#3
Biggest concern is clearly American party politics, don't worry about the collapse of the Euro, or the bursting of the real estate bubble in China, or the rise of radical Islamic governments across the middle east, or worldwide commodity inflation, or US debt, or ...
Posted by: Cincinnatus Chili ||
11/19/2011 14:41 Comments ||
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#4
Sarah Palin is the only leading Republican who has clearly come out against 'crony capitalism' aka
'defending the big banks & financial industry.' Herman Cain having worked for the Federal Reserve will probably work hand in glove with that interest.
There is some grass roots thinking by GOP'ers which may become more popular, see Jerry Pournelle:
THE 2012 campaign issue: The real question is what can be done about the economy, and that requires an agreement on just what is the point of government, and who owns what. Is the purpose of government to reduce the gap between richest and poorest? That certainly was not the intent of the Framers, some of whom might have thought of that as a good idea, but it wasnt what the Constitution was intended to do. Lots of luck getting the electorate (especially the part that doesn't pay taxes) to agree on the point of our national government).
International relations & WOT: George Washington told us to avoid entangling alliances and not to get involved in the territorial disputes of Europe. Jefferson and Monroe sent the Navy to the shores of Tripoli, but not to build democracy or even to stay. The Marines did deliver the message: millions for defense and not one cent for tribute. The best Near East policy for the US would be US energy independence. Invest in developing US energy resources, rebuild the Navy, and let the Arabs sort out their own governments. We are the friends of liberty everywhere, but the guardians only of our own; but we can be a very generous people to those who are our friends. Peoples can have friends. Nations have interests.
On taxes: I have no great objection to reducing the disparity between richest and poorest, but I have a lot of objection to raising the governments revenue. The more money government gets, the more it will [I summarize] WASTE.
On TBTF institutions: I would very much like to see laws and regulations that limit the sizes of organizations, including private fortunes. The problem is that doing that has side effects. I do subscribe to the principle that any organization that is too big to fail is to big. I subscribe even more to the elimination of institutions that take high risks, keeping the winnings while saddling the public with their losses. It seems to me that we can go a long way in that direction fairly rapidly.
I would start with the banks: instead of a Big Five or Big Six I would have a not-so-big fifty or sixty. One way to do that would be to go back to the separation of commercial and investment banks, with investment banks unable to guarantee any funds or receive any bailouts. We had such a structure until about 2000. We also need to stop using public money to drive up the costs of education and housing. All this is relatively simple, and I suspect that all the necessary measures would be approved by both the Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party movements.
What we dont need is to rob the rich in order to give the government more money to [I summarize] WASTE.
I've been reading Jerry for years & find myself agreeing with all these points. An GOP candidate who could defend these policies might even get support from some of the OWS people, although not from the Free Lunch Party or Obama's core supporters who would follow him right off a cliff.
#5
We also need to stop using public money to drive up the costs of education and housing.
This was originally, and still in effect, part of the GI Bill. What has been forgotten or ignored was that there was a requirement of service first, then the opportunity followed. The obligation was removed from the equation via student loans and Fannie Mae. As a consequence, GI Bill after the WWII population had exercised their benefits was a much smaller influence upon the system than the give aways that were allowed to corrupt the processes.
#6
There has always been a huge difference between GI Bill benefits and government 'driving up the cost of education and housing.' Certainly the government supporting a market in any way tends to drive up the costs in that market, and I'm sure this happened with the GI Bill. But overall, those GI benefits were a win-win situation all around. Unlike what happened with Fannie and Fraudie, which had much wider and more damaging application.
#1
Today Europe tomorrow the USA. When the people of Europe begin to withdraw their money things will get ugly. I wonder if Chavez got his gold out yet.
I wonder if it's gone. Nothing is safe now. Sung to the Robert Palmer tune "She's so fine I don't know where the money went". So many will be left with the tab. Then those who took advantage of the situation will benefit from the fire sale. The famous names of the depression past will be jointed by new names of the future wealthy. Then it will start over again.
#3
phil_b Hello- when do you think the public will run on their banks in Europe. I believe most will just let it ride and hope for the best. The real panic hasn't hit yet. Perhaps most are living paycheck to paycheck. Its the retirements and savings plans that will hurt the most. I believe those are being tapped now to maintain current lifestyle there and here. Outgo is greater than income for the banks and public.
The reason there is such a mess in Europe is that they haven't worked out that bankers and speculators are in charge now - well, China and banks, actually but they are still operating under the delusion that politicians run the world.
The Americans understand the new world order, largely because investment bankers are running Washington. When the crisis struck in 2008, the US Treasury Secretary was a former CEO of Goldman Sachs - Hank Paulson - and the administration was, and is, full of his mates.
A lot of people think that's bad, that it means undue power in the hands of Wall Street resulting in them lining pockets and in people camping in Zuccotti Park in protest.
Well, yes, that's true. But it also meant that someone in Washington understood what was happening and responded accordingly - that is, by throwing huge amounts of cash at the masters of the universe - the banks - money that was both borrowed and printed.
In Brussels and Berlin they haven't quite figured out that their sovereignty has been ceded to banks.
It happened way back when they created the euro and then allowed Italy, Greece, and Portugal to borrow from said banks in flagrant breach of the Maastricht rules.
The banks showed their power with Greece but Germany didn't care enough about Greece. Now they're turning the screws on Italy, and that is very serious indeed because seven times the money is involved.
The Germans don't want to face up to the fact that bankers control the world now because their country is fine.
But that's not the point. The euro was their idea and they're stuck with it - along with the reality of the new world order.
#1
The "bankers and speculators" are in charge of nothing but empty promises. The lock box is empty.
Like Zombies going through the motions. When individuals withdraw their money from the banks the game is over. Exit of the U.S. money-market funds has already started. The card game has the house being owed money the players do not have.
#2
The lock box is empty.
It's not what the sheep taxpayers have but what they they can be shorn of on a seasonal basis that matters.Just a farming operation.
Pretty much every bank in the world is insolvent and beholden to governments that control the money tap that keeps them trading.
The only reason governments keep funneling money at the banks is to keep credit flowing, because without credit driven largely illusory growth, tax revenues will crater.
[Dawn] Halfway between Toronto and Montreal, ghastly details of a murder trial are unfolding. The dead are three young Moslem girls and their stepmother. Stand accused of their murder are the parents and the brother of the dead girls.
What makes Moslem parents murder their own children, especially daughters, is a question that has leapt to the front pages of newspapers all across Canada. It is, unfortunately, not the first time that Moslem parents in Canada have murdered a female child. Such murders are known as 'honour killings' where parents murder their daughter/s to "protect the family honour."
It was only in December 2007 when a Pak father (along with his son) murdered his 16-year old daughter, Aqsa Parvez, in a suburb of Toronto. Her crime: she wanted to act and dress like other teenage girls in her school. Fewer than two years after Aqsa's murder, another Moslem father in Canada murders not one but three daughters.
On the morning of June 30, 2009, a car was found submerged in the Rideau Canal in Kingston, Ontario, a small university town some 250 km East of Toronto. Found dead in the car were the three Shafia sisters: Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17, and Geeti, 13. Also found dead in the car was 50-year old Rona Amir Mohammad, who was the girls' stepmother. Weeks later the Canadian police set to sit in solemn silence in a dull, dark dock, in a pestilential prison with a life-long lock the girls' parents Mohammad Shafia, 59, and Tooba Mohammad Yaha, their 39-year old mother. The police also set to sit in solemn silence in a dull, dark dock, in a pestilential prison with a life-long lock the girls' brother Hamed Shafia, 18, and accused the three of murdering the three teenage girls and their stepmother, Shafia's first wife who did not bear any children.
A little over two years later, the accused are now standing trial in Kingston. As the trial proceeds, gruesome details emerge about the family that conspired to kill its own daughters. Once again, it is a familiar story where a father is unhappy with his teenage daughters and decides to kill them "to protect his family honour."
Shafias, originally from Afghanistan, moved to Canada in 2007 and settled in a suburb of Montreal. The court proceedings reveal an overbearing father who was not happy with the way his daughters were growing up in Canada. He was particularly concerned about his eldest daughter, Zainab, who fancied a Pak young man of modest means. Mohammad Shafia did not approve of the relationship.
Over the next two years an acrimonious relationship develops between the father and the eldest daughter. Shafia was spying on the daughters and was aware of the digital photographs of his older daughters with their friends. He was not pleased.
While Shafia was away in Dubai for work, Zainab wedded the Pak young man in a small ceremony attended by her immediate family members. Missing from the ceremony was Shafia and the groom's entire family, who also did not approve of the union.
What transpired later in the day after the Nikkah ceremony revealed that Zainab in fact got married to spite her father. According to the Toronto Star, she told her uncle: "... this boy doesn't have money and he's not handsome. The only reason I'm marrying him is to get my Dire Revenge™. I will sacrifice myself for my other sisters. At least they will get their freedom after me.'' Zainab told her mother after the Nikkah that she would be willing to dissolve the day-old marriage to please her mother. Soon the family was off to a vacation in Niagara Falls. On their way back from vacation they made an overnight stop in Kingston. Next morning, four dead bodies were found trapped in the submerged car.
The police suspected the family from the very beginning. The evidence found around the scene of the crime suggested that the submerged car was pushed into the water by another car, which also belonged to the family. Further investigations revealed that the four women were dead before the car went into water, suggesting that it was not a freak traffic accident, as was initially claimed by the parents.
The police planted surveillance equipment in the Shafias' home and car, and also bugged their phone. The taped conversations played in the courtroom revealed a calculated plot by Mohammad Shafia to kill his daughters. They painted a picture of a man who had no remorse for killing his own flesh and blood. Geeti, who was 13, and his first wife, Rona were the collateral damage. Still Shafia is heard on tape saying: "I am happy and my conscience is clear," and that his daughters "haven't done good and God punished them."
Was it really a punishment from God or from a sadist father who killed in cold blood because his daughters disobeyed him? He called his daughters "filthy and rotten children" and expressed his resolve to do the same 100-times over.
While the tapes reveal a merciless man who was a captive of his tribal norms, which he brought with him from Afghanistan, a swoop of Hamed Shafia's computer by the police also revealed a cunning man who was searching the Internet to plot murders. Other searches conducted on the laptop computer focused on what would happen to one's business and property if one was incarcerated.
Many in the West associate 'honour killings' with Moslem societies. However, a woman is only as old as she admits... the deplorable practice can be found in several non-Moslem majority societies. In India, for instance, the practice is more frequent in rural settings where village councils at times have sanctioned murdering the couple who had eloped or married without the family's consent. Earlier this week a judge in Uttar Pradesh sentenced eight men to death and 20 others for life imprisonment for honour killings committed in 1991. In May 2011, the Indian Supreme Court had already recommended capital punishment for those convicted of honour killings, thus enabling the lower courts to award stricter punishments.
In Pakistain and several other Moslem countries, female victims of honour killings seldom get justice. While laws against honour killing have been on the books in Pakistain since 2005, however the conviction rate has been despicably low. In Khyber Pukhtunkhwa (KP), a mere 8 per cent of those accused of honour killings were convicted in 2009. *Of the 33 women and 18 men murdered in honour killings in 2009 in KP, 83 per cent of the accused were husbands, fathers, brothers and other male relatives of the dear departed.
Research from Pakistain, Jordon, and other countries revealed that often mothers of murdered women approach the sharia courts as their legal heirs and sought and received pardon for the accused father, brother or other male relative of the murdered girl in a Diyat (blood money) arrangement.
The Shafias will have to face justice. Mohammad Shafia's wealth and property cannot buy him freedom in Canada. He murdered his daughters. It was not an act of passion, but a premeditated one. Shafia thinks he acted honourably.
However, facts are stubborn; statistics are more pliable... nothing is more dishonourable and cowardly than murdering children.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/19/2011 00:00 ||
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#1
God did NOT punish them, their father did, May he long hang.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
11/19/2011 0:25 Comments ||
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#2
What kind of religion is it when the honor of a man is determined by what happens between the thighs of his daughters? (Paraphrased) Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Posted by: Jack Salami ||
11/19/2011 10:07 Comments ||
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#3
I'm very confused: how is it that the murderous father's childless first wife is the girls' stepmother? Isn't a stepmother the one who enters the picture after the birth mother dies or is divorced by the father? And given that "Stepmama" is 50, the children ranged in age from 19 to 13, and Mama herself is only 39, why was Stepmama involved at all?
...Obama has multiple degrees from Ivy League colleges and spent a good deal of his career as a part-time professor. At Columbia, Harvard and the University of Chicago, he absorbed the politically correct nostrums of the academic left. But he didn't pick up much by way of critical thinking skills (although at least he doesn't scream at banks).
He didn't have to learn how to think, since he was thinking all the "right" thoughts anyway. So he came to office with lots of ideological preconceptions but no ability to adapt or innovate. As a result, he is simply in over his head intellectually--at the mercy of allies, opponents and events....
Posted by: Mike ||
11/19/2011 06:13 ||
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#1
As a result, he is simply in over his head intellectually--at the mercy of allies, opponents and events....
Ah, yes, victimhood. Thus the narrative begins.
"Ahh, but the strawberries that's... that's where I had them. They laughed at me and made jokes but I proved beyond the shadow of a doubt and with... geometric logic... that a duplicate key to the wardroom icebox DID exist, and I'd have produced that key if they hadn't of pulled the Caine out of action. I, I, I know now they were only trying to protect some fellow officers... "
#2
I just started to read a 2011 book by David Freddoso entitled: Gangster Government: Barack Obama and the New Washington Thugocracy.
Newsweek's Evan Thomas says Obama's greater than any small idea like America. He compares him to another recent president--and to the Almighty.
Reagan was all about America...Obama is "We are above that now." We're not just parochial, we're not just chauvinistic, we're not just provincial. We stand for something--I mean in a way Obama's standing above the country, above--above the world, he's sort of God..."
The book should be interesting if one can get past their nausea. Maybe the love-in, kumbaya, and wet dream is over. Perhaps, they can come down to reality with the rest of us mere mortals.
#3
Nothing save PCorrectness-Deniabilty + Himself is stopping the Bammer from calling for a formal US, Global vote on extra-national/sovereign OWG that no American = Amerikan of the OWG Mighty USSA = OWG Weak USRA Global SSR has voted for, NOR BEEN ASKED TO.
Again, while its certainly possible for a person to correctly guess or discover, etc. third-party individual or group agenda(s), ITS STILL NOT THE SAME AS HEARING IT DIRECTLY FROM THE HORSE'S = HERD'S? MOUTH.
[Dawn] FOR most of its 66-year history, the Arab League ...an organization of Arabic-speaking states with 22 member countries and four observers. The League tries to achieve Arab consensus on issues, which usually leaves them doing nothing but a bit of grimacing and mustache cursing... was a powerless organization, dominated by autocratic regimes that made sure it never criticised their lies and crimes. But suddenly, this year, it woke up and changed sides.
Last March, the vaporous Arab League suspended Libya`s membership because of dictator Muammar Qadaffy`s ...Custodian of Wheelus AFB for 42 long years until he was ejected from the gene pool by his indignant citizens... brutal attempts to suppress the revolution, and voted to back a no-fly zone in Libya. That led directly to the UN resolution authorising the use of force to protect civilians from Qadaffy`s army, and ultimately to the tyrant`s overthrow and death. Curiously enough, the Arab Leagues new sense of manliness coincided with the departure of Jerry Lewis as its head. Not that the effect is associated with the cause, mind you.
Last Saturday, the Arab League acted again, suspending Syria`s membership. It did so because Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad Dread of Those Who Don't Like Him... has not carried out the commitments he made to the League about ending the violence against Syrian civilians (an estimated 3,500 killed so far), pulling the army off the streets of Syrian cities, releasing the thousands of recently imprisoned protesters and opening a dialogue with the opposition within two weeks.
On Sunday, the Arab League`s secretary-general, Nabil al-Arabi, called for "international protection" for Syrian civilians as the organization lacked the means to act alone. "There is nothing wrong with going to the UN Security Council because it is the only organization able to impose" such measures, he added. And he said that during a visit to Tripoli, the newly liberated capital of Libya.
Everybody understood the significance of his saying it there. The Arab League explicitly rejects foreign military intervention in Syria, and NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A single organization with differing goals, equipment, language, doctrine, and organization.... would never take on Assad`s regime anyway. But al-Arabi was implicitly saying that what is happening in Syria now is comparable to what was happening in Libya six months ago, and that all measures short of war are justified to stop the slaughter in Syria and remove the dictator`s regime.
Then on Monday, King Abdullah of Jordan finally said aloud what almost every other Arab leader has been thinking: "If Bashar [al-Assad] has the interest of his country [at heart] he would step down."
It`s particularly striking coming from Abdullah because the two men are not just neighbours. They both came to power in 1999-2000, replacing fathers who had ruled over their respective countries for decades, and they were both originally painted as reformers. True, Bashir al-Assad is not technically a king, but he is equally the product of a dynasty -- and here is his closest counterpart in the Arab world publicly giving up on him.
King Abdullah added that on his way out, Bashar should also "create an ability to reach out and start a new phase of Syrian political life". Decoded, that means that Syria`s problems cannot be ending just by changing horses. The whole Baathist regime, and the near monopoly of power by the Alawite minority that underpins it, have to go too.
This is astonishing stuff. One year ago, nobody would have believed it possible that 18 of the 22 members of the Arab League would vote, in effect, for the peaceful removal of the oppressive Syrian regime, or that the Jordanian king would dare to be so frank about his neighbour`s problems and options. What has wrought this miracle?
It would be nice to say that the rapid and largely non-violent spread of democracy in the Arab world has brought enlightenment even to the most deeply entrenched authoritarian regimes, but it would not be true. Only three of the 22 Arab League members (Tunisia, Egypt and Libya) have actually had democratic revolutions, and their example has not transformed the attitudes of all the other members. What drives this response is mostly fear.
The Arab League said nothing when Bashir al-Assad`s father slaughtered up to 40,000 Syrians while putting down a revolt in the city of Hama in 1982, but his son`s brutality is simply unacceptable today. Arab leaders can no longer ignore the mass killing of Arab citizens. Some of them would like to, but uncensored Arabic-language mass media, broadcasting directly from satellites, have made it impossible. Everybody knows what`s going on.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/19/2011 00:00 ||
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Professor Hanson
A million Iranians protesting a soon-to-be-nuclear theocracy is false revolutionary consciousness and to be left alone; a few thousand Israelis wanting to buy apartments in the Jerusalem suburbs is subversive and worthy of presidential condemnation. And when atoning for supposed American lapses, what better place to begin apologizing than in Turkey, the incubator of the Armenian, Greek, and Kurdish mass killings? We need to deny history to make the case that America is not exceptional, and to invent it to persuade us that the Muslim world is extraordinary.
Twenty-four months of a Democratic Congress, and over $4 trillion in spending, resulted in 9.1% unemployment and near nonexistent growth. Yet the culprit for the current situation is ten months of a Republican-controlled House that has yet to approve another $500 billion of borrowing. In the imaginarium, just a little more of the massive amount that has failed will not fail. But if the Republicans are to be blamed for not wanting to waste the last half-trillion, are the Democrats to be praised for borrowing the first wasted $4 trillion?
In the imaginarium, all sorts of demons and devils can unite to derail the brilliance of Barack Obama's economic recovery plan. ATMs have for the first time after 2009 begun to eliminate jobs. But then so did the Japanese tsunami and the EU meltdown. The DC earthquake did its part, but then so did climbing oil prices and the Arab Spring. Of course, the ghost of George Bush floats over all the present mess. Economic gurus like Austan Goolsbee, Peter Orszag, Christina Romer, and Larry Summers used to write brilliant essays of what would work if they were to be in charge, and now write brilliant essays about why it did not work when they were in charge.
#1
Economic gurus like Austan Goolsbee, Peter Orszag, Christina Romer, and Larry Summers used to write brilliant essays of what would work if they were to be in charge, and now write brilliant essays about why it did not work when they were in charge.
I just know that somewhere in that statement is a "It's Bush's fault."
lotp reviews Robert Reilly's "The Closing of the Muslim Mind: How Intellectual Suicide Created the Islamist Movement"
An excerpt:
It is both the personally related God and the God of meaning, Robert Reilly tells us, that Islam rejected, with consequences that are playing out today.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Dawn] Halfway between Toronto and Montreal, ghastly details of a murder trial are unfolding. The dead are three young 
...Obama has multiple degrees from Ivy League colleges and spent a good deal of his career as a part-time professor. At Columbia, Harvard and the University of Chicago, he absorbed the politically correct nostrums of the academic left. But he didn't pick up much by way of critical thinking skills (although at least he doesn't scream at banks).
[Dawn] FOR most of its 66-year history, the 
Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir 
Then on Monday, King Abdullah of Jordan finally said aloud what almost every other Arab leader has been thinking: "If Bashar [al-Assad] has the interest of his country [at heart] he would step down."
This is astonishing stuff. One year ago, nobody would have believed it possible that 18 of the 22 members of the Arab League would vote, in effect, for the peaceful removal of the oppressive Syrian regime, or that the Jordanian king would dare to be so frank about his neighbour`s problems and options. What has wrought this miracle?
