March than in prior months.
About two weeks ago I was at a Food Maxx in San Jose waiting in a long line at one of the registers and there was some black guy ahead of me. He was irked by the fact that Food Maxx doesn’t have express lines, and the conversation bounced around from there. At some point, it came out that he had just recently secured a job, but it was 40 miles away in Millbrae, CA, and he had to drive up there, and apparently Caltrain was not a workable option for his commute. I remarked that the commute he had to make was unenviable due to the rising gas prices, and he surprised me by saying outright that Obama wasn’t doing anything about it.
They’re noticing.
bl@66: No, this mobility stuff is all turdles, all the way down. What we need is that high speed rail, or just rail, so we can finish sending the personal vehicle fuel necessarily through the roof.
Now you’ve done gone and done it.
Out of deference to the topic, I will keep this short. ALL public transportation is a consistently miserable experience, including and especially targeted at, buses, which run a tight race with air travel, the only discernible difference being strip searches, which hardly matters when the homeless guy at the bus stop is peeing in the bushes. The economics aren’t there, probably never will be, and the d@mning “turdle” of them all is the remarkable absence of anyone who has enough money to engage an alternative mode – charter or ‘pry it from my cold dead hands’ personal car.
“local county election officials who ran the confirmation checks and discovered the clerk’s error were Democrats and have stated it was a simple clerical error.”
UH huh! Absolutely. Easter is coming. Are you going to stay up late and stake out the back yard to catch the Easter Bunny?
Meanwhile the Politicians in the Unions and Democratic party have to wonder on the next election just how much skullduggery they can get away with? How many votes are those evil Conservatives sandbagging?
BTW, your account doesn’t match the published account;
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2011/04/07/surprise_in_wisconsin_incumbent_judge_receives_7500_new_votes.html
It seems the person making the error (R) found her error. She then had the (D) check her, which would have happened anyway. The mistake was normal and part of the process. That is why the (D)’s check the (R)’s and vice versa. What is unusual here is the timing. The extra votes didn’t show up until the (D)’s were to far in the trap to back out.
GREAT timing. Or co-ink-see-dink?
You pays your money, you makes your choice.
ybr/85,
Ve vill jhust rhemoven das steerink vheel, und Sie may keepen er in der kolten toten kaputen Handen, wenn Sie mit ridink en dem high-speed trainen zug fahren.
BJS@84: They’re noticing.
First steps are just that.
What would a Republican administration in Washington do? Reduce unemployment? Reduce inflation? Reduce the debt by reducing entitlements?
When “women and minorities” start “to notice”, that’s not good for Democrats – even less so for Republicans.
The long-term structural reforms (taxes, SS/MCaid/Mcare, health care) will require a short-term world of pain for the lower and lower-middle class. Absolutely no way around that, which is why Congress is locked up tighter than a terrified turtle. Consensus might be achievable on the desired end-state, but the transition will be brutal. My guess is that the only way through it will be to take on more debt.
Important thing to keep straight: The seven *point* drop among blacks amounts to a nine-and-a-quarter *percent* drop in support. IOW, it’s approaching one African-American in ten losing enthusiasm for Obama, not one in fourteen. I don’t have the starting percentages for hispanics, so can’t calculate that. But do always recall that percentage-point drop/rise is different from percentage change.
“in an alternate universe of mind-boggling corruption, deceit and subversion of representative government and the rule of law.”
AKA, the real world. Corruption and election fraud are norms in America.
SO? Politics ain’t bean bag. Remember the winner, Berry, won by conning 50+million people. Say one thing, do another. How is that different in spirit from voting a couple of times, giving some street bum 10$ to vote, Voting the dead, or buying a judge to get a satisfactory result? Cheating is like sex. You’re a virgin or you are not. No half steps.
It is who counts the votes that matters. I think most Americans are more amused then concerned. Unless they( the cheaters) get caught. Then guys like you take umbrage because your POV that voting matters gets bruised. Guys like me think; ‘Fool got caught, he is tooo stooooopid to represent America in a place as treacherous as the real world.’
I vote every election because it is my duty. As I vote, I realize that in the off chance my vote is the difference between the (D) candidate and the (R) candidate, it doesn’t matter. They are actually both the establishment and their differences are minor compared to their similarities. The whole deal is a kabuki dance, the modern version of the Roman Empire’s bread and circus. I’m good with that since I just turned 69 and have learned an interesting job, enough food and a source of amusement/entertainment are about all one can expect from life.
The alternative is we go Libyan and chase each other around with firearms. I’m too old for that. So a little voter fraud is entertaining. You just have to out smart your opponent. Political Darwinism. To quote a better man then I. WE have the best Congress money can buy. Best POTUS too.
Obama’s solution for high gas prices? Buy a new car. He’s a joke, yet he’s too arrogant to see himself swimming in the ocean as the sharks circle him beneath the water. More fool he. I’m convinced the beheaded Queen Marie Antoinette has been reborn as President “Let Them Eat Cake” Obama.
s@90: AKA, the real world. Corruption and election fraud are norms in America.
I have quite a few “quit yer whining and deal with it” moments myself. Like a Virgin is just a song.
The calculating hubris behind 2008 changed everything. “Your father’s Oldsmobile” style corruption is not sustainable in a global environment of nuclear weapons now available to unstable agents that make li’l Kim look like the Easter Bunny. The species is going into rehab, like it or not, and the USA better lead – or at least show some signs of being smarter than an eighth century rock farmer.
RE: election fraud, as I’ve indicated before, the worst possible outcome for 2012 will be a close presidential race. The accounting system is stressed along the periphery. (Nor are the Diebold machines any answer but they’re coming anyway. You ain’t seen nothing yet.)
@59. bell curve
The fast speed Tampa Bay-to-Orlando train was to provide jobs to the construction and railroad unions. Has nothing to do with need or practicality. American unions contributed $200 million to Obama’s presidential campaign. He owes them, and they know it.
(Nor are the Diebold machines any answer but they’re coming anyway. You ain’t seen nothing yet.)
Don’t get me started. Diebold is the perfect example of croney capitalism. The Establishment arranging for one of the good old boys to count the votes while claiming they were ‘improving’ the system. Notice they didn’t say HOW they were improving it.
If there was a shred of honesty involved, the creation of voting machines would be assigned to the Bureau of Standards and use open source code. Anything else is a scam.
The whole thing makes me want to run out to the shed and check my rope supply.
s@94: The whole thing makes me want to run out to the shed and check my rope supply.
I’ll bring a shovel.
And they wonder why state officials seem so unconcerned by the fact that the two companies in line to sell touch-screen voting machines to Ohio have deep and continuing ties to the Republican Party.
There’s solid reason behind the political rhetoric tapping Ohio as a key battleground. No Republican has ever captured the White House without carrying Ohio, and only John Kennedy managed the feat for the Democrats. In 2000, George W. Bush won in the Buckeye State by a scant four percentage points. Four years earlier, Bill Clinton won in Ohio by a similar margin.
@74. maz2
Will you stop with your “carbon footprint” propaganda. What kind of “carbon” are we talking about? Carbon (coal) dust, carbon (coal) powder? Those scientifically deficient, or not versed in the climate change debate or EPA’s backdoor attempt to regulate CO2 emissions, would rightly be concerned about “carbon (coal)” dust or powder entering their lungs. The term “carbon footprint” was invented by the proponents to regulate CO2 (carbon dioxide) emissions resulting from industrialization, and their claims that CO2 affects climate. Scare tactics about the “carbon footprint” are similar to those used by politicized scientists when referring to “ocean acidification”. What they do not tell you is that the oceans are basic, and it is a slight reduction in alkalinity that they refer to as “ocean acidification”. Scare tactics. In elementary schools they take vinegar (an acid) and drop sea shells into it to show school children the dissolving effect of acid on sea shells, then teach that it represents ocean acidification. All hogwash.
Bell Curve #59:
Whatever else you may say about it, the Sunrail concept produced one of the greatest quotes of all time from a politican:
“I am hoping that the government will pay for the entire cost of the project so that the taxpayers won’t have to do so.” – Mayor of Tampa.
It looks like they’re going to do the government shutdown. Krauthammer comments about the cliché demagoguery of “throwing grandma into the snow”, refer to:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/after-ryans-leap-a-rush-of-deficit-demagoguery/2011/04/07/AFUfOXxC_story.html
The socialists have been using this tired narrative for decades to justify continued deficit spending and government indebtedness. First of all, if the system hadn’t been broken by the socialists then grandma wouldn’t need to worry about the snow, i.e. she’d be living comfortably on a private pension. Unfortunately the situation is now so screwed up that the question is no longer whether or not grandma lands in the snow but when, i.e. now with some remnant of the economy intact or a couple years from now with runaway inflation and a collapsed economy. If the socialists want to blame someone for putting grandma in the snow, they should look in the mirror. We’ll know that the Left is serious about dealing with the ruinous federal debt after they stop wasting our time with this stupid narrative.
Think about it.. it’s a brilliant move; control energy and you control the people. I think Stalin first proposed it, but he had no way of enforcing it. Now, that the Enviro-Nazis have the Anointed One’s ear, he can affect Stalin’s plan of Societal control, that is, if you Sheeple let him…
It’s Trade-In time people.
I mean, at first I was shocked that Pia T. got voted off but then I realized that the American public has a history of screwing up the whole voting thingy. The badgers did a good job of digging their way out of a hole yesterday though.
Constitution First @ 99 said:
“… control energy and you control the people. I think Stalin first proposed it, but he had no way of enforcing it.”
I’m convinced that using concern about the environment as a means to advance socialism was a concept dreamed up in the mid-1970s by an Agitprop expert working for the KGB. It’s possible that same expert also invented Liberation Theology. If the Soviets had implemented these Agitprop programs in the early 1960s, it’s conceivable they would have won the Cold War. As it stands, the Agitprop windup robots keep wandering around mindlessly repeating their narrative with no Soviet master to actually benefit from the process.
eggplant@98
“throwing grandma into the snow”
My wife is a fully qualified Grandma and I pushed her in the snow just a few days ago. She laughed and threw a snowball at me.
New headline “DEMS Out of Touch With Snow-Covered Grandmas”
westerncanadian @ 102 said:
“My wife is a fully qualified Grandma and I pushed her in the snow just a few days ago.”
My Grandma turned 101 last month. She would not be happy if I pushed her into the snow. Fortunately, she would have forgotten about it 5 minutes later (almost no short term memory).
As usual, the Republicans can’t get out of their own way. They have just handed the Dems a brand new meme by hanging on some Planned Parenthood funding. Now it’s not about some tiny (however much needed) budget cut. No, now it’s a “war on women” etc. etc.
Why oh why can’t the Republicans keep their social policy battles out of budget issues? Yes, government funding of Planned Parenthood is idiotic. But it’s tactically moronic for the Republicans to pick at this issue at this time. As a way to energize the Democrats and incite the media into hysterics, it’s a great idea. I can see it now: the (white, male) Republicans shut the government down because they hate women.
The sad thing is this will stick with a lot of people.
@101
Yuri Bezmenov would agree with you. You’ve probably seen one of his videos from the 1980s. If not, just google that name and watch. You’ll be amazed at what you see.
Bezmenov was a journalist and a KGB agent who defected to the West and came clean on the tactics used by the Soviet goons to undermine America. Even if the guy was some deep mole double agent, the stuff he talked about sure makes sense today. He describes exactly what we’re experiencing now, and he did it almost thirty years ago.
Folks, we need to close our bold tags.
——-
eggplant @ 101
Hear, hear.
peterike @ 104 said:
“As usual, the Republicans can’t get out of their own way. … Why oh why can’t the Republicans keep their social policy battles out of budget issues?”
Yes, this is stupid. However both the Republicans and Obama are playing through the MSM and the MSM is biased towards Obama. The goal now is have Obama appear to have the most blame for the government shutdown. Getting the truth through the MSM is a near impossible exercise.
Speaking of controlling energy:
http://www.cnbc.com/id/42483704
Oil at USD112 and climbing?
Short and Sweet
The four doormen of the apocalypse @ 108 said:
“Oil at USD112 and climbing?”
This is where Bernanke’s money printing catches up with him. If he does not do QE3 then the US stock market will collapse (QE2 is the only thing holding it up). However if Bernanke does QE3 then crude oil goes to $200 and the world economy collapses. He’s a chess player with only his king left but the other guy has his king, queen and castle.
#61 yankee fifth
First, if he is found to be ineligible it is going to be a disaster, he will not go easily and his supporters will become violent. If those who suggest he is a narcissist are correct it may be a very dangerous time.
I do not doubt that in the slightest. We are already outside the rule of law, and there are a significant portion of the LEO community who are loyal to a Party over the Constitution. [I know some people who have nephew who works for ICE as an agent, and until he was banned from family gatherings; said nephew was not shy about bragging that he and the Federal government were NOT bound by any law or the Constitution, that they would do what they were ordered to do, to anyone at any time.] Law enforcement in Democrat areas can be assumed to be such. When that happens, there will be no resort to the law, any more than German citizens in 1934 could call the police when attacked by the Sturm Abteilung on the streets or Russians could point to the law and Soviet constitution to defend them when the Народный комиссариат внутренних дел’s Black Marias pulled up.
If and when he is found to be ineligible; we are going to be in a vast, uncharted territory. We will be totally outside the social and political contract that is the Constitution; and the path through that uncharted territory to get back into compliance or develop a new contract is going to be marked by unavoidable agony. It will be either violence as noted above; or it will be a wave of political disinfection akin to Germany from May 1945 to 1949, or perhaps like the Restoration of the Chinese Han dynasty after the usurper Emperor Wang Mang was overthrown in 23 AD. But one path or another [or more likely both] will have to be followed, with no sure end point. It will be our children or grandchildren who will have to judge if our efforts by either path have been successful.
Actually, Wang Mang is not a bad parallel for our times. Wang Mang created government monopolies on production, seized private property to create communal farms worked by peasants under compulsion for the benefit of the state, confiscated gold and replaced it with fiat scrip, he insulted and drove away China’s allies and tributary states, and through arrogance provoked the Xiongnu into a costly war with China. This war was ended when the restored Han dynasty chased them to the West, permanently. They kept going west, chasing various other terrorized tribes before them, until they hit the eastern boundaries of the Roman Empire. The West calls the Xiongnu, the Huns.
Sorry for the digression. In any case, if Buraq Hussein Obama is found to have been legally and constitutionally ineligible to be President; we have nothing but pain in our future. If the Constitution is to be directly restored; every act, every appointment, and every law, regulation, and confiscation has to be reversed. And every person, regardless of rank or standing, who enabled and supported the usurpation has to be subject to what the country accepts as proper punishment. Anything less, endorses the usurpation. Which means that it will be acceptable in the future.
The alternative, the other path mentioned above, will have to end with one side or the other totally destroyed. And I am not speaking metaphorically. It may involve one burst of domestic violence. It may be as episodic and recurrent [and fatal] as the 30 Years War. But if political and legal restoration of the social/political contract does not occur; it will happen.
Those of all parties who support the TEA Party, Patriots if you will or alternately Oathkeepers, understand that it is not only the current administration that regards the Constitution as irrelevant. The Political Class [see pollster Rasmussen's formulation], which includes the leadership and dependents of both major parties, share a lot more with each other than they do with the American people. Politicians do not have a high tolerance for pain, political or physical. They love to kick problems down the road to avoid encountering them in the near term.
As sure as whichever-Deity-is-turning-the-crank-this-week made undersized, immature, Malus domestica , that reflect light at a wavelength of roughly 520–570 nanometers; they are going to try to equivocate their way out of any consequences. Expect some form of ex post facto legislative validation of what has occurred to be attempted in the name of Comity; leaving the usurper’s supporters and acts functionally intact. This cannot be allowed to stand. If it is, we are going to be doing this again and again.
If the legitimacy of the Obama administration is disproven, or even seriously brought into question, there is no easy way left.
As a corollary of that, expect the tolerant acceptance of Donald Trump as a political figure to come to a screeching halt. Of late, he is speaking heresy akin to the English Treason Act of 1351 as modified in 1537. The state sponsored media is about to turn their ire on him.
#65 Blast From the Past
Your last paragraph is truth.
#65 Blast From the Past
As is your piece. This is not going to be easy.
Subotai Bahadur
For some reason, everything in my post and several above me is in boldface. I don’t think I did that.
I’ve been hitting a lot of the online news aggregation sites lately and it may be my own bias, but it seems to me that Obama and his crew are making a lot of the mistakes that they warn you about in PoliSci-101, that is they are doing things you wouldn’t try in Duval County Texas. In one instance a former Carter administrator warned about how badly gas price hurt the Carter administration. They seem to be ignoring polling data, and etc. So I’m starting to wonder if the administration is heading for a narcissistic breakdown not only of the One himself but of those surrounding him?
PS: Why is this printing in Bold?
#106 blert
Folks, we need to close our bold tags.
It’s me at 102 – see source code – DEMS Out of Touch With Snow-Covered Grandmas” There is an incorrect tag preceding a correct closing bold tag at the end of this line.
Apologies to all. I have pasted the source code to this comment and edited the tags. It appears to be fixed now.
I also find the Planned Parenthood thing dumbfounding under the immediate circumstances, and I’m saying that as someone who also would like to see Margaret Sanger’s creation defunded fed-wise.
That battle can be fought another day. The GOP and conservatives need to learn to be stealthier about social policy the way the patient and crafty left has been. I really wish they’d stop being such clueless buffoons.
107. Eggplant
peterike @ 104 said:
Sorry, disagree. Taking a principled stance is what I want in a politician, preferably a conservative one. I think conservatism has the advantage now – certainly the progressive movement is failing. Now is the time to move back to conservative principles. If done in earnest, it would prove its worth and hopefully restore the peoples’ faith in our way of life- before the progressives starting monkeying around with it.
New headline “DEMS Out of Touch With Snow-Covered Grandmas”
Second try at cleaning up the tag. If this doesn’t work, shoot me – I’ve had lunch already.
#111 subotai
Thank you- I always appreciate your analysis.
e @ 110: “Oil at USD112 and climbing?”
This is where Bernanke’s money printing catches up with him.
I thought the oil price was supposed to be because of Libya? Though that doesn’t explain gold. If anything, Khaddafi is supposed to be spending from his horde of gold to fund his mercenaries.
The economy really is doing a Wiley Coyote deal of running off the cliff and not looking down. Have to give The Bernank props for hanging in midair even this long, I doubt the fall will end pleasantly when it occurs.
Can someone please remind me which Amendment states only Conservatives need to compromise? The left wins ground incrementally because we fail to stand it. Enough already.
Again, the MSM controls “the narrative” and The Left controls the MSM. Conservatives are obliged to use blunt object methods to get their message through the MSM. This is probably the greatest advantage that The Left has.
Josh @ 118 said:
“The economy really is doing a Wiley Coyote deal of running off the cliff and not looking down. Have to give The Bernank props for hanging in midair even this long… ”
The Bernank is obviously very skilled at what he does. He must have a team of very bright Ph.D. level mathematicians running advanced macro-economic simulations on really big computer clusters. He probably runs simulations for every conceivable decision that might keep the rotten system running a little bit longer. The problem with this strategy is the algorithms probably have limited scope in time and place, e.g. only valid for 3 months into the future and only models developed world economies. That weird unforeseen third order effect that became irreversible in Paraguay 4 months ago is what ultimately kills the Bernank’s strategy.
Subotai Bahadur @ 111 said:
“If the legitimacy of the Obama administration is disproven, or even seriously brought into question, there is no easy way left.”
One must ask whether anything signed by Obama was legally binding if he became President illegally. The question is obviously “too hard” which is why the Birthers are wasting their time.
The MSM seriously dropped the ball by not properly vetting Obama when he first appeared. But then how could they since they were too busy having a very messy and public orgasm over getting the first dark skinned hard-Left person elected as President?
Those of you that think conservatives are missing the point, I’ll bet none of you figured out why Guillani (SP?) started cleaning up New York by removing Graffiti Fixing broken windows, picking up the trash, ETC.
It’s the cultural environment that is the problem. Legislating morality NEVER works. So a society has to create a cultural bias toward anti-social behavior. Ignoring social issues to focus on fiscal ones is the definition of RINO.
Fiscal problems are caused by corruption, lying, stealing, etc. Those problems themselves are created by amoral behavior.
Nobody is born with morals. They are not hardwired into the cortex, not part of the DNA. Morals are learned. From parents, from church, from society, from government.
OF those Government is the least effective. You always end up with the population split in half, with the 2 halves watching one another. society and church are more effective then gubbermint but they have drawback too. Society drifts. Change is the only constant in life and morals that evolve too much too fast fracture the society they should be protecting. Church is very stable and long lasting but the problem there is a church can be taken over by malign influences and churches are very hostile toward each other. Religious wars are as nasty as civil wars. Parental morals work the best but the problem there is families are fragile.
SO a healthy society needs a combination of moral sources. The USA had a firm moral foundation up until the 1930′s.
I haven’t been able to figure out exactly what did it. Something or maybe somethings has decayed the moral fabric of America and all the things we see as problems are actually symptoms.
So RINOS going after the Symptoms won’t actually fix anything. Rotting wood can be painted over so it looks good from the curb but it doesn’t fix the problem….
Don, Abortion is not only murder, it is a direct assault on the American Family. Nothing happening anywhere in the world is as big a threat to America as that Abortion clinic in the poor part of town. Anyone that disagrees with that is both clueless AND a RINO.I’m proud to be associated, even loosely with those working against the genocide of unborn babies. 1.3 million per year.
If Samatha wiggled her nose and Jennie wiggled her boobs and they made the defcit go away, it wouldn’t solve anything. It would just kick the can down the road. Way down the road but eventually we would get there again.
Stopping the genocide against unborn infants would go a LOOOOONG ways toward solving the problem.
No one here seems to understand one basic principle: when you screw up, it’s your fault. When Obama screws up, it’s your fault. I hope this is clear to everybody so we can avoid any more discussion of these kinds of issues in the future.
#73 Stoicheion The strategy in King County, Washington (Seattle and suburbs) for several elections has been to hold the count until the solidly Republican counties in the eastern part of Washington have reported, and then keep “finding” more and more ballots until the Democrat wins. In any state with Democratic urban centers the outer suburbs and rural areas must wait until the Democratic controlled areas have committed to a count. Even so they will probably keep “finding” ballots.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/42479791
This where the USD is at: it’s being rejected wholesale by China and Taiwan … and Japan.
A hearty +2 on #62 Jeff from Michigan’s recommendation of Bloodlands. I have read Conquest’s Harvest of Sorrow but this book was an eye opener. One of the author’s asides is that many of the Soviet politicos overseeing these purges of Ukrainian, Poles, Jews, etc., were Jews themselves.
@89 Charlie Important thing to keep straight: The seven *point* drop among blacks amounts to a nine-and-a-quarter *percent* drop in support. IOW, it’s approaching one African-American in ten losing enthusiasm for Obama, not one in fourteen. I don’t have the starting percentages for hispanics, so can’t calculate that. But do always recall that percentage-point drop/rise is different from percentage change.
You’re implying that the starting support among blacks was 76%:
s-0.07 = (1-0.0925)s –> s = 0.76 approximately
In fact, it was well over 90%. Besides, even if your numbers were correct, the non-supporting 9.25% would not be 9.25% of blacks; it would be 9.25% of the blacks that originally supported him, i.e., 7% of blacks.
However, the article says that 85% now support him, so 15% do not, so almost 1 in 7 blacks do not support him. So you’ve pretty thoroughly defeated your own purpose.
There is no way that the Black vote leaves the plantation.
So forget about it.
No President has pandered to his base more than the Resident.
The ONLY bloc that is in contention is the SWPL crowd, like my sister and BIL.
The Obamanation has ruined their careers — which as yet has not opened their eyes.
——
Over the years Big Government has grown to support Democrat voting blocs.
Now that the system has run out of blood the polity is going to experience pure shock.
Madison was but a foretaste of the waterfall of curtailments.
The later the correction — the more severe the impact.