PolifrogBlog

There is no free in liberty.


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Thursday, April 28, 2011

No, Obama's Birth Certificate did not End Questions...

polifrog



I know very little regarding photo editing so I reserve judgment, however I have grown to respect tickerguy...



Update:

This link via Fred Gregory.
http://israelinsider.net/profiles/blogs/purported-birth-certificate


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Failed Keynesian Models or Proven Hayek Success...

polifrog


Or is it polifrog vs. Andrew Brod?






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Bob Schieffer - Viewing America Through the Lens of Race...

polifrog



When an individual charges racism where the is none, the charge of racism becomes an act of racism itself.



Bob Schieffer - Racist.



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Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Obama's Birther Moment...

polifrog



Joe Sherlock:

On Wednesday morning, the White House finally released an image of the putative birth certificate. Obama remarked sullenly, "We do not have time for this kind of silliness. We've got better stuff to do." Then, after unsuccessfully looking for his five-iron for an upcoming golf game, he flew off to Chicago with wife Michelle to do an Oprah interview. Afterwards, he jetted off to New York City for still another campaign fundraiser. You can't make this stuff up, folks.

Not so much the Most Interesting Man in the World as the Most Disingenuous Man in the World...


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Tavis Smiley - Viewing America Through the Lens of Race...

polifrog



When an individual charges racism where the is none, the charge of racism becomes an act of racism itself.



Tavis Smiley ... Racist.



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David Brooks - Hammering Hippies...

polifrog



Just one of the many structural issues David Brooks references in his list on American rot:

There are structural problems in the welfare state as baby boomers spend lavishly on themselves and impose horrendous costs on future generations.

How such a a worthless, selfish and damaging generation was created by the Greatest Generation will likely always be a mystery.




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Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Phony Anti-War Movements do not Equate to the Tea Party...

polifrog



Megan McArdle:
Have you noticed all the huge antiwar demonstrations in the last twelve months? Yeah, me neither. It turns out that a lot of the energy for the movement seems to have been provided by Democrats who are a lot less worried about wars conducted by Democratic presidents.

She references Scott McLemee:

"As long as voters remain highly polarized along party lines," he responded by e-mail, "self-identified Democrats are unlikely to protest against Obama's policies, even if they disagree with some of them strongly. A sudden end to the era of partisan polarization seems highly unlikely. So I would say that it is a very good bet that Obama will not confront large left-wing demonstrations. Of course, LBJ faced large left-wing demonstrations, but the party system was not polarized back then in the way that it is today."

The same dynamics apply to the Tea Party: "Our analysis implies that the Tea Party will have a lower degree of organization and success in 2012 than it did in 2010. Because the Republicans won the House and made gains in the Senate, Tea Party activists feel much less threatened today than they did a year ago. So, while the Tea Party will obviously be around in 2012 -- and it will likely factor into the Republican presidential contest -- our analysis suggests that the Tea Party will not generate the same level of enthusiasm next year as it did last year."



I do not believe this comparison to the Tea Party is accurate. Although there will likely be some reduction in Tea Party enthusiasm the next election cycle, there will not be the wholesale abandonment of the movement.

The antiwar movement got its modern start in reaction to the Vietnam War, but today has devolved into less of a grass roots movement than the appearance of a grass roots movement commonly known as astroturfing. The antiwar movement has become a tool in the hands of the Democrat Party by which they reattain during wartime conservative presidents. The evidence of this is the vanishing act we have witnessed since the election of Barack Obama. Neither war in Iraq or Afghanistan has ended as promised and, in fact, a new war has begun in Libya under Obama yet the antiwar movement is nonexistent. It seems only to have legs under conservative presidents. The antiwar movement as it existed during the Vietnam War no longer exists today.

To be sure, there were those who truly believe in the antiwar message. Cindy Sheehan comes to mind. She is still doing her thing today despite the absence of the astroturfed support she received years ago under Bush. I am not sure of she used the astroturfing or if the astroturfed anti(Bush)war movement used her, but I respect her for continued albeit misplaced commitment.


In looking at the Tea Party no evidence of astroturfing, can be found, Pelosi's comments not with standing. The Tea Party was and remains a real organic grass roots movement that did not and does not derive its support from currently entrenched political elites looking to further their political or media careers. In fact, the Tea Party has had a record of attacking both Democrats and Republicans for their profligate spending and lack if respect for the Constitution. Bush was no favorite of the Tea Party, neither was the conservative congress under portions of Bush's two terms in office. And frequently the Conservative Party found itself on the defensive in last summer's primaries as Tea Partiers had Conservatives across the nation on the run. Just as frequently Tea Party candidates found themselves in the cross-hairs entrenched conservative-media elites; even Rush took the nearly the whole of last summer to come around to the Tea Party. No love was lost between Conservatives and Tea Partiers as the Tea Party sought to change Conservatism in Washington DC.

The dynamics between the Antiwar movement and the Tea Party movement could not be more different. One is an aged movement infected with a self preservation mentality in which power and money flows from above to the movement in an attempt to give the appearance of an energetic movement only when politically expedient while in the other power flows from the citizenry to affect change on a reluctant governing body.




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Monday, April 25, 2011

Liberty in Sync With Econnomics - Ron Paul Runs...

polifrog



In some good anti-Keynesian news Ron Paul is running:

Sources close to Paul, who is in his 12th term in the House, said he will unveil an exploratory presidential committee, a key step in gearing up for a White House race. He will also unveil the campaign’s leadership team in Iowa, where the first votes of the presidential election will be cast in caucuses next year.

This is a man who's sense of liberty and understanding of economics are in sync, a statement that can be made of no proponent of Keynesian Theory.

Additionally, while the democratization of the Middle East is important, it is less important then ending the Keynesian theft of prosperity and liberty.



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Don't Panic!!!

polifrog



Michael A Walsh...

Already, we're hearing that action is urgent. If the limit isn't raised again at once, we face possible default on our sovereign obligations, a ruined currency . . . Somebody do something, quick!

Hold on. This is no time to panic. Instead, it's a time for sober, serious reflection, tough judgments and hard choices. Too bad there's nobody in Washington who seems up to the task.

Because panicking is exactly what we've been doing ever since the fall of 2008, when the housing bubble burst, Lehman Bros. collapsed, and Washington handed America the bailout of insurance giant AIG and the rest of the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program -- followed soon after by the $787 billion stimulus program and the de facto federal takeover of GM and Chrysler.

Wall Street's fantasy finance (a joint production with Washington), which divorced "financial instruments" from any real-world concept of value, destroyed the housing market and seriously damaged the country, but Congress and President Bush were right there to bail them out, and this morning the stock market is sitting pretty at 12,506. Wall Street got theirs, while Main Street still suffers.



Keynesian Theory has lengthened 3 depressions, of course depressions aren't called depressions anymore. The current one in the US is referred to as the Great Recession while the other in Japan was called the 10 Year Recession but is now referred to as the more illuminating 20 Year Recession, as Japan seems mired in a seemingly endless economic nightmare of stimulus spending from which the nation is unable to awake.

What do the Great Depression, The Great Recession, and the 20 Year Recession have in common? The answer is that they all employed the failure that is Keynesian Theory.

Thieving from the future, while comforting today, yields a diminished tomorrow.




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Ron Paul's Liberty Defined...

polifrog



I have not read Liberty Defined yet, but I have read some excerpts via Whiskey and Gunpowder.

I particularly like this quote on Keynesianism:

“…Something did change with the publication of The General Theory. Keynes gave the governments of the world a seemingly scientific rationale for doing what governments wanted to do anyway.”
The rationalization for spending and growth at all levels of governance gifted to government by Keynesian Theory is deplorable. As I have argued previously the result is that:

Over almost a century Bastardized Keynesian Theory has become the Wmap of public spending policy; it has become the dark energy behind our ever expanding national debt, and is at the heart of our current economic malaise.
It is a shame that there are men who make their living off the defense of such policy.





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Sunday, April 24, 2011

Keynes' Diminished Western World...

polifrog





Via Instapundit:
“‘Daddy, is it really true that people used to fly to the Moon when you were a boy?’ It shook me, because that’s how a Dark Age begins.”

It takes decades of theft from the future to kill a productive capitalist society but the beauty of Keynesian Theory may have managed what Communism could not.

A sloppy disingenuous thank you to John Maynard Keynes from polifrog:




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A Chinese US Debt Dump?

polifrog




For those of you not in the know there have not been enough buyers of US debt at current interest rates. In an effort to keep interest rates down the Federal Reserve has been buying US debt off the private market with "printed" dollars (in quotes as the dollars only exist as data) for more than the US government sells it for. This creates an appetite for US debt in the private markets thus keeping interest rates on US debt lower than they would otherwise be. In recent months the Federal Reserve has been clearing the private market at the rate of 70% of new debt issuance. In effect the Federal Reserve is buying 70% of new debt issuance.

The Fed hopes to eventually pass the baton of support to a healthier economy, but the economy has continued to lag growing ever more dependent on government support.

QE is a sign of US fiscal weakness.

Fewer and fewer see US debt as a good store of value. Europe, battling its own debt problems is a poor market for US debt, while Japan is caught between demographic issues, a 20 Keynesian born recession, and most recently the massive costs associated with earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disasters has become a poor market for US debt as well.

Now in the wake of Obama's spend more budget proposal which makes self imposed American austerity an unlikely course China has joined S&P in viewing the US as a poorer investment. It seems China may not only cease buying US debt, but eventually dump 66% of their US debt.

Our congress' inability to reconcile the fiscal incoherence between its desire to spend and its ability to raise taxes has turned to debt to cover the difference and in so doing has laid its neck across the Chinese fiscal chopping block.

Schemes on dreams -- A poor choice.


Via Zero Hedge:
China appears to be getting ready to cut its USD reserves by roughly the amount of dollars that was recently printed by the Fed, or $2 trilion or so. And to think that this comes just as news that the Japanese pension fund will soon be dumping who knows what. So, once again, how about that "end of QE" again?

From Xinhua:

China's foreign exchange reserves increased by 197.4 billion U.S. dollars in the first three months of this year to 3.04 trillion U.S. dollars by the end of March.

Xia Bin, a member of the monetary policy committee of the central bank, said on Tuesday that 1 trillion U.S. dollars would be sufficient. He added that China should invest its foreign exchange reserves more strategically, using them to acquire resources and technology needed for the real economy.




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Friday, April 22, 2011

Does Boeing Have the Right to Run Boeing...

polifrog




The fiction of collective bargaining rights seems to be of greater importance than the reality of a viable job producing corporation in a world of increasing competition in the airline production sector.

“Boeing’s decision to build a 787 assembly line in South Carolina sent a message that Boeing workers would suffer financial harm for exercising their collective bargaining rights,” said the union’s vice president, Rich Michalski.



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Krugman, Arguing to Focus the Dispersed Power of Consumers in the Fewest Hands Possible...

polifrog




Yesterday Krugman attempted to diminish the dispersed power of the consumer in an attempt to argue for its theft.

Being a consumer allows all of us acting in concert to price goods based on their demand and need.

This is a collective power over the economy that we all share. It is also a power that is lost when handed off to a third party.

Krugman diminishes the importance of this power with references to mundane daily transactions in an attempt to argue that the power of being a consumer is worthy of little consideration and that it should be passed to an advisory board of health-care experts. He is wrong to do so.

To understand how wrong Krugman is one must understand the incentive structure behind his suggested ménage à trois.

First, Kugman demotes health-care recipients from consumers with influence to business costs with no influence. How? By removing them as the source of the health-care industry's income. From the health-care industry's perspective providing health-care to individuals becomes an expense rather than a service. From the perspective of the health-care consumer their health-care is diminished as it becomes an expense to be minimized.

Second, Krugman shifts the obligation the health-care industry once had to consumers to a new consumer ... the federal government. Where once the health-care industry kissed the ass of consumers for their dollars, under Krugman that same industry would kiss the ass of the federal government. Under Krugman the health-industry's new service is that of kowtowing to government, its source of income. From the health-care industry's perspective providing health-care to individuals becomes an expense rather than a service.

Third, Kugman sets the government up as the primary beneficiary in the health-care system. The government would receive the dispersed power and influence of the consumer over 1/6 of the US economy. The health-care industry would receive what the health-care advisory board is willing to pay and the health-care consumers would become no more than a business cost to be minimized.

Krugman, by first diminishing the dispersed power of consumerism among the many as if to say, 'you aren't loosing anything, trust me', then goes on to argue for an unholy alliance between government and health-care, an alliance similar to what we have been saddled with between financial institutions and government, in which the dispersed power of consumerism becomes a focused power in the hands of the few and in which the people least served are those promised the most.

It is a wicked thing to argue for thieving from the many to benefit the few as Krugman does.


Update:

House of Eratosthenes:

What is Krugman supposed to be doing, anyway? Maybe he’s what Thomas Sowell is talking about, when Dr. Sowell uses the word “intellectual” as a put-down: Krugman’s specialty begins in the arena of ideas, and ends there as well, so there’s no way to measure how well the idea meshes with reality, therefore no way to measure Krugman’s competence.



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Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Rep. Brad Miller - Shifting Responsibility for Bad Debt from Private Banks to the Public Balance Sheet...

polifrog



When you hear Brad Miller pretending that he cares about you and the deleterious effects of predatory lending by financial institutions, stop and consider Miller's predatory shifting of the responsibility for bank speculation from Private Banks to the public balance sheet... you and me.

Miller claims to protect the US citizenry yet saddles us and our children and their children with $13 trillion in someone else's debt.

Brad Miller helped do to the US citizenry what has been done to the citizenry of Ireland...








Irish "debt emigration wakes" are held daily ... Where would Americans emigrate??

Brad Miller is not the friend of the NC citizenry but the friend of dead beat debtor banks.

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Just Thanking Rep. Brad Miller (NC-13) for Pushing Unaffordable Home Ownership...

polifrog



Miller's "affordable home" problem...






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Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Presidential Dithering...

polifrog



Through inaction Obama is choosing to follow the Euro/Socialist economic plan toward stagnation....






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Saturday, April 16, 2011

Living the Unpleasant Truth and Promoting the Lie...

polifrog



Will there ever be a moment that our president is not deliberately politically divisive or promoting himself and his policies as something other than what they have obviously been? I doubt it. This is a president sadly dependent on the uneducated masses of the government schooled who don't compare his actions to his words.



Steve Hayes


Rhetorical Divisions



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Friday, April 15, 2011

Silly Establishment Conservative Narratives...

polifrog


Via NRO ...
The narrative is that Republicans couldn’t have done better on the CR because
  • they only control the House;
  • the media would’ve blamed them for the shutdown; and
  • such blame would hamstring their political ability to get greater cuts and reforms in the FY 2012 budget.

So now, having gotten the sideshow of the CR behind them, Republicans supposedly can concentrate on securing the big cuts in FY 2012. Or so the narrative goes.

Precisely how well will that work? How has Republican bargaining leverage now changed for the better going into the next round of negotiations?

  • Will Republicans now control both houses and the presidency?
  • Will the media not blame the Republicans for any future shutdowns?
  • How credible will any future Republican threats be now that Democrats have seen Republicans blink — particularly when they blinked when the political stakes arguably were much lower?



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Inflation Explained...

polifrog

In a world where cartoon bears are the most reliable source of information anything is possible.



Doctorates in economics make for fairly good walking dictionaries, though.


And how about a graph of the failure that has been brought upon us via the implementation of Keynesian Theory. Any economic policy that not only calls for but results in declining dynamism should be questioned.





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Thursday, April 14, 2011

Higher Education is not What it Once Was...

polifrog





I haven't been feeling the blogging thing much lately, but I did stumble across this:



If you have college for all but don’t dumb down the standards, the dropout rate will stagger the imagination. If you have college for all and lower standards so that most can earn a degree, then you devalue college by transforming it into something more like a longer and (much) more expensive high school. So then the high-achievers will feel an even greater imperative to go to the next level. High school becomes middle school, college becomes high school, graduate school becomes college, and our prolonged adolescence continues and worsens.


Credentials are not what they once were.



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Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Coppin' 'Tude Dude....

polifrog







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Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Ignoring Tradition...

polifrog



Ignoring tradition leads to mistakes such as the hippie movement and its liberal embrace. Consider a generation choosing in mass to turn their backs on the greatest generation, a generation that fought and won 2 world wars, tolerated a depression lengthened by faulty academic solutions yet ushered their children into abundance.

There has not been a more giving generation followed by a more selfish generation. Witness the dependence on governance over self, the embrace of debt over savings both personal and public.

It is a generation so selfish that it could not feed its wants without dipping into the pockets of the unborn, that is, the unborn who manage to survive their time in utero to the selfish convenience of free love abortion. And to those who survive that free love storm of selfish desire the hippie movement leaves a diminished America.

This is the failure that results from the lack of proper respect for tradition and is brought home to me each time I run across another self serving 60's retrospective.



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Saturday, April 9, 2011

Union Troubles in Wisconsin

polifrog



James Taranto calls Prosser's win in Wisconsin a Landslide (admitted an exaggeration later in the article):

...With Prosser proffered as a proxy for Walker (we dare you to say that 10 times fast), the justice's approximately 50.5% of the vote is a swing of less than 2% away from Walker, elected last November with 52.3%.





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Friday, April 8, 2011

Keynesian Plaque...

polifrog



Michael Victory:
Society is bursting with inefficiencies that should have been rooted out by recessions long ago. Today big government and big business share the same bed and insatiable addiction to money printing. It must be cured if we are to move into any genuine period of prosperity.
I see this as the result of the lack a economic dynamism in the US since our nation embarked on the Keynesian path of muted market swings rather than purely a fiat currency issue, but ... Yeah.




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Ryan Budget Plan Approval on Slate...

polifrog


If the GOP gets behind his proposals in a serious way, it will become for the first time in modern memory an intellectually serious party—one with a coherent vision to match its rhetoric of limited government. Democrats are within their rights to point out the negative effects of Ryan's proposed cuts on future retirees, working families, and the poor. He was not specific about many of his cuts, and Democrats have a political opportunity in filling in the blanks. But the ball is now in their court, and it will be hard to take them seriously if they don't respond with their own alternative path to debt reduction and long-term solvency.

It takes brave adults to start difficult dialogs but the reaction from most of the left has been anything but mature from the inability to pass a budget during the last congress to the inability to offer alternatives to Ryan's plan today.

The left seems not only unable to start an adult conversation, but seem unable to engage budgetary discourse on any mature level. They do not seem to see that they belittle themselves.



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Human Powered Donkey Carts...

polifrog


P.J. O'Rourke,
WSJ:
"The bicycle is a parody of a wheeled vehicle - a donkey cart without the cart, where you do the work of the donkey. Although the technology necessary to build a bicycle has been around since ancient Egypt, bikes didn't appear until the 19th century. The reason it took mankind 5,000 years to get the idea for the bicycle is that it was a bad idea. The bicycle is the only method of conveyance worse than feet. You can walk up three flights of stairs carrying one end of a sofa. Try that on a bicycle."
H/T joesherlock

I once took out a pedestrian who wobbled into my path on Franklin St. in Chapel Hill. We shared an ambulance ride to the hospital during which she awoke five or six times only to ask "What happened?". The answer during each of her cyclical bouts with lucidity was a clinical, "You were struck by a bicyclist Ma'am."

I never saw her again after admittance to the hospital.


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Thursday, April 7, 2011

To the Vacuous CO2 and Carbon are One in the Same...

polifrog


In reference to conservative attempts to limit the EPA from regulating a gas required for life on Earth, CO2, Boxer uttered this drivel ...


There has been an amendment that was attached to this bill on the very first day that would stop the Environmental Protection Agency forever from enforcing the Clean Air Act as it relates to carbon pollution. … It is essentially a repeal of the Clean Air Act as it involves a particular pollutant, carbon, which has been found to be an endangerment to our people.
...
And what is the science telling us? That it is dangerous to breathe in air pollution with lots of carbon in it.
...
Medical professionals and public health organizations agree that carbon dioxide pollution is a serious public health issue.

Does she live in an informational vacuum or is she just vacuous?



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Kelo and the NC Constitution...

polifrog


In 2005 the U.S. Supreme Court decision gave us Kelo - government can seize land from private individuals for the purpose of allowing other private individuals to develop it.

BlueRidgeNow:
The GOP made passing the eminent domain amendment a part of its campaign platform.

...

The House Judiciary Committee recommended a proposed constitutional amendment...The bill, which now goes to the full House for an expected Thursday vote, would enshrine in the state constitution certain protections for landowners if approved by voters statewide in a November 2012 ballot.

...

The proposed amendment would let North Carolina voters decide whether to add language to the state constitution to bar condemnation of private property by state or local governments except for a "public use." That could include highways, railroads or natural gas pipelines.


Another safeguard is access to a jury trial to assure just compensation if the property owner requests.

Constitutional amendments make me nervous, but loss of property rights make me more nervous. Private property should be protected from government.

However, considering the difficulty in passing constitutional amendments I can't help but wonder if this is simply a path by which good law or appropriate change is left to die while at the same time meeting campaign promises.



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Monday, April 4, 2011

Paul Ryan Attacks Spending ...

polifrog



Apparently there are some adults left in DC...
The GOP budget represents the most consequential domestic policy proposal in our lifetimes. Republicans, the Tea Party, conservatives, libertarians--we should drop all other fights. This is where to make our stand.
I fear without growth it will not be enough to tame our budgetary issues.

More at WSJ.



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Dr. Vincent Courtillot - Sun Over CO2 in Climate Control

polifrog



It seems obvious that the sun would have an impact on Earth temperatures, after all, for any of us who spend any time outside at all temperature differences between day and night are obvious.
Silly statement? Only somewhat....





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CNN Anchors Accused of Carrying Water for the President on Air...

polifrog




I support democratization in the Middle East, however I have an open mind to to the possibility of failure.

Here former CIA analyst, Michael Scheuer, explains the fact that frequently world events drive presidential decisions. Although we hold to the ides that our president guides our nation, the fact is that presidents are often guided by the ceaseless and unpredictable unfolding history.

Additionally, as Scheuer mentions, it does not help matters when the press carries water for the president.






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Cutting Pennies While Spending Borrowed Dollars...

polifrog



The Hill:
A new poll conducted for The Hill showed 41 percent polled said the GOP had been “more reasonable,” while 29 percent said Democrats had been more sensible. Twenty-two percent said neither party was more reasonable than the other, and 7 percent were not sure.

Sounds good, but the current squabbling over 30-100 billion in cut amounts to would only fund 1- 3 weeks of current deficit spending.




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Friday, April 1, 2011

Their Debt is Our Debt is Our Debt is Their Debt - Until it is Paid for by US Citizens...

polifrog



Via Bloomberg.:

Dexia SA (DEXB), based in Brussels and Paris, borrowed as much as $33.5 billion through its New York branch from the Fed’s “discount window” lending program, according to Fed documents released yesterday in response to a Freedom of Information Act request. Dublin-based Depfa Bank Plc, taken over in 2007 by a German real-estate lender later seized by the German government, drew $24.5 billion.

The biggest borrowers from the 97-year-old discount window as the program reached its crisis-era peak were foreign banks, accounting for at least 70 percent of the $110.7 billion borrowed during the week in October 2008 when use of the program surged to a record. The disclosures may stoke a reexamination of the risks posed to U.S. taxpayers by the central bank’s role in global financial markets.

Truly, what is there to say.




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ObamaCare Wiener Waiver ...

polifrog



Steven Crowder - Wiener hypocrisy:



Well, I smiled.




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