#1
I have to hope our military strategists are right, and I (we) are wrong - but I don't see how this portrayal of weakness will win. My fear is that they don't believe it either, but it is the only 'hope' left open to them.
#2
Don't be dismayed by short term results. Paying off the locals is a highly respected US military tradition to make long term friends--as long as you don't try to cut back on the bucks.
US units in Germany quietly payed out hundreds of millions of dollars over the course of many years, and still do so today. We actually pay a lot more than actual damages, and everybody knows it. But when the penny drops with the locals that to be our friend is *profitable*, they realize that what they thought was weakness is actually a demonstration of strength.
Just a reminder that bad home loans are a huge problem, that this is not going away and is not being dealt with in any substantial way by the powers that be:
if banks really accounted for all the losses in the home loan market, they'd all be insolvent. Diane Olick report 8 March 2010
The current strategery/shuck-and-jive is to keep the defaulted mortgages off the books of the banks and the defaulted homes off the real estate market (aka "shadow inventory") in the (most likely foolish) hope that the economy and the housing market will grow its way out of the debt basement we're in.
#2
If the banks were actually accounting honestly they would virtually all be bankrupt. The government regulatory bodies are fully aware of this, and have been for two years or more, but are actively abetting the deception, hoping for a long, soft decline (like Japan's for the last two decades) rather than a catastrophic crash.
All that has been addressed so far (and incompletely, at that) is the sub-prime home loans. The various second mortgages are mostly valueless (to the banks.) A lot of balloons and 'investment' home mortgages are seriously underwater. Judging by the number of vacant storefronts and office buildings I have to believe the commercial mortgage market is in serious trouble. Two more homes went up for sale on my little two-block street this week - and I am in one of the better real estate markets. Only one property has sold, and several have been pulled back after not finding buyers.
Somebody is going to end up holding the bag on this mess - and it can only be the people who have behaved responsibly and lived within their means. Whether they pay via inflation or deflation or taxes, THEY will pay, and THAT will crush honest development and investment for a generation.
#6
Buy farmland you say? How will you pay the state's tax levy on it? What if you are old or disabled and can't plow a row. How will you keep the roving gangs of armed predators from stealing your crops? Hobby farming or subsistance living may work in some remote areas, but unfortunately everyone can't move to Remoteville.
#8
Actually I was thinking of doing a reverse of my great-grandfather's situation and being an absentee landlord in County Mayo-god-help-us. With a 21st c. spin-- you know, arugula, free-range radicchio, dairy farming for devonshire cream, etc
#12
I was on leave that day and the wife yelled at me to come look at the teevee. I no sooner sat down that the second plane hit. I jumped up, pulled on my BDU's and headed for post. I will never forget that day and seeing those people leap to their deaths from the top floors. Afghan Hearts and minds strategy my aching arse.
#15
Yeah. When I bought maps of most of the habitable caves east of the Mississippi River back in 94, from the USGS Map Store in Reston, I knew this was bound to happen I now need to buy the latest revisions to them all.
Also, as a resident of S. Maryland these days, Ill also need to warn my Amish neighbors that theyll soon be forced into a 24/7 food production & supply-chain logistics nightmare. Dont look now gentle, self-sufficient folks, but youre on the hook to feed the whole damn Nation (think small N).
So, Snap those suspenders and look livelycuz nobody else can do it like you little guys.
#1
Japan is likely to be devastated by a snowballing public debt that will bankrupt its government and trigger catastrophic hyperinflation.
Some economists can see beyond the current deflation and realize the only way out of the sovereign debt 'crisis' is hyperinflation. No other outcome is possible I'm afraid.
#3
Gromky, that also means $20.00/Gallon Gas regular only. premium, don't ask.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
03/20/2010 13:28 Comments ||
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#4
I'm old enough to remember when farthings were in general circulation in the UK. A farthing was a 1/4 of an old penny.
I believe the current smallest denomination coin in the UK is 1 new pence. Although in practice 5 pence is the smallest denomination in general use.
On that basis (5p is nominally worth about a hundred times more than a farthing), Your Big Mac will go for about $500 and your gallon of gas for about $1,000.
On that basis (5p is nominally worth about a hundred times more than a farthing), Your Big Mac will go for about $250 and your gallon of gas for about $400.
#1
In other words: "If this is an emergency, call America."
Posted by: Matt ||
03/20/2010 10:02 Comments ||
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#2
Yeah, I'm reading that differently. A combination of a referral to the [mildly] tranzi IMF with rhetoric evoking explicitly Imperial German nationalist iconography? That's... a pretty freaky blend right there. It strongly suggests that the right-of-pole Germans are thinking about bailing on Europan substitute nationalism, and are going in two directions at once - internationalist on the pragmatic level, retro-nationalist on the emotional level.
Posted by: Mitch H. ||
03/20/2010 11:39 Comments ||
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#3
Mmmm!
WWI happened in the first place because Germany started building Dreadnought class ships, invalidating (so the conventional wisdom of the time thought) the Royal Navy's numerical advantage in ships.
Germany thought their Dreadnoughts would allow them to operate a merchant fleet on the high seas. Jutland proved them wrong, but it was a close run thing.
Arguably superior British seamanship and their longer naval tradition defeated the German's technology advantage.
All of which has bugger all to do with Greece and the IMF.
The German High Seas Fleet knew they couldn't match the British Grand Fleet. They caught the British battle-cruiser scouting force too far from their supports, but did not stick around to fight when the British main force came up.
If the Germans had stayed and somehow arranged a miraculous victory, it would have been catastrophic for Britain, but the odds of this were very low and the Germans knew it.
On Tuesday something remarkable happened. A human rights commission actually made a good decision. Quebec's human rights commission ruled that niqab-and burka-wearing women must uncover their faces to apply for a medicare card and cannot insist on being served by a woman.
Salam Elmenyawi, chairperson of Montreal's Muslim Council, told the Montreal Gazette that the commission's stance was fair, but his reasonings for saying so are troubling. "In any Muslim state, a woman has to remove the face panel (in circumstances like voting or obtaining government services). I don't see this as a rejection," he said.
With all due respect to Elmenyawi, why on earth would Canadians fashion our society after what's done in any Muslim state? This is Canada, and we have our own customs, traditions and laws that include gender equality. Most Canadians don't want our country to emulate Muslim countries, which are, according to human rights NGOs like Freedom House and Amnesty International, among the most repressive countries in the world, particularly to women.
Marc-Andre Dowd, vice-chairperson of the Quebec Human Rights Commission said: "It is not a significant infringement of freedom of religion" for a woman to uncover her face for the short time required for a clerk to confirm her identity. Alas, some common sense. Dowd added: "One cannot choose the gender of the employee serving us." In other words, it's not OK to discriminate against men. En fin! And discrimination against men is what took place in another face-covering brouhaha recently in Montreal. Naema Ahmed has lodged a complaint with the Quebec Human Rights Commission stating she was kicked out of a French class in Montreal because she was wearing a niqab.
Tarek Fatah, founder of the Muslim Canadian Congress, congratulated the commission for standing up for Canadian values and hopes it will do so again in Ahmed's complaint. Fatah points out that news stories that claim Ahmed was kicked out of French classes for new immigrants because she was wearing the niqab are not entirely correct. Ahmed, a 29-year-old Egyptian pharmacist, was accepted into two separate college French courses while wearing the veil worn by fundamentalist Muslim women that leaves just a slit for their eyes. What got her kicked out of one of her classes was her unreasonable demands that were discriminatory and insulting toward male students in her classroom.
When she was asked to make a presentation to the class, she insisted that the three male students be forced to look the other way. When that sexist request was denied, Ahmed -- who was, remember, completely covered except for her eyes -- made her presentation facing away from all of her classmates. "We tried certain arrangements, but the demands just became too great," Paul-Emile Bourque, the principal of one of the schools, told the Globe and Mail.
"In my view, cases like this are done to provoke a clash," states Fatah. "The whole objective is to portray western society as hostile and at war with Islam." The real irony, however, says Fatah, is that Canadians tend to view women wearing niqabs and burkas as subservient, vulnerable women when, in fact, other than those being forced to wear niqabs by their male family members or because it is mandated in some Muslim countries, many of the women (though not all) who wear them by choice tend to be very fundamentalist, outspoken, "radical haters of the West."
"The doctrine behind niqab (where it is not mandated) is fundamentally anti-West," says Fatah. "It says to the West, 'f--k you'." How does he know this? "It is well known in Muslim circles," he says. Consider the women in the infamous Khadr family, who wear the niqab. In a CBC documentary, they very openly expressed their contempt for the West and their hope for their male relatives to die martyrs while killing infidels.
Then there are the now exposed e-mails of some of the wives of the so-called Toronto 18, who conspired to blow up Parliament, behead the prime minister and explode enormous bombs in downtown Toronto. Several men have been convicted and pleaded guilty to the charges against them in that case.
Nada Farooq, the wife of Zakaria Amara -- who was sentenced in January to life in prison for his leading role in the plot -- for example, referred to Canada as "this filthy country" and considered adding a clause to her pre-nuptial agreement that would allow her to file for divorce if her husband didn't pursue jihad.
In Egypt, the government has banned women from wearing the niqab at universities because it says the niqab is a symbol of radicalization and fundamentalism tied to al-Qaeda.
Fatah says Quebec's immigration minister, Yolande James, is a hero for saying recently, "There is no ambiguity about this question. If you want to assist at our classes, if you want to integrate into Quebec society, here are our values. We want to see your face." Here's hoping Quebec's human rights commission agrees and that the rest of Canada follows Quebec's lead.
#1
if you want to integrate into Quebec society, here are our values.
Sheesh dont confuse this with all the Human rights PC values stuff. So what if someone views the Burka as a symbol of subservience? Whats next the Amish barn dress? Bottom line, this is a public safety issue. As long as they dont receive special treatment I say let em wear the sack if they want.
There is no free press in Canada.
And these so-called "Human Right Commissions" rule 99.99% in favor of muslim judicial terror.
(Badmouthing islam is guaranteed bankrupcy)
It's rabid leftist agit-prop all the time,
(Fox News is interdicted)
So expect ALL women to wear the burqua in the next twenty years.
Americans are depicted as hideous monsters and Jihadists as heroes.
Priest are all pedophiles and muslims pious
tolerant saints...
Just watched that hollywood movie about haditha,
where US soldiers cannot say two words without one being Fxxx and jihadis are all raped heroic martyrs...
#4
Quebec has the lowest birthrate among Canadian provinces and US states. To avoid being overwhelmed by english speaking immigrants, the province has eagerly accepted french speaking muslims from Lebanon and North Africa, they apparently being preferable to dreaded anglos. (Unlike every other province, Quebec, not Canada, controls its immigration policy.)
H/T Hugh Hewitt -- read past the first few paragraphs. It ain't what you think it is
Barack Obama is the best thing that has happened to America in the last 100 years. Truly, he is the savior of America's future. He is the best thing ever.
Despite the fact that he has some of the lowest approval ratings among recent presidents, history will see Barack Obama as the source of America's resurrection.
Barack Obama has plunged the country into levels of debt that we could not have previously imagined; his efforts to nationalize health care have been met with fierce resistance nationwide; TARP bailouts and stimulus spending have shown little positive effect on the national economy; unemployment is unacceptably high and looks to remain that way for most of a decade; legacy entitlement programs have ballooned to unsustainable levels, and there is a seething anger in the populace.
That's why Barack Obama is such a good thing for America.
Obama is the symbol of a creeping liberalism that has infected our society like a cancer for the last 100 years. Just as Hitler is the face of fascism, Obama will go down in history as the face of unchecked liberalism. The cancer metastasized to the point where it could no longer be ignored.
Average Americans who have quietly gone about their lives, earning a paycheck, contributing to their favorite charities, going to high school football games on Friday night, spending their weekends at the beach or on hunting trips -- they've gotten off the fence.
They've woken up. There is a level of political activism in this country that we haven't seen since the American Revolution, and Barack Obama has been the catalyst that has sparked a restructuring of the American political and social consciousness.
Think of the crap we've slowly learned to tolerate over the past 50 years as liberalism sought to re-structure the America that was the symbol of freedom and liberty to all the people of the world.
Immigration laws were ignored on the basis of compassion. Welfare policies encouraged irresponsibility, the fracturing of families, and a cycle of generations of dependency. Debt was regarded as a tonic to lubricate the economy. Our children left school having been taught that they are exceptional and special, while great numbers of them cannot perform basic functions of mathematics and literacy.
Legislators decided that people could not be trusted to defend their own homes, and stripped citizens of their rights to own firearms.
Productive members of society have been penalized with a heavy burden of taxes in order to support legions of do-nothings who loll around, reveling in their addictions, obesity, indolence, ignorance and "disabilities."
Criminals have been arrested and re-arrested, coddled and set free to pillage the citizenry yet again. Lawyers routinely extort fortunes from doctors, contractors and business people with dubious torts.
We slowly learned to tolerate these outrages, shaking our heads in disbelief, and we went on with our lives.
But Barack Obama has ripped the lid off a seething cauldron of dissatisfaction and unrest.
In the time of Barack Obama, Black Panther members stand outside polling places in black commando uniforms, slapping truncheons into their palms. ACORN -- a taxpayer-supported organization -- is given a role in taking the census, even after its members were caught on tape offering advice to set up child prostitution rings.
A former Communist is given a paid government position in the White House as an advisor to the president. Auto companies are taken over by the government, and the auto workers' union -- whose contracts are completely insupportable in any economic sense -- is rewarded with a stake in the company.
Government bails out Wall Street investment bankers and insurance companies, who pay their executives outrageous bonuses as thanks for the public support.
Terrorists are read their Miranda rights and given free lawyers.
And, despite overwhelming public disapproval, Barack Obama has pushed forward with a health care plan that would re-structure one-sixth of the American economy.
I don't know about you, but the other day I was at the courthouse doing some business, and I stepped into the court clerk's office and changed my voter affiliation from "Independent" to "Republican."
I am under no illusion that the Republican party is perfect, but at least they're starting to awaken to the fact that we cannot sustain massive levels of debt; we cannot afford to hand out billions of dollars in corporate subsidies; we have to somehow trim our massive entitlement programs; we can no longer be the world's policeman and dole out billions in aid to countries whose citizens seek to harm us.
Literally millions of Americans have had enough. They're organizing, they're studying the Constitution and the Federalist Papers, they're reading history and case law, they're showing up at rallies and meetings, and a slew of conservative candidates are throwing their hats into the ring.
Is there a revolution brewing? Yes, in the sense that there is a keen awareness that our priorities and sensibilities must be radically re-structured. Will it be a violent revolution? No. It will be done through the interpretation of the original document that has guided us for 220 years -- the Constitution.
Just as the pendulum swung to embrace political correctness and liberalism, there will be a backlash, a complete repudiation of a hundred years of nonsense. A hundred years from now, history will perceive the year 2010 as the time when America got back on the right track. And for that, we can thank Barack Hussein Obama.
Gary Hubbell is a hunter, rancher, and former hunting and fly-fishing guide. Gary works as a Colorado ranch real estate broker. He can be reached through his website, aspenranchrealestate.com.
#3
Barack Obama Has Awakened A Sleeping Nation
9/11 was all a nightmare, never happened
Posted by: Sir Victor Emmanuel Glomomble IV ||
03/20/2010 4:57 Comments ||
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#4
A sleep greatly assisted by the blindfold put in place by the MSM. You know the one that endlessly drones about Abu Ghrab and Gitmo but seems to have a serious memory lapse [aka Memory Hole(C) 1984] about 9/11 where thousands of Americans really died.
#8
Someone tell me how I'm wrong about the following statements.
The tragedy of this is that once past, it cannot be stopped, because any efforts to repeal will be vetoed by this POS in the WH, and the agencies and commissions and civil servants will still be hired and established in the next 3 years. reversing that tumor is impossible.
And, the immediate and onerous taxes will bust the economy back into a double dip recession, breaking our ability to borrow more from the increasingly reticent ChiComs and Japanese. SO additional deficit spending will come through massive inflation and increased reductions in Defense and national security activities. American power in the world declines and the ascendent Chinese waste no time in reshaping everything their way, to include the basing of forces in out hemisphere, forever making economic colonies of willing dupes like Hugo and the Latin Amercian socialists.
At home, no jobs, permanent 10%+ unemployment, a profligate government transferring benefits/entitlements/payments/special preferences to selected supporters and an overwhelmed tax paying public. The relationship of the actual tax payers in this country with the aristocratic, tyrannical government and their non-taxpaying Democrat voter allies has just become overtly adversarial, not just conflicted.
Empires and nations do not survive these kinds of stresses. It takes a couple of decades, but the process has started. Our POS leader talked about change, and he was right. Tomorrow, the inevitable decline of the Republic was sealed!
Sauve qui peut!
#9
"any efforts to repeal will be vetoed by this POS in the WH"
His veto can be overridden buy Congress, NMBS.
Not saying it would actually happen, just that it could.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
03/20/2010 18:02 Comments ||
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#10
Unfortunately, Barbara, it takes a two-thirds majority in the House AND the Senate to override a veto. There is no effin way that the Republicans will get two-thirds majority in both Houses in November.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
03/20/2010 21:37 Comments ||
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#11
Maybe so, Rambler, but perhaps the some of the Dems who are still there untill 2012 will be scared enough by the November 2010 results that they'll vote to override.
Best thing is if they just fail to pass it this time.
Any of y'all who have fence-sitting Dems for reps, call them again and tell them to vote no. E-mail too.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
03/20/2010 23:05 Comments ||
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#12
Barack H Obama has awakened many people....
Poem by me in October 2008, a parable about you-know-who before he was elected...
UPON THE APPROACH TO THE EVENT HORIZON
On a ship.
In the vast expanse,
A myriad of lights,
But this trip is different.
We are all together,
Yet we are split in two,
Many in the ship are drawn,
To a brilliant shining mass.
Yet as we approach it,
The center is hollow and void,
Half dont care,
Half see alarm.
We pull against
Against each other,
We are drawn close,
Cant they see danger?
God knows the answer,
In the end our fate,
Our fate is with Him,
The bell tolls.
Suddenly, my city feels again like a war zone. Since the suicide bombings ended in 2005, life in Jerusalem has been for the most part relatively calm. The worst disruptions have been the traffic jams resulting from construction of a light rail line, just like in a normal city. But now, again, there are clusters of helmeted border police near the gates of the Old City, black smoke from burning tires in the Arab village across from my porch, young men marching with green Islamist flags toward my neighbourhood, ambulances parked at strategic places ready for this city's ultimate nightmare.
The return of menace to Jerusalem is not because a mid-level bureaucrat announced stage four of a seven-stage process in the eventual construction of 1,600 apartments in Ramat Shlomo, a Jewish neighbourhood in northeast Jerusalem. Such announcements and building projects have become so routine over the years that Palestinians have scarcely responded, let alone violently. In negotiations between Palestinians and Israelis, the permanence of Ramat Shlomo, and other Jewish neighbourhoods in East Jerusalem, has been a given.
Ramat Shlomo, located between the Jewish neighbourhoods of French Hill and Ramot, will remain within the boundaries of Israeli Jerusalem according to every peace plan. Unlike the small Jewish enclaves inserted into Arab neighbourhoods, on which Israelis are strongly divided, building in the established Jewish neighbourhoods of East Jerusalem defines the national consensus.
Why, then, the outbreak of violence now? Why Hamas's day of rage' over Jerusalem and the Palestinian Authority's call to gather on the Temple Mount to save' the Dome of the Rock from non-existent plans to build the Third Temple? Why the sudden outrage over rebuilding a synagogue, destroyed by the Jordanians in 1948, in the Old City's Jewish Quarter, when dozens of synagogues and yeshivas have been built in the quarter without incident?
The answer lies not in Jerusalem but in Washington. By placing the issue of building in Jewish neighbourhoods in East Jerusalem at the centre of the peace process, President Obama has inadvertently challenged the Palestinians to do no less.
Astonishingly, Obama is repeating the key tactical mistake of his failed efforts to restart Middle East peace talks over the last year. Though Obama's insistence on a settlement freeze to help restart negotiations was legitimate, he went a step too far by including building in East Jerusalem. Every Israeli government over the last four decades has built in the Jewish neighbourhoods of East Jerusalem; no government, let alone one headed by the Likud, could possibly agree to a freeze there. Obama made resumption of negotiations hostage to a demand that could not be met. The result was that Palestinian leaders were forced to adjust their demands accordingly.
Obama is directly responsible for one of the most absurd turns in the history of Middle East negotiations. Though Palestinian leaders negotiated with Israeli governments that built extensively in the West Bank, they now refused to sit down with the first Israeli government to actually agree to a suspension of building. Obama's demand for a building freeze in Jerusalem led to a freeze in negotiations.
Finally, after intensive efforts, the administration produced the pathetic achievement of proximity talks' setting Palestinian-Israeli negotiations back a generation, to the time when Palestinian leaders refused to sit at the same table with Israelis.
That Obama could be guilty of such amateurishness was perhaps forgivable because he was, after all, an amateur. But he has now taken his failed policy and intensified it. By demanding that Israel stop building in Ramat Shlomo and elsewhere in East Jerusalem and placing that demand at the centre of American-Israeli relations he's ensured that the Palestinians won't show up even to proximity talks. This is no longer amateurishness; it is pique disguised as policy.
#2
Hah! They've renamed that column since this was posted.
Posted by: Mitch H. ||
03/20/2010 11:40 Comments ||
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#3
Oh, also: the folks in the comments demanded a source for Wingate's alleged homosexuality, and nobody offered one, so I'm calling the whole premise of the article bollocks until somebody can actually pony up the context. It rather sounds like that crap book from a few years ago wherein some clown tried to claim Lincoln for the rainbow. Again.
Posted by: Mitch H. ||
03/20/2010 11:48 Comments ||
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#4
All famous dead people were gay. Didn't you know that?
#5
The real story of Srebenica has yet to be told. The worst massacre in modern times outside Africa is still treated as a 'well sh1t happens, get over it' story by the MSM and the powers that be.
If you lose the war, as Irakis, Serbs and Germans
did, you get scrutiny and your "Ethnic Cleansings" get exposed.
If you win, like Stalin, Mao, the Spaniards
in South America and the English in North America,
your hundred of millions of victims die of exposure, plagues and others "Acts of God"
The Muslim "Umma" is now winning their propaganda war.
And you never hear now about the Barbary Pirates
and the hundred of millions of African Blacks and
White Europeans that they enslaved, raped,
tortured and dismembered.
(It only stopped when the American Navy
went after them at Tripoli.)
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.
On Tuesday something remarkable happened. A human rights commission actually made a good decision. Quebec's human rights commission ruled that niqab-and burka-wearing women must uncover their faces to apply for a medicare card and cannot insist on being served by a woman.
