The AUF of Utoya Fame is Completely Radicalised Against Israel

Seen here:

Labor Youth not only subscribes to a Manichean perspective on the Israel-Palestine conflict – they are baying for the conflict to increase. Christian People’s Party does not approve.

Vårt Land offers the article “Labor Youth is playing at war” by journalist Johannes Morken. Excerpt:

Labor Youth leader Eskil Pedersen demands that Norway positions itself “even more clearly on the side of the Palestinians”. This makes CPP-youth leader Elisabeth Løland to mobilize against Labor Youth.

- The conflict has been going on for decades and has destroyed the lives of many humans, both Israelis and Palestinians. This is not a football match where one selects a side to support, and then to cheer every time they score a goal, says Løland.

Run sister, run, you’re doing good. As for Eskil Pedersen of Labor Youth, you know full well how your brethren are faring under the loving rule of Hamas and PA alike, and yet, in order to be sufficiently radical and tough, you choose to look the other way. That’s the kind of creature you are, you and Anette Trettebergstuen alike.

Jewish Children In Oslo Schools Report The Most Harassment

Gee, I wonder why. Just maybe because anti-Semitism, the preferred pose of Norway's Labour Party and its youth arm, the AUF, is pandemic in Norway, thanks to Gro Harlem Brundtland. Imagine that. A doctor spreading a disease.

Excerpted from a news report in June:

Students with ethnic Norwegian background were the least harassed, but the rate of harassment rose in line with the number of non-Norwegian students at their schools.

Most worrisome for school and city officials was the high level of Jewish students, 33 percent, who reported harassment at least two to three times a month. That compares to 5.3 percent of Muslim students who said they’d been harassed. Fully 9 percent of the students responding said they’d been harassed at school because of their religion or faith, while Christians experienced the least harassment. ...

More than half of the students, 52 percent, said they’d experienced that the word jøde (Jew) was used to describe something negative. Fully 41 percent confirmed having heard jokes about Jews at school and 35 percent had noticed generally negative commentaries on Jews. As many as 5 percent had heard other students deny that the Holocaust occurred during World War II.

“Respect, tolerance, equality and inclusion must be made crystal clear in the schools’ educational program,” said director Astrid Søgnen of the city’s department of education.

What a joke. Whether it's under fascists like Quisling or communists like Labour, anti-Semitism finds fertile ground to flourish and grow in Norway, no matter what.

Oslo/Utoya: The overall toll in the attack now stands at 76 instead of 93.

The latest here.

What's The Difference Between The Utoya Shooter and Bill Clinton?

One besieged and killed 76 people, including more than 20 children, and the other is a Norwegian.

The Utoya Shooter Also Lifted Broadly From The Unabomber

It won't get much attention, since the liberal effort already is to smear Fjordman, Gates of Vienna, Jihad Watch, Pam Geller, Brussels Journal, et alia, but the shooter's manifesto also lifted broadly from the Unabomber, according to Scott Shane for The New York Times, here:

Mr. Breivik’s declaration did not name Mr. Kaczynski or acknowledge the numerous passages copied from the Unabomber’s 1995 manifesto, in which the Norwegian substituted “multiculturalists” or “cultural Marxists” for Mr. Kaczynski’s “leftists” and made other small wording changes.

Don't study mathematics, kiddies. You wouldn't want to grow up to be a terrorist now would you?

And while we are at it, the post-war right in America has never drawn any inspiration from utilitarianism and John Stuart Mill either, unless, of course, you include libertarians on the right. Many of us never have, don't now, and won't in future. One reason being that some of them have a nasty habit of being anti-Semitic, just like the Norwegian Labour Party and its youth wing, the AUF. Another being, for example, Mike Gravel.

Utoya Shooting Survivors So Brainwashed By AUF Anti-Semitism They Mistook The Atrocity For A Staged Object Lesson

"Several young survivors of the massacre reported that they initially took the shooting by the killer who was dressed as a cop for a simulation of Israeli crimes against Palestinians in the occupied territories."

As reported here:

Mehrere jugendliche Überlebende des Massakers berichteten, dass sie die Schießerei des als Polizist verkleideten Mörders zunächst für eine Simulierung israelischer Verbrechen an Palästinensern in den besetzten Gebieten hielten.

But you can bet no one will call what Norwegians have let happen to the minds of these young people a crime.

A Credible Republican Candidate For President in 2012. . .

. . . will be first and foremost the one who forthrightly repudiates the legacy of George W. Bush.

Democrat Intransigence: To Go On Spending As If There Were No Problem

Jack Kelly notes here that revenues have never been enough to match spending, going all the way back to WWII:

The problem is spending. Outlays rose from $1.863 trillion in FY 2001 to an estimated $3.819 trillion in this fiscal year, 105 percent in 10 years. The federal government now consumes 24 percent of the gross domestic product. (Since 1903, federal spending has averaged a hair over 20 percent of GDP). ...

Since World War II, federal tax revenues have averaged 18 percent of GDP. Income tax rates varied widely during this period, and there were both booms and busts. But tax revenues never exceeded 20.6 percent of GDP. That seems to be a ceiling -- no matter what economic conditions are or how high rates are raised -- and it suggests the budget cannot be balanced unless spending is held below 20 percent of GDP.

So tax hikes can't close the budget gap. But they could clobber the moribund recovery, making the deficit worse.

Democrats want Republicans to accept real tax hikes in exchange for mostly phantom spending cuts. Because they are unwilling to do so, many journalists describe Republicans as "intransigent." But the truly intransigent, it seems to me, are those who want to go on spending as if there were no problem.

None Dare Called it Learned

Except for "Aaron," a non-religious Jewish Democrat who thinks George Bush is a war criminal.

Aaron "also didn't know that his same-sex attraction, far from being inborn and inescapable, was a thirst for the love that he had not received from his father, a cold and distant man prone to angry outbursts, coupled with a fear of women kindled by his intrusive and overbearing mother, all of which added up to a man who wanted to have sex with other men just so he could get some male attention. He didn't understand any of this, he tells me, until he found a reparative therapist whom he consulted by phone for nearly 10 years, attended weekend workshops, and learned how to 'be a man.'"

Gary Greenberg for Mother Jones tries to remain sympathetic, here.

Author Admits Norway is Racist, Never Mentions It Is Official Labour Policy Towards Israel

Everyone is ignoring the anti-Semitic elephant in the world's living room.

"Casual racism is rife. Only in Norway have I heard someone order a taxi and request that the driver is white. News reports can display an unwitting racism that is shocking to British ears."

-- Anthony Browne, Mayor of London's Re-election Campaign, here

Camp Utoya Day Before The Shootings: A Seething Cauldron of Anti-Israelism

As seen here and here and translated by Google (italics added for emphasis):

Jonas Gahr Store: - The occupation must end, the wall must be demolished and it must happen now

21. July 2011, at. 5:42 p.m. | | By: Eivind Funds

The Foreign Minister was met with claims that Norway must recognize a Palestinian state when he visited the Labour Youth League summer camp Thursday.

AUF WANT BOYCOTT: Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Store was met by demands that Norway must recognize a Palestinian state when he visited the Labour Youth League summer camp at Utøya Thursday.

During the second day of Labour Youth League summer camp at Utøya got the Labour Party's young hopefuls visit by Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Store.

Together with the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation correspondent Sidsel Wold and Norwegian People's Aid Kirsten Belck-Olsen, discussed the Foreign Minister of the deadlock between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

As foreign minister arrived Utøya he was met with a demand from the AUF that Norway must recognize a Palestinian state.

- The Palestinians must have their own state, the occupation must end, the wall must be demolished and it must happen now, said the Foreign Minister to cheers from the audience.

Earlier this week, when Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas visited Norway, the Minister said to TV 2 news channel that Norway stands ready to recognize a Palestinian state . This he repeated during the debate on Utøya.

- We are ready to recognize a Palestinian state. I await the actual resolution text Palestinians will promote the UN General Assembly in September, said the Minister.

In autumn it is expected that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will bring the matter to the UN. Where will he ask for UN membership and recognition of a Palestinian state within the borders before the 1967 war, with East Jerusalem as its capital.

Wednesday said AUF leader Eskil Pedersen that the AUF want a unilateral economic embargo of Israel from the Norwegian side.

- Labour Youth will have a more activist Middle East policy and we have to recognize Palestine. NOK NOK's, now we have to get the peace process into a new track, said Pedersen.

The foreign minister admitted that the situation is untenable, but believes that the boycott is the wrong tool.

- Boycott will be to move from dialogue to monologue. It is difficult to open the door the day we will talk with Israel, said the Minister.

The Vikings Live On . . . in the Anti-Semitic 'Ship To Gaza Norway'

Some things never change:

Note their platform: "resistance against the Israeli occupation".







(source)

The Gang of Six Types Attack Savers

They want to cap "combined employee/employer pre-tax contributions to 401(k)s at $20,000 or 20 percent of income, whichever is lower. That would be a substantial cut in deductibility, since the employee deduction alone currently is capped at $16,500 (savers over age 50 can make additional $5,500 “catch-up” contributions)."

Just one of the ways the greedy feds want to extract more revenue from people as they age.

You'll find more of this discussed, here.

"Norway's toughest sentence is 21 years in jail"

Seen here.

Larry Kudlow is No Conservative: Another Voice Impeding the Tea Party

So-called conservatives like Lawrence Kudlow insist, INSIST!, that Barack Obama is a liberal, not a socialist.

Wake up, Kudlow: The deficit is triple what it was under a real liberal, George W. Bush, and you call that more liberalism!

Which is why Kudlow, even today, keeps defending plans like the one from the Gang of Six. That plan's baseline assumes the expiration of the Bush tax rates, which means a reset UP of the tax rates. A cut from that is a cut, except relative to the rates from which it represents a tax increase.

GET ON THE RIGHT, KUDLOW!

Cut taxes, you moron.

And slash, SLASH!, spending.

Build submarines and satellites to project American power, and drill here. We don't need boots on the ground in what, 170 countries?!

This is so easy my fifth grader could beat you.

TSA = Thousands Standing Around

According to the pilots! So says The Barrister, here.

I still like Tough Shit America, though.

The Fed Still Refuses to Document for the GAO the Exigent Circumstances Justifying Loans to Non-Primary Dealers

See the story here.

We're talkin' affiliates of Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Citigroup.

None dare call it fascism.

The True Born Sons of Liberty want The Fed to end.

Mayor Daley's Legacy: A Total Breakdown of Law and Order in Chicago

Firemen need police escorts to turn off nearly 2,000 opened fire hydrants.

Story here.

Just think what would happen in this country if we had a really serious problem. The natives are restless.

Right Wing White Racist Militia From Missouri Sets Off Car Bomb In Oslo

Oops, sorry. Wrong headline.

Story here.

Everybody's Doin' A Brand New Dance Now: The Mussolini

Carole King - Locomotion


LOCOMOTION
by Gerry Goffin and Carole King

Everybody's doin' a brand new dance now

Come on baby do the locomotion Mussolini
I know you'll get to like it if you give it a chance now
Come on baby do the locomotion Mussolini

My little baby sister can do it with ease
It's easier than learning your ABC's

So come on, come on do the locomotion Mussolini with me

You gotta swing your hips now
Come on baby jump up jump back
Oh well, I think you've got the knack

Now that you can do it let's make a chain some pain now
Come on baby do the locomotion Mussolini
Chug-a-chug a motion like a railroad train now nuke plant meltdown
Come on baby do the locomotion Mussolini

Do it nice and easy now and don't lose control
A little bit of rhythm and a lot of soul

Come on, come on do the locomotion Mussolini with me

Move around the floor in a locomotion like a king-sized Weenie
Come on baby do the locomotion Mussolini
Do it holdin' hands if you get the notion you big fascist Meanie
Come on baby do the locomotion Mussolini

There's never been a dance that's so easy to do
It even makes you happy wealthy when you're feeling blue
Come on, come on do the locomotion Mussolini with me

(original lyrics here)

Senator Saxby Chambliss Doesn't Tell The Whole Truth About Tax Loss Expenditures

On the Sean Hannity program today Senator Chambliss claimed that under Ronald Reagan tax loss expenditures were eliminated as part of a lowering and broadening of the tax base in 1986.

The top income tax bracket eventually fell to 28 percent for a very brief time as a result of the Tax Reform Act of 1986 under Reagan's successor, George Herbert Walker Bush, who subsequently went on to break his no new taxes pledge, paving the way for tax increases under his successor, Bill Clinton, proving that broad low tax rates can be as ephemeral as any other part of the tax code.

The senator from Georgia today claimed that the current plan of his Gang of Six was proposing the scaling-back of similar tax loss expenditures enjoyed by taxpayers in the same spirit of Reagan. For example, the Gang wants to reduce the deductibility of home mortgage interest and charitable contributions in exchange for a lower income tax rate.

But the senator is pulling a fast one with the facts. Reagan didn't just eliminate some tax loss expenditures and reduce income tax rates in exchange. He in fact broadened at the same time the mortgage interest deduction in order to encourage home ownership, something entirely missing from the Gang of Six plan:

Prior to the Tax Reform Act of 1986 (TRA86), the interest on all personal loans (including credit card debt) was deductible. TRA86 eliminated that broad deduction, but created the narrower home mortgage interest deduction under the theory that it would encourage home ownership.

I remember at the time how unfair I thought it was to lose the deductibility of credit card interest until I realized how an equity line of credit based on home ownership could and in fact did replace the role credit cards and other lines of credit had played in the tax equation before 1986. The change was also noteworthy because it encouraged the acquisition and use of secured equity instead of the use of mere credit secured only by income and creditworthiness.

Senator Chambliss' plan will eliminate tax deductibility of home mortgage interest without replacing it with anything to encourage home ownership.

And if there's anything America needs more right now, it's jobs and family formation to soak up the excess housing inventory. All Chambliss' plan will do is worsen the economic circumstances of current homeowners, who are already struggling with upside down loans and declining real estate values.

It's time conservatives recaptured the importance of home ownership as a social good. Unfortunately, the ideas of the Gang of Six do anything but. And whatever else they are, they aren't Reaganite. 

Atlantis Makes Final Shuttle Return to Earth, as Seen From Space Station

Source:

American Fascist Snapshot of the Day: NY Fed President, William Dudley, Owned AIG and GE During Their Bailouts!

Outrageous. 

The best investments government can buy.

None dare call it fascism.

Story here.

Naked Scans To Be Replaced With Generic Silhouettes On Millimeter Wave Machines

So says The Washington Post, here.

A similar change for backscatter scanners is still in development and is not available.

Dept. of Homeland Security Snitch Video Portrays at Least 15 Terrorists as Whites

Go ahead.

Count 'em.

Here.

Read about it, here.

Incompetent Airport Security Misses .32 cal Ammo TWICE

Both in the US and in the Bahamas:

It’s unclear how the bullet was not detected by security at Kansas City International Airport and in Nassau.

No, it's entirely clear. You're incompetent and your security is pure theatre, you miserable cretins.

There's more here.

Spending Cuts, Not Default, Are What Obama and Democrats Fear, and Loathe

American news organs appear to be incapable of the accurate formulation.

You won't find it put better anywhere than here:

Without agreement by August 2, the U.S. government will have to impose immediate spending cuts of about 44 per cent to stave off a default on its huge debts.

House Defiant, Passes Cut, Cap and Balance 234-190

Presidential candidates Bachmann and Paul were among nine Republicans who voted against the plan because it raises the debt ceiling:

The measure, to be taken up by the Senate next, would impose statutory spending caps to wring $5.8 trillion in unspecified savings from the government over the next decade — twice the $2.4 trillion debt ceiling increase that is allowed. Nondefense appropriations face a 30 percent cut from what the Congressional Budget Office now projects for the same period, and even SSI (Supplemental Security Income) payments for the elderly and disabled are exposed to across-the-board sequesters to enforce the reductions.

Read the rest here.

Spending Prediction

78 percent of New Year's Eve resolutions fail.

And they all vote.

Obama Grasps at Straws, Seizes on Gang of Six Pricks Plan

Reported here:

President Barack Obama ... lauded a bipartisan deficit-reduction plan Tuesday that includes $1 trillion in higher taxes ... [S]tocks soared for the day, propelled by the deficit plan's emergence and Obama's decision to seize on it as well as by strong earnings reports.


And elsewhere, this:

"You're elected executive to lead. And I think it's incumbent on the president to put the plan out there. You cannot wait for members of a legislative body to lead. The executive has an obligation to lead."

-- New Jersey Governor Chris Christie

Tim Pawlenty Draws Blood: How Bachmann is Obama All Over Again

And it's about time, too:

Speaking to reporters after a town-hall event [in Iowa] on a sweltering afternoon, Pawlenty did not hold back when asked whether the Minnesota congresswoman could win a general election if she were to become the Republican presidential nominee.

"I don't think the country is going to do that again," Pawlenty said in his characteristically subdued tone before twisting the knife. "They learned the lesson of big speeches and no experience with Barack Obama, and it didn't work."


More here.

Spending Every Year is Now Twice What it was When Clinton Left Office

When men lack self-restraint, restraint must be applied from the outside. That is the meaning of this moment.

For more from David Boaz, click here.

The Gang of Pricks

They want to raise your taxes by $1.2 trillion:

Sen. Tom Coburn is the Enemy of Every Traditional Family

With enemies like Coburn, who needs Democrats?

"I’ve argued that Republicans should be willing to consider increases in revenue -- not through higher tax rates but through eliminating tax earmarks, such as that for ethanol, and other expenditure that misallocates capital."

"Tax earmarks" and "other expenditure" which "misallocates capital"?

Read "tax loss expenditures." In other words, the tax deductions which every nuclear family in the country depends on for its survival: mortgage interest, donations to charity, property taxes, state income taxes and the like.

THE GUY VIEWS YOUR TAX PAYMENTS AS THE GOVERNMENT'S CAPITAL. AND EVERY PROVISION OF THE TAX CODE WHICH DIVERTS YOUR MONEY BACK TO YOU HE VIEWS AS A MISALLOCATION.

If it walks like a tax increase and talks like a tax increase, it's a tax increase.

Federal Judge Rules One Hutaree Member Incompetent to Stand Trial

Due to either a mental defect or a mental illness, resulting in delusions.

The story is here and here.

Too bad someone can't intervene in this way on behalf of President Obama, an ideologue who suffers under the delusion that he is a pragmatist.

How Much of Your Money Market Fund is in the Repo Market?

Just days ago it seems we were worried sick about money market exposures to European banks who are in turn exposed to the PIIGS.

Overall US money market funds have had just under half of their assets in short term European investments, meaning that US cash savers in such funds are actually providing perhaps as much as several trillions of dollars in liquidity to Europe's stressed banks and sovereigns.

Now Jim Jubak thinks money market exposures to the repo market should also worry people, here:

My big worry is that the current slow erosion of faith in U.S. Treasurys will turn into a cascade of unanticipated consequences if the debt ceiling isn't raised. Treasurys play a unique role in the global financial markets. They aren't important only because they're jammed into so many global portfolios, including the portfolios of so many of the world's countries. They're also important because they serve as collateral on a huge percentage of the complex deals that use derivatives to shift risk around the globe. ...

Treasurys are used as collateral for cash loans in the repo (repurchase) market. In a repo agreement, the seller of a security agrees to buy it back from a buyer at a higher price on a specified date in the future. Repos are, in effect, short-term loans; they are used to raise short-term cash by banks and corporations. Central banks, such as the Federal Reserve, also use them to manage the money supply. To expand the money supply, the Fed decreases the repo rate at which it buys back government debt instruments from commercial banks. To shrink the money supply, the Fed increases the repo rate.

It's a huge market. Bank of America Merrill Lynch estimates that 74% of primary dealer repo financing -- or about $2.1 trillion -- involves Treasurys as collateral. ...

Money market funds have big chunks of their cash in the repo market. (Anyone who remembers the problems that the Lehman crisis created for money market funds should regard any advice on using money market funds as a safe haven in the event of a U.S. default with extreme skepticism.)

North Carolina Dept. of Transportation A Little Hacked Off At Obama

For what reason, we do not know, but the sign displayed the message over the weekend and motorists pulled over to take pictures.

The story is here:

The Bernanke S and P After 2 Rounds of Quantitative Easing

600 points for $2.5+ trillion in MBS and Treasuries.

Ben Bernanke: The Very Face of Moral Hazard

Senator Jim Bunning (R-KY), quoted here:

“You are the very definition of a moral hazard.”

Damn Right Gloria: The Tea Party Stopped The Transformation

And we aim to reverse it.

Video here.

Pay It Down Now, Or Pay A Lot More Later

“I used to think that if there was reincarnation, I wanted to come back as the president or the pope or as a .400 baseball hitter. But now I would like to come back as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody.”

-- James 'Cue Ball' Carville, quoted here

Will Government Be Short $134 Billion In August as Bob Brinker Claims Today?

He made the claim on his radio show, "Money Talk." See the recap here.

Others, as for example here, maintain there's plenty of cash flow to pay for everything critical both in law and for creditworthiness:

"The Daily Treasury Statement for June 30—which any American, including the president, can look up on the U.S. Treasury Department’s website at this link—says the government took in $196.994 billion in revenue during the month ... more than enough to pay not only all Social Security benefits and veterans benefits and programs for the month, but also, on top of that, the interest on the federal debt, Medicare, Medicaid, the Indian Health Service, Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, all federal workers’ salaries, federal workers’ insurance benefits, Justice Department programs, and Defense Department venders.

"The combined costs for all of these federal expenditures in June was $195.502 billion.

"That means that out of the federal government’s $196.994 billion in revenue in June, the government would have had a surplus of $1.492 billion after it had paid the interest on the national debt, plus all Social Security benefits, veterans’ benefits, veterans’ programs, Medicare, Medicaid, the Indian Health Service, Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, federal workers’ salaries, federal workers’ insurance benefits, Justice Department programs, and Defense Department vend[o]rs."


Isn't it the potential of cutting off the cash cow for extraneous government spending which really has liberals like Brinker in a fit? After all, he called Senator Harry "The War is Lost" Reid of Nevada "a good man" more than once on his show. Brinker loves the guy.

How is it that Brinker can assert, as he did today, that advocating against raising the debt ceiling, as certain Republicans are doing presently, disqualifies one for the presidency when Obama actually voted against raising the debt ceiling in 2006, along with all the rest of his Democrat colleagues in the Senate? The Roll Call vote is here.

The minions of liberals in the federal workforce might actually have to THINK going forward and prove their competence for their exorbitant salaries by PRIORITIZING spending for a change if Republicans muster the courage to force them TO DO THEIR JOBS and leave the debt ceiling where it is. Raising the debt ceiling is the true default: It means you can't pay your bills without more borrowing.

Maybe Bob Brinker is afraid the Democrats are not really up to it. They certainly haven't been in the past. We're still waiting for a budget proposal from the Senate. The Senate under Reid hasn't passed one in over two years.

Obama Proves The Rule: Stoners Can't Remember Dates

Not only can he not remember his daughter's birthdate, he can't remember his own.

Story here.

Nor quantities and sizes: Obama's America has at least 57 states and hundreds of millions of inhabitants.

US Money Market Funds Are Keeping The PIIGS' Banks Liquid

So says Felix Zulauf, here:

[T]he banks, particularly at the periphery, are refunding themselves via the U.S. money market that is extremely liquid, and half of the money in the U.S. money market funds is really money to fund the peripheral European banks. Once those money market funds get hit by redemptions because investors find out, then you have a funding crisis of major scale at the periphery of Europe, and that is the next step. It is a never-ending drama until it breaks in a big way.

The Dollar, Then and Now

In 1913, when the Federal Reserve came into being, the 1790 Dollar had lost little value over the preceding 123 years. You needed just $1.08 to buy what a 1790 Dollar could buy.

58 years on from 1913, however, when the Dollar and Gold were finally and completely de-linked from one another in 1971, that 1913 Dollar worth $1.08 had lost over 300 percent of its value. You needed $4.56 in 1971 to buy what $1.08 could buy in 1913. Much of the devaluation of the Dollar occurred in 1933 when FDR confiscated Gold and then reset the price per ounce at $35.00 from $20.67, a 70 percent devaluation almost overnight.

By 2010, just 39 years on from 1971, that $4.56 really went south. Completely unhinged from Gold, you now needed $24.50 in 2010 to buy what $4.56 could buy in 1971. That 1971 Dollar worth $4.56 had lost over another 400 percent of its value.

Carthago delenda est? Try: Down with the Fed!

Woman Gropes TSA Agent!

It's about time!

Story here.

Obama's Got The Better Approach? Granny Hawkins Begs To Differ.

"I’m confident that I will win that [debt] debate because ... we’ve got the better approach.”

-- President Obama


Granny Hawkins:

I say that big talk's worth doodly-squat.

Moody's Downgrades 7 Portuguese Banks Which Just Passed EU 'Stress' Tests

The laughs never stop.

Story here.

DC Circuit Court Rules Naked Body Scans Do Not Violate Fourth Amendment

Because they're optional.

As in you can either get photographed naked, or groped, without which you are not "free to fly about the country."

Some option. Papers will be next. And then every form of transportation you  take will make you subject to unreasonable search and seizure.

Just roll over and take it, bitch. You'll enjoy it.

Story here.

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee Confuses Not Getting Your Way With Racism

Pretty soon anyone who says No to anyone will be a racist, too.

Story here.

'If Obama Cuts Medicare or Social Security, I'll Vote Communist'

Chicagoan Mary Ellen . . . Croteau was asked if she would still vote for Obama, "No I won't . . .. Not if he cuts Medicare and Social Security. I'm 61. I'm looking at retirement in a few years."

". . . I will vote for someone. Whether it's a Green candidate, whether it's a Communist, I don't care. Somebody who's going to stand up for people. This is disgusting. [Obama] has given away everything he pledged to stand for."

Read the full entry here.

Dr. Obama Prescribes The Same Old Medicine Of The Miserable

"I always have hope. Don't you remember my campaign? [laughter] Even after being here for two and a half years, I continue to have hope. You know why I have hope? It's because of the American people."

Video here.

The miserable have no other medicine,

But only Hope:

I've hope to live, and am prepar'd to die.

     -- Claudio, William Shakespeare's Measure for Measure, Act III, Scene I

Rasmussen Poll, Like Gallup, Shows Low Support For New Taxes at 34 Percent

Again, as part of a debt limit increase measure. While Gallup has 50 percent wanting spending cuts as the primary feature of the legislation, Rasmussen shows that at 55 percent.

The poll results are here.

Obama Says 80 Percent Want Balanced Approach, Gallup Says 32 Percent

Only 11 percent want a predominantly tax approach, while 50 percent want a predominantly spending cuts approach.

See Gallup here, and Obama here.

Why Michele Bachmann Won't Be President

TMI.

Is Tim Pawlenty "The Unnatural"?

There's a certain metaphysical quality to the guy. And we're not talking Platonic philosophy.

The New Republic tries to explain, here.

Ann Althouse Calls Obama A Liar

Well, yeah. And you thought reading was fundamental.

"Obama lied about a central fact about his own life which he used — powerfully — to push health care reform."

I wonder if he ever lied to his own mother.

Democrats Under Obama Were The First Since 1974 Not To Pass A Budget

So Mona Charen, here:

Unlike Republicans under President Bush, Democrats were in full control of the federal government from January 2009 until January of 2011. Despite a 77-seat majority in the House, an 18-seat majority in the Senate and a Democrat in the White House, the Democratic Party became the first since budget rules were enacted in 1974 to fail to pass a budget. Budgets are clarifying. So is the failure to produce one.

Democrat Rick Perry Once Voted For Texas Size Tax and Salary Increases

. . . Back in the 80s, when now Republican Governor of Texas Rick Perry also worked for Al Gore.

The New York Times is happy to tell you, here.

For Mockery of Fiscal Conservatism, You Can't Beat MarketWatch

As here.

Being a commie must be a line item check-off on the job application. 

When the counter-revolution comes, those guys better watch out.

America is Completely Insane: TSA Pats Down Titanium SECDEF Rumsfeld

Story here.

The Atlantic Doesn't Really Care What Kind of Nut Michele Bachmann Is

Just that you know she's a nut.

Joshua Green here thinks she's a Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran anti-Catholic nut, even though she's formally separated herself from the group after many years.

The reason surely has to do with theological views she has which are errors according to these Lutherans. Green would like Bachmann to be all about the Lutheran position that the pope is the Antichrist, a position Bachmann has gone on record disavowing.

You'd think Green would dig a little deeper because of that, say at Salon here or especially Mother Jones here, to gain a little wider appreciation for Bachmann's interest in an apocalyptic timetable at the center of which is the state of Israel, and the dispensationalism and millennialism which goes with it, all of which are eschewed by Lutheran interpretation.

Lutheranism is amillennial, and Pauline in its insistence that the Church is the Israel of God, and has replaced it in the world. For Lutherans, the state of Israel is theologically irrelevant. And therefore it is impossible for them that one's relationship to the state of Israel could be talismanic in any way, as Bachmann appears to believe.

For end times enthusiasts like the Congresswoman, the Antichrist is an historical personage who is revealed before the end of the world, not a spirit of error who perennially inhabits the seat of Roman Catholic false doctrine, as the Lutherans believe.

I don't find it surprising at all that Bachmann has parted ways with Lutheranism in the light of these facts. What is surprising is that it took her so long.

She may herself be still quite confused about much of this. Lots of Christians are, and spend inordinate amounts of time trying to figure it all out. But who can really say, except Bachmann herself? About that Green is correct.

The political ramifications for Bachmann's presidential run are not inconsiderable, since many of the people on all sides of these issues in the churches are her potential base of support. For fervent believers as many of them are, positions taken on these issues can be fundamentally alienating.

It's fascinating in a way . . . kind of like a train wreck.

Social Security Tax Cut For 2011 Adds To Stress In A Government Shutdown

The revenue lost to Social Security, about $120 billion in 2011 due to the temporary tax cut, will be reimbursed to the Trust Fund from income tax withholding, over two years, not one. That means that with annual deficit spending already at $1.5 trillion, in a shut down there's even less cash flow to count on if $5 billion in funds are being siphoned off for this purpose monthly.

TheHill.com explains here:

The tax cut will put roughly $120 billion into workers’ pockets. Perhaps $90 billion of this, or three quarters, will be spent. This could provide enough of a boost to GDP to create more than 300,000 jobs. 

Also, the Social Security trust fund will be reimbursed for the lost revenue. Under the deal that President Obama worked out with the Republican leadership, funds from general revenue will replace the lost tax revenue for the next two years. This means that the tax break will have no effect on the long-term solvency of Social Security.

Doh!

Treasury's Own Figures Show It Has Plenty of Cash Flow To Pay Seniors

[A]ccording to the Daily Treasury Statements published by the U.S. Treasury Department, the ongoing flow of federal tax revenue since the Treasury declared that it had hit the debt limit on May 16 has been more than sufficient to cover the combined costs of federal spending on interest payments, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, the Veterans Affairs department and federal workers wages and insurance benefits (including wages and insurance benefits for military personnel).

All the figures follow at the link here.

In 2009 Only 10.5 Million Americans Still Got Paper Checks From Social Security

Tens of millions use direct deposit instead:

[A]bout 10.5 million Americans still receive their Social Security and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) payments by paper check each month.

Read the full story here.

Obama Would Be Breaking The Law If He Stopped Social Security Checks

Obama must issue Social Security checks. They're mandatory, not discretionary.

The authority to issue Social Security checks is outside the scope of the president's decision-making authority.

He would be in violation of the law if he ordered them stopped. So would The Treasury Department. 

The Social Security trust fund receives regular infusions from income specially withheld from paychecks for the purpose. Its income is presently in equilibrium with its outflow.

Neither the president nor the Congress can lawfully interfere with this process.

The president is a scoundrel for terrorizing Social Security recipients with his idle threats.

Don't believe it? 

Read it. 

'Uncle Sam Would Not Qualify For A Home Mortgage'

So says Bill Wilson of Americans for Limited Government here:

Currently, the U.S. is paying about 3 percent interest on the $14.3 trillion debt, or $430 billion of gross interest payments every year. If we had to repay everything over the next 30 years, principal and interest owed would amount to $908 billion out of revenue every year. That’s 41.7 percent of this year’s $2.174 trillion projected tax collections.

Is that affordable? Would repayment even be possible today? Perhaps just barely. The benchmark total debt service ratio for mortgage lenders is 40 percent. Anything above that, and a prospective borrower would not qualify for a loan. So even today, Uncle Sam would not qualify for a home mortgage.

I think the situation is much worse than that.

I remember that way back in 1990 the debt service ratio for a residential mortgage loan was much lower than 40 percent. Your mortgage payment had to be no more than 28 percent of income, and all your debt payments combined, adding in automobile and credit card debt, could not exceed 36 percent of income. Higher than that and you didn't get the loan.

By that standard, the US government today isn't even close at 41.7 percent, and would be laughed out of the bank.

The over-spending must stop.

Even Bruce Bartlett Admits We're in a Depression

Here, where the 1930s is the interpretive lens through which he seems to see everything, including the prospect of fiscal and monetary tightening. Evidently he prefers a looser sphincter.

Is this former Republican sleeping with Paul Krugman?

Fascist Obama's Fascist General Electric Shill Lectures Business on Jobs

GE's Jeff Immelt lectures business on taking the lead on jobs here while cutting his own workforce 11 percent between 2009 and 2011 (here), from 323,000 to 287,000.

"Our motto shall be: Moronica for Morons!"

New Book Contradicts Obama's Story That His Mother Was Denied Health Coverage

Byron York summarizes here:

"'Though [Barack Obama] often suggested that she was denied health coverage because of a pre-existing condition,' Scott writes, 'it appears from her correspondence that she was only denied disability coverage.'"

She had health coverage, and it paid her medical bills, contrary to Barack Obama's repeated claims.

Read the complete story at the link above.

Chris Farrell Speaks Up For Cash, Glorious Cash, and Shakespeare

Here:

That’s why the time-honored tactic of diversification remains one of the more powerful ways to protect finances from the downside. Shakespeare powerfully captured the idea when, in The Merchant of Venice, Antonio tells friends that his investments cause him no worry. "Believe me, no. I thank my fortune for it, my ventures are not in one bottom trusted, nor to one place; nor is my whole estate upon the fortune of this present year. Therefore my merchandise makes me not sad."

In times of trouble, Chris likes T-bills as an inflation hedge, and investment grade corporates for return. And diversification, of course.

Another Voice Searching for the Word

Fascism:

The nexus of big government, big business and the Federal Reserve has brought us to financial ruin. The US has the ability and the resources to create a better economy for all but it won’t happen as long as we continue to look to this troika of elites for economic salvation. They cannot and will not repair the damage they have done. I don’t know how to end this triumvirate of tyranny ...

Americans generally prefer the euphemism State Capitalism, for the obvious historical reasons.

For more from Joseph Y. Calhoun, III, go here.

The Tea Party Began With Moral Outrage Over Mortgage Bailouts

Ron Klain provides a needed reminder of the forgotten origins of the Tea Party movement, here:

Although we now associate the Tea Party with a general opposition to government spending, it was mortgage-relief policies that were the target of the seminal rant by the CNBC commentator Rick Santelli in February 2009 that is credited with getting that movement off the ground: “How many of you people want to pay for your neighbor’s mortgage that has an extra bathroom and can’t pay their bills?”

A striking aspect of the conservative backlash against the administration’s mainstream economic policies -- from using federal money to keep teachers on the job, to saving the domestic auto industry, to investing in job-creating public works projects -- is how much the opposition’s arguments have been based on morality and values, not economic considerations. Sure, critics offer facts and figures to challenge these policies, but the most potent weapons have been values-laden attacks about borrowing from the future, being irresponsible about spending, and failing to hold the profligate responsible for the consequences of their ways. Even direct beneficiaries of the president’s policies have pressed these moral critiques.

Klain fancies, however, that there was an equivalent moral reaction on the left to Obama's failure to prosecute wrongdoers. As genuine as it may have been, and still is, it did not translate itself into political action on a scale which did anything. It was the Tea Party which gave the Republicans a stunning and sweeping national victory in November 2010 screaming No! to Obama's policies. It entirely co-opted the left's moral pretensions.

And I rather doubt there are many leftists who would concede the right's claim to such moral equivalence with them. They still think of themselves as far superior, both intellectually and morally, to everyone else in America.

Nevertheless, while malefactors continue to go unpunished, the bailouts are a fact and have not been reversed. To that extent, the Tea Party has not been victorious at all.

It may just be my imagination, but in a better time in America left and right could have come together at a time like this to reverse these injustices. Until they do, we will live uncomfortably in a house divided.

Who Will Buy Your Crappy Ass-et: Megan McArdle, or Jesus?

Have you lost your soul? Were you just your job? Are you fit for nothing now, a drag on society, a problem that can't be solved?

Megan McArdle thinks so, and her barren, soulless assumptions lead straight to war, to the gulag, and to the ovens where the unproductive assets of humanity can be "soaked up." In the language of the dismal economist, liquidated:

"Human capital is like almost any other form of capital: it is a depreciating asset. The longer you stay out of the workforce, the less valuable you are to potential employers. You lose market intelligence and industry connections. Your technical knowledge and skills atrophy.

"I was unemployed for basically two years between . . . 2001 . . . and . . . 2003. ... I felt the isolation and the desperate fear of everyone who doesn't have a 'real job', the people who don't know how they're going to earn enough over the next forty years to keep body and soul together.  I experienced real despair for the first time in my life. And it changed me, permanently.

"... What really matters is how it changed my outlook on the world. I became afraid then in a way that has never really left me. I obsess about economic security.  I catastrophize small setbacks. ...

"There was also the crushing sense of isolation, and failure. ...

"[M]illions of people, staring into the abyss of an empty future.  We don't know how to re-employ them. The last time this happened, in the Great Depression, World War II eventually came along and soaked up everyone in the labor force who could breathe and carry a toolbag.  I hope to God we're not going to do that again, so what are we going to do with all these people?

-- Megan McArdle, here

Such is the way of death. Many are they who walk in it. But there is a way where there is no fear, where everyone is valued, not for what they do, but for who they are, for whom the future is full because God inhabits it: 

Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?

Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?

Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature?

And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin:

And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, [shall he] not much more [clothe] you, O ye of little faith?

Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed?

(For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things.

But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.

Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day [is] the evil thereof.

-- Matthew 6:25-34

For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel's, the same shall save it. For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?

-- Mark 8:35-36

Come unto me, all [ye] that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

-- Matthew 11:28

'The US Remains Trapped in Depression'

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard is back at it, here:

The calamitous US jobs data released last Friday leave no doubt that the US remains trapped in depression. Broad U6 unemployment rose from 15.8 to 16.2pc in June; the numbers in work fell by a quarter million to 153.4m; the average time without a job reached a fresh record of 39.8 weeks; hourly pay fell; hours worked fell; the employment/population ratio crashed to new lows of 58.2pc.

Spending Trendlines: Obama Goes Vertical

Let's play "Find the Conservative Spending Trendline."

Is it the postwar trendline of the 1940s? Can you imagine such a small government today, spending just barely $400 billion by 2015?

Or how about The Great Society trendline of the 1960s, spending $800 billion by 2015? Unfortunately its little Vietnam-guns and Medicare-butter time bombs had time delay detonators.

They went off and set the trendline established in the wake of the mid-1970s recession, oil embargoes and Iranian hostage crisis which took us all the way through Carter, Reagan, Bush 41, and Clinton. Does $2.5 trillion by 2015 sound conservative to you? All assisted by a dollar finally unglued from gold in 1971.

It certainly couldn't be George W. Bush's trendline, could it? It was an even more radical departure from the past because of added spending on drugs for seniors and two more wars. And don't even think of calling that policy "tax and spend." It was all spend. 

For an encore to that sorry enterprise, Obama has taken it practically vertical, but it can't reach escape velocity and looks doomed to crash. Which is why the man who eight months ago signed the extension of the Bush tax rate regime now suddenly wants to raise taxes as part of a debt ceiling deal this summer.

Some people define conservatism as maintaining the status quo. Some as measured, gradual change. Cutting current spending back toward the 1970s trendline, which is where Rep. Paul Ryan is trying to go, is viewed as radical by the likes of Newt Gingrich and the left. In reality, though, it's just a return to a status quo ante which for its time was anything but conservative. What this means is that so-called conservatives today find themselves reduced to defending the liberalism of the still recent past.  

  

Federal Spending and Federal Receipts 1901-2010

Tax receipts have fallen dramatically during the Panic of 2008, but spending has not. It should.

If you don't have the dough, you don't go to the show.

Unemployed? To Megan McArdle You're Just A Depreciating Asset

Here:

"Human capital is like almost any other form of capital: it is a depreciating asset."

In other words, your worth as a human being is purely economic.

Megan may have a job, but it masks a poverty of soul which lies at the heart of America's problems, where everything is fungible, including your house, and now you.

Want a vacation? Write a check on your HELOC account. Pregnancy inconvenient for your career? End it. Old people cost too much to take care of? Withhold food and water. 14 million unemployed?

"[W]hat are we going to do with all these people?"

Why, liquidate them, of course, like any other asset.

Anyone who will do anything for a job will do . . . anything.

Save your self. 

Repatriating Overseas Corporate Cash Primarily Benefits Shareholders

Claims it will boost the dollar, job growth, new investment and the stock market are exaggerated, according to Marc Chandler, here.

He points out that overseas cash may be as high as $2 trillion but that perhaps 40 percent of it is already parked in low tax havens abroad. Why move it?

Based on the last repatriation in 2004 and 2005, when about $300 billion came home, only on the most generous reading about 250,000 new jobs were created compared to a predicted 500,000, if 2003's anemic 100,000 new private sector jobs per month is the baseline. And dollar gains could just as easily be attributed to incremental 25 basis point upticks in interest rates by the Federal Reserve.

For the full argument, follow the link above.

To Hell With Clive Crook and The Financial Times

For phrases, here, such as:

"if there were any such thing as a moderate Republican;"

and

"a pathologically intransigent Republican party."

Why don't you bugger off to The Guardian or something, Clive? You'd be more happy there, fantasizing about how immune from the dark side of human nature you think you are, and how inferior you imagine the Colonies remain.

We beat you, and we'll beat you again, and again and again and again.

Landslide Vote For Israel in Congress, Except for Rep. Justin Amash and 5 Others

The vote was a non-binding resolution, a shot across the bow of the Palestinian Authority, which Justin Amash, among others, could not bring himself to support:

The U.S. House of Representatives threatened to cut off funding to the Palestinian Authority if it pursues recognition of statehood outside of negotiations with Israel.

A resolution passed Thursday night by a vote of  406 to 6 "affirms that Palestinian efforts to circumvent direct negotiations and pursue recognition of statehood prior to agreement with Israel will harm United States-Palestinian relations and will have serious implications for the United States assistance programs for the Palestinians and the Palestinian Authority."

The non-binding resolution is similar to one passed last month by the Senate. ...

Among those voting against was a freshman, Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI), who is aligned with the Tea Party and who is of Palestinian descent.

Tea Party candidates were an unknown quan[t]ity to pro-Israel groups last year and since then, the Republican leadership has endeavored to secure assurances of support for Israel from lawmakers aligned with the Tea Party.

Most have done so, although there are holdouts like Amash. The five other members who voted against the resolution were Reps. Ron Paul (R-TX), Walter Jones (R-NC), Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), Nick Rahall (D-WV) and Earl Blumenauer (D-OR).

Read more here.

Krauthammer Attempts to Define the Political Spectrum

He says, here, that a person open to both liberal and conservative views is a moderate, which would be David Brooks of The New York Times, in his opinion.

Gee, we didn't know David Brooks was open to conservative views.

Government Spent About $113K PER SECOND in 2010

Federal Spending 1901-2010

As calculated here.