It’s nice to see that this new change in attitude hasn’t been lost on the treasury department.  Earlier this week, there were several news stories about certain institutions paying back their TARP money.  They were even going to pay back the money with some interest, hence the taxpayers were making a profit.  However, yesterday we learned that the wise stewards of TARP haven’t been the great investors the original stories made them out to be.  According to this story, a recent audit shows that taxpayers are showing a loss of $61 billion dollars on just the AIG and auto company bailouts.  This loss wipes out the $19.5 billion profit reported earlier this week.

TARP

If a publicly traded private company engaged in this kind of behavior, it would be investigated for securities fraud.  If the public company of our government, whose stock is privately traded among various special interest groups, engages in this kind of financial reporting, nobody cares.  Also, if a company with a $700 billion market cap reported a $40 billion loss in one year, the market’s reaction would be swift and painful.  If Obama & Bush inc. loses this much money, there’s not much that can be done.  After all, there was so much resounding shareholder…I mean taxpayer support for Obama to buy off his supporters in the UAW with the auto bailout, that this is a bad investment that we are all going to have to live with.

Most presidents get out of office and build a library or something.  Obama should start an investment bank.

On the other hand, Mitt Romney, published ten things that should be done to start creating jobs now in an article in the USA Today.  Of course, he is just advancing the same tired ideas that got us into this mess.  He and all of his rich corporate buddies.  What do they know about creating jobs?  For what it’s worth, here is the list:

• Repair the stimulus. Freeze the funds that haven’t yet been spent and redirect them to immediate, private sector job-creation priorities.

• Create tax incentives that promote business expansion and hiring. For example, install a robust investment tax credit, permit businesses to expense capital purchases made in 2010, and reduce payroll taxes. These will reignite construction, technology and a wide array of capital goods industries, and lead to expanded employment.

• Prove to the global investors that finance America’s debt that we are serious about reining in spending and becoming fiscally prudent by adopting limits on non-military discretionary spending and reforming our unsustainable, unfunded entitlements. These are key to strengthening the dollar, reducing the threat of rampant inflation and holding down interest rates.

• Close down any talk of carbon cap-and-trade. It will burden consumers and employers with billions in new costs. Instead, greatly expand our commitment to natural gas and nuclear, boosting jobs now and reducing the export of energy jobs and dollars later.

• Tell the unions that job-stifling “card check” legislation is off the table. Laying new burdens on small business will kill entrepreneurship and job creation.

• Don’t allow a massive tax increase to go into effect in 2011 with the expiration of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts. The specter of more tax-fueled government spending and the reduction of capital available for small business will hinder investment and business expansion.

• New spending should be strictly limited to items that are critically needed and that we would have acquired in the future, such as new military equipment to support our troops abroad and essential infrastructure at home.

• Install dynamic regulations for the financial sector — rules that are up to date, efficient and not excessively burdensome. But do not so tie up the financial sector with red tape that we lose a vital component of our economic system.

• Open the doors to trade. Give important friends like Colombia favored trade status rather than bow to protectionist demands. Now is the time for aggressive pursuit of opportunities for new markets for American goods, not insular retrenchment.

• Stop frightening the private sector by continuing to hold GM stock, by imposing tighter and tighter controls on compensation, and by pursuing a public insurance plan to compete with private insurers. Government encroachment on free enterprise is depressing investment and job creation.

The worst terrorist attack to hit the Russian heartland in five years was almost certainly engineered by Islamist extremists, who are increasingly active in Russia’s volatile northern Caucasus region, say analysts.

First of all, they assume that it was a terrorist attack.  It could have easily been a man-made disaster.  It is also disappointing that they blamed Islamist extremists.  Where is CRIR (Council for Russian Islamic Relations) denouncing these blanket accusations.  It is a little disturbing that the Russian press would not take an apologist stance and try and figure out how Russians themselves are to blame for this little mishap with the train.  After all, Vladimir Putin has yet to travel to the heart of the Muslim world and make a spectacular apology to the Muslims for the centuries of mistreatment at the hand of the Russians.  They get what they deserve.

A man-made disaster

If you compare the Russian response to what could have easily been a mere act of spontaneous combustion, to the American media’s response to the Fort Hood human-caused disaster we learn a valuable truth about terrorism:  Terrorism lies in the eye of the beholder.  The United States hasn’t had a terrorist attack on its soil since 9/11, because we have stopped calling these man-made disasters terrorist attacks.  Problem solved.

Meanwhile, it was only a few short weeks ago that I read the following report on Stratfor:

In the 11th edition of the online magazine Sada al-Malahim (The Echo of Battle), which was released to jihadist Web sites last week, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) leader Nasir al-Wahayshi wrote an article that called for jihadists to conduct simple attacks against a variety of targets. The targets included “any tyrant, intelligence den, prince” or “minister” (referring to the governments in the Muslim world like Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Yemen), and “any crusaders whenever you find one of them, like at the airports of the crusader Western countries that participate in the wars against Islam, or their living compounds, trains etc.,” (an obvious reference to the United States and Europe and Westerners living in Muslim countries).

Al-Wahayshi, an ethnic Yemeni who spent time in Afghanistan serving as a lieutenant under Osama bin Laden, noted these simple attacks could be conducted with readily available weapons such as knives, clubs or small improvised explosive devices (IEDs). According to al-Wahayshi, jihadists “don’t need to conduct a big effort or spend a lot of money to manufacture 10 grams of explosive material” and that they should not “waste a long time finding the materials, because you can find all these in your mother’s kitchen, or readily at hand or in any city you are in.”

While Al-Wahayshi’s new battle plan would be less-frightening if we were willing to admit that a terrorist attack doesn’t have to always result in a destroyed skyscraper; or if we were more worried about preventing future attacks instead of giving enemy combatants full-constitutional rights and a civilian trial,  at least Al-Wahayshi gives away their plan.  They are going to use materials from your mother’s kitchen.  If we all join together and clean out our mother’s kitchens of anything that could be used in a terrorist attack, we can stop these attacks.  Also, don’t invite Muslims over for dinner.

Killer Jellyfish

The Independent Bloghorn was one of the first to identify that the global warming alarmists were shifting their laser beam focus on the soon to be extinct polar bear to other animals, like the American Pika.  For more on this, you can read Polar Bear Huggers.

I am always on the lookout for stories that focus on how global warming is affecting other carbon based lifeforms.  Apparently the warm oceans is causing Jellyfish populations to surge.  Did I mention that these are killer jellyfish?  Is my prose striking fear in your heart?  It’s not?  Well perhaps you should read a passage from the article published by the AP, written by Michael Casey:

A blood-orange blob the size of a small refrigerator emerged from the dark waters, its venomous tentacles trapped in a fishing net. Within minutes, hundreds more were being hauled up, a pulsating mass crowding out the catch of mackerel and sea bass.

The fishermen leaned into the nets, grunting and grumbling as they tossed the translucent jellyfish back into the bay, giants weighing up to 200 kilograms (450 pounds), marine invaders that are putting the men’s livelihoods at risk.

The venom of the Nomura, the world’s largest jellyfish, a creature up to 2 meters (6 feet) in diameter, can ruin a whole day’s catch by tainting or killing fish stung when ensnared with them in the maze of nets here in northwest Japan’s Wakasa Bay.

Are you scared now?  I sure hope so.  It is not very often that we find professional journalists that are so adept at conjuring up the skills they learned from their freshman creative writing class.  The vivid imagery, tactful alliterations, the incomplete sentence in paragraph 2 all combine to communicate one simple message: Be afraid…Very afraid, of KILLER JELLYFISH.

Fine, I admit it, I am scared.  Please Mr. Casey, tell me there is something that government can do to solve this problem.

Addressing the surge in jellyfish blooms in most places will require long-term fixes, such as introducing fishing quotas and pollution controls, as well as capping greenhouse gas emissions to control global warming, experts said.

Whatever it takes, whatever the costs, I hope we can all do our part to fight back this invasion.

-Chuckles

I can respect Chuckles’ ability to distill what is probably the essence behind most of the current health care debate.  I can also agree that private/public corporations and conglomerates with their “evil” profit motives will do some things that a lot of people will find reprehensible.

However, the power of private/public corporations and conglomerates to do these reprehensible things is severely limited by the very profit motive that makes them so “evil.”  Their evilness can only be prolonged as long as they are able to make a profit.  Ultimately, their growth, power, and influence is going to be determined by whether they can create value for society or not.

Governments, on the other hand, operate by a different set of rules.  For a good example of the complete failure that  government’s disinterested incompetence can lead to, we can look at the usual suspect: California.

This week lawmakers in California authorized the government to withhold 10% of everyone’s paychecks to cover their budget shortfall.  As evil as they are, private insurance companies cannot perform acts such as this.  This is only the fourth or fifth time in the last year that lawmakers in California have raised taxes to close their budget shortfalls, and this will only be the fourth or fifth time that recent tax increases have resulted in lower than expected tax revenues.  They keep raising taxes, and the amount of tax dollars coming in keeps shrinking.  Democrats and liberals will try suggest that the era of Reagan is over, and it is time to remake the economy.  The problem with this thinking is that economic laws can’t be changed by legislative will, e.g. you can’t legislate away the scarcity of an economy’s resources.  There seems to be enough historical examples, of which California is just the latest, where increasing taxes during a recession only accelerates the downward spiral of decreasing overall tax revenues.  The most recent Californian tax increase is absolutely criminal, and I guess I can’t understand why the same people that are livid about an insurance company making a profit will give disinterested, incompetent governments a free pass.

Given the current abuse Californians are receiving from their disinterested, incompetent government my objections to Obama’s current health care plan boil down to the fact that I don’t believe that Obama’s supporters can adequately answer the following questions:

• What evidence do you have that democrats’ health plan will be successful?  Please! Point me to the government model of success that I can look at and say, if they run this the same way, we’ll be fine.
• What is the exit strategy for the possibility that things get worse?  Let’s say Obamacare passes, and health costs don’t go down, joblessness increases, private insurers do go out of business, people stop wanting to go into the field of medicine, etc.  I am not saying that I think all of these things will happen, but I do believe that the likelihood of a variety of negative consequences resulting from this bill is very high.  In fact, the potential for these “reforms” to cause a lot of damage is a lot more likely in my opinion than that the earth will be destroyed by Carbon Dioxide.  Once again, I am not saying that I have fallen off the fearmongering cliff, but I am asking for an exit strategy.
• Disinterested incompetence?  Really?  This is the impetus behind your hope and change?  This is what you think will solve problems?
• Why try to do this all at once?  The whole health-care reform issue comes across as a big, expensive power grab to me rather than a sincere desire to solve legitimate problems.  If there is a a couple hundred billion dollars worth of waste and fraud in Medicare, let’s go fix that.  Once it is fixed, and we can see that one of the government’s largest entitlement program isn’t careening towards bankruptcy, then let’s talk about how we can use some of the same intelligence and expertise that fixed that problem to help those who are currently uninsured.

Going Rogue

Her memoir, Going Rogue, will have a first printing run of 1.5 million.  To put things in perspective, The Audacity of Hope, sold 200,000 copies in 2007.  By the time Obama was elected each of his books had finally sold a million copies.  Regardless of how you feel about Sarah Palin, her faux memoir is probably going to sell more copies in 3 months than Obama’s 2 books have sold in 3 years.

Selling a lot of books, however, isn’t the only indication of Palin’s rise.  Unlike Obama, when she speaks, results follow.  For example, how long have we been listening to Obama speak about healthcare.  Has it only been 6 short months of incessant, ubiquitous, incomprehensible speeches?  What are the results?  We have 5?  Or is it 6? bills?  How many thousands of pages?  How many speeches?  And where are we?

Palin on the other hand, posts a microblog, and the world listens.  Palin gets David Letterman to apologize to her daughter, a feat only matched by his cuckolded wife.  And most lately, Palin is determining who wins political elections.  Dede Scozzafava was comfortably winning her congressional race in the 23rd district of New York.  Then Palin endorsed her rival from the conservative party, Dan Hoffman.  Not less than two weeks later, Scozzafava is backing out of the race and throwing her support to Hoffman.  Whether you like Palin or not, with her we can at least get a glimpse of what leadership looks like.  Barack Obama, on the other hand is throwing the Democrat gubernatorial candidate in Virginia under the bus.

Republican critics from within the party and from outside, have complained for a while now that the party has lost its way, and has therefore become an obstructionist party with no solutions of their own.  By going rogue, Sarah Palin might be playing a crucial role in helping the party find its new face, and here it is:

The Bean Counter

I haven’t been following this race very closely, but on the surface I can tell you one reason why Hoffman is a great candidate: He is an ACCOUNTANT.  If the trend of replacing Washington’s career politicians and lawyers with practiced and principled accountants can be replicated 100 times across the country, conservatives might have something to look forward to next year.  Every district in the country needs a nerdy, conservative, bean counter running with the simple message, “We can’t afford this.”

The fact that Sarah Palin is the one who gets this tells me that Obama better watch out, or we might get a new Messiah in Chief.

“The most dangerous thing that would threaten others is that if we really create success in building a democratic state in Iraq,” said Maliki, whose country today now has about 100 newspapers. “The countries whose regimes are built on one party, sect or ethnic group will feel endangered.”

The most interesting part of this quote to me is that Friedman feels the need to mention that Iraq now has 100 newspapers.  I don’t know how many newspapers Iraq used to have under Saddam’s rule, but I imagine the answer would have to be one.  This quote also led me to wonder why newspapers are such a hot growth industry in Iraq, but they are floundering business disasters from coast to coast in the United States.  I also found Friedman’s statement to be even more interesting when juxtaposed with a quote about the Obama administration’s recent assault on Fox News from one of my other favorite columnists, Mark Steyn:

The most recent whine – the anti-Fox campaign – is, apart from anything else, unbecoming to the office. President Obama is the chief of state of one of the oldest free societies in the world, but his official White House Web site runs teasers such as: “For even more Fox lies, check out the latest ‘Truth-O-Meter.’” It gives off the air of somebody only marginally less paranoid than this week’s president-for-life in some basket-case banana republic ranting on the palace balcony because his interior security chief isn’t doing a fast-enough job of disappearing his enemies.

I don’t need to get into a Fox vs. the rest of the media debate here.  This, to me, comes down to one simple question: which country is more American, Iraq or America?  We should be proud of our troops for what is likely the right answer to this question, and we should be embarrassed by the Obama administration for creating an environment where this question can even be asked with any degree of seriousness.

-Wesley Pruden

I haven’t yet written about Obama receiving the Nobel Peace Prize.  For all of those who say that he doesn’t deserve it, you haven’t been paying attention to his foreign policy.  After all, what better way is there to promote peace than making dramatic concessions to our peaceful allies, the Russians.  A few weeks ago, Obama made the decision to forestall the development of missile defense shields in Poland and the Czech Republic.  It is nice to see Obama snub these warmongering Israel-wannabes, in favor of strengthening our relationship with our peaceful allies, the Russians.  After all, we are going to need their help if we are going to enforce sanctions against Iran for pursuing their peaceful nuclear weapons program.  You would think that with all of the conciliatory overtures that Obama has made towards Russia, that our peaceful friends in Moscow would reverse their position on Iran and promote a peaceful solution.  Which is why when Hillary, our fortuitous Secretary of State, was in Russia this week she came back with this news:

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov restated at a news conference with Clinton Russia’s long-standing position that any talk of sanctions against Iran at this stage was counter-productive.

Counter-productive indeed.  That is if you are referring the to the peaceful interests of our friends, the Russians.  I guess the world would be a pretty peaceful place already, if it wasn’t for those warmongering Israelis who will probably be forced to conduct a military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities.  Maybe Obama and our friends the Russians hope that Iran can first “wipe the Israel problem off the map,” then nothing can get in the way of all this peacefulness.

Lean on Me

On second thought, Obama certainly deserved the Nobel Prize, but I am a little disappointed that the prize wasn’t a shared one – with Vladimir Putin.  Sure, Obama has done a lot to change the atmospherics of how America is viewed in the world from a country of bellicose, arrogant strength to one of peacefully ignorant weakness.  But Putin, he is the man with the plan.  He is the one exploiting Obama’s peacefulness to change the actual power dynamics on the ground that will result in the next decade being either characterized by peace or conflict.  Given Russia’s long history of exporting peace and Putin’s inherent peacefulness, I am sure the world has a bright and peaceful future in store.  Something for Oslo to consider.

Taking down communism with a dinner knife

I grew up playing the game, Rush ‘n Attack, on my 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System.  Basically this was a game where you were an American soldier fighting your way across Russian landscapes killing Commies with a knife.  From this game alone I think I am pretty much brainwashed to distrust Russians.  The nice thing about Nintendo is whenever the Russians got the upper hand, I could just push the reset button and start over.

Barack Obama has proven with his phony Hallmark video card to the Iranians that he knows how to engage foreign powers through shortsighted Western paradigms such as multiculturalism.  Apparently, multicultural overtures to hostile regimes must have run its useful course, because the Obama administration has decided against using such tactics, and has resorted to another shortsighted Western paradigm: brazen insensitivity and ignorance towards foes and friends alike.  Obama can be considerate of Iranian holidays, but when it comes to snubbing allies, he chooses the anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Poland to announce the decision to discontinue an important strategic defense alliance with the Poles.  For those who thought Obama would bring a nice departure from Bush when it comes to foreign policy, this must be extremely disappointing.  For those of us without hopeychangey stars in our eyes, this would be a welcome turn of events, but to couple Bush’s insensitivity and ignorance, with Obama’s ineptitude and weakness isn’t the kind of synergy that is becoming for any U.S. president.

Reset with the push of a button

Where resetting a Nintendo game when things don’t go your way with the Russians was a good strategy for an 8-year-old playing a game, bringing a plastic reset button to diplomatic meeting with the Russians as a symbolic gesture indicating that we would like to return to the good ole days when Russia was the irrelevant rubble of a former empire is an indication that it wouldn’t hurt to have a Secretary of State with a brain.  Or, as George Friedman from stratfor put it, “It is hard to imagine anything as infuriating for the Russians as the reset button the Clinton administration’s Russia experts — who now dominateObama’s Russia policy — presented the Russian leadership in all seriousness. The Russians simply do not intend to return to the Post-Cold War era Western experts recall so fondly.”  Instead the Russians seem to be enjoying the era they are in.  The one where they control the energy spigot to Europe, where they have puppets in Iran and North Korea that they can lever against American interests, and where they get to deal with the first American president since Jimmy Carter that has no balls when it comes to foreign policy.  There have been two significant bull-markets since Obama took office: one in guns and bullets as ordinary Americans sense the weakness of their president and have rushed to take the matter of protecting themselves into their own hands, and one in concessions to the foreign powers that have most recently been our biggest enemies.

Where Obama’s foreign policy has mostly focused on changing atmospherics with our enemies, which our enemies perceive as a weakness to exploit, this strategy has enabled Obama to live up to his pre-presidential reputation of “voting present” when it comes to foreign policy rather than make decisions.  Unfortunately for Obama and the United States, Iran, the Taliban, Russia, and China aren’t just voting present when it comes to advancing their strategic foreign policy interests.  Unfortunately for Israel, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Jordan, Turkey, most of Europe, Poland, and the Czech Republic, America under Obama’s leadership seems no longer interested in aggressively pursuing its strategic interests.

It is not long before Obama is going to have to make a decision on what to do with Iran and Afghanistan.  According to George Friedman from Stratfor:

Every president is tested in foreign policy, sometimes by design and sometimes by circumstance. Frequently, this happens at the beginning of his term as a result of some problem left by his predecessor, a strategy adopted in the campaign or a deliberate action by an antagonist. How this happens isn’t important. What is important is that Obama’s test is here. Obama at least publicly approached the presidency as if many of the problems the United States faced were due to misunderstandings about or the thoughtlessness of the United States. Whether this was correct is less important than that it left Obama appearing eager to accommodate his adversaries rather than confront them.

No one has a clear idea of Obama’s threshold for action.

In Afghanistan, the Taliban takes the view that the British and Russians left, and that the Americans will leave, too. We strongly doubt that the force level proposed by McChrystal will be enough to change their minds. Moreover, U.S. forces are limited, with many still engaged in Iraq. In any case, it isn’t clear what force level would suffice to force the Taliban to negotiate or capitulate — and we strongly doubt that there is a level practical to contemplate.

In Iran, Ahmadinejad clearly perceives that challenging Obama is low-risk and high reward. If he can finally demonstrate that the United States is unwilling to take military action regardless of provocations, his own domestic situation improves dramatically, his relationship with the Russians deepens, and most important, his regional influence — and menace — surges. If Obama accepts Iranian nukes without serious sanctions or military actions, the American position in the Islamic world will decline dramatically. The Arab states in the region rely on the United States to protect them from Iran, so U.S. acquiescence in the face of Iranian nuclear weapons would reshape U.S. relations in the region far more than a hundred Cairo speeches.

There are four permutations Obama might choose in response to the dual crisis. He could attack Iran and increase forces in Afghanistan, but he might well wind up stuck in a long-term war in Afghanistan. He could avoid that long-term war by withdrawing from Afghanistan and also ignore Iran’s program, but that would leave many regimes reliant on the United States for defense against Iran in the lurch. He could increase forces in Afghanistan and ignore Iran — probably yielding the worst of all possible outcomes, namely, a long-term Afghan war and an Iran with a nuclear program if not nuclear weapons.

On pure logic, history or politics aside, the best course is to strike Iran and withdraw from Afghanistan. That would demonstrate will in the face of a significant challenge while perhaps reshaping Iran and certainly avoiding a drawn-out war in Afghanistan. Of course, it is easy for those who lack power and responsibility — and the need to govern — to provide logical choices. But the forces closing in on Obama are substantial, and there are many competing considerations in play.

Presidents eventually arrive at the point where something must be done, and where doing nothing is very much doing something. At this point, decisions can no longer be postponed, and each choice involves significant risk. Obama has reached that point, and significantly, in his case, he faces a double choice. And any decision he makes will reverberate.

Given the gravity of the decisions that Obama now faces, and given the fact that these problems can’t be solved by giving a speech, it is too bad that we don’t have a reset button.  This doesn’t appear to be a game that we are going to win.

Bow before your master

The other night the movie, 300, was on TV, and I watched the last 30 minutes of it.  Towards the end, there was a scene where the spokesman for Xerxes (evil king from Persia) pretty much told Leonidas (good king from Sparta) to bow before Xerxes or be killed.  Like most mindless action movies, I didn’t think much about this at the time.  After all, we have certainly moved past the time when narcissistic, man-gods demand that those who oppose them prostrate themselves in fearful worship.

Then I heard about how the democrats were having hearings today to pass a resolution of disapproval against Rep. Joe Wilson for calling the Chosen One a liar.  I didn’t even know there was such a thing as a resolution of disapproval, and I also don’t know by which moral compass Congress gets to wield such a tool.  With disapproval ratings of Congress soaring, one has to wonder how such a body was able to remove the beam from their eye long enough to pick out the mote from Rep. Wilson’s.  Above all, I am disappointed that they didn’t force Rep. Wilson to bow in worship of Barack Obama.  Resolution of disapproval??? Give me a break.  I want nothing less than 100% submissive prostration.  Face to the ground.  Beg for forgiveness, boy!