Mexican border fence

I never had a problem with the border fence.  To be honest, I really did not care too much one way or another about it.  I do believe in LEGAL immigration.  The diversity and lack of historic societal caste constraints is what makes this country unique and has made us strong.  We all came from somewhere and we all came here because we wanted opportunity.  So I say to let the best and the brightest, or even the hardest working, come here.  If the fence makes sure that the process is appropriately regulated, then fine.  However, what I did not foresee was that Obama would trash the economy SO terribly that we would need the fence to keep the Mexicans IN.

Notwithstanding the beatdown the Supremes are giving Obama over healthcare, he received a very impressive newspaper endorsement for the upcoming election

From Pravda.  No kidding.  You can't make this stuff up.  Maybe this is a result of the sweet nothings he whispered to Medvedev to pass on to Putin.  And the paper really ripped Romney.  If I were Romney, I would run their quotes as great reasons why Americans should vote for him.

Damn I hate to agree with Osama bin Laden

 

The Washington Post explains Osama's rationale for ordering a hit on President Obama:

“The reason for concentrating on them,” the al-Qaeda leader explained to his top lieutenant, “is that Obama is the head of infidelity and killing him automatically will make (Vice President Joe) Biden take over the presidency. … Biden is totally unprepared for that post, which will lead the U.S. into a crisis. As for Petraeus, he is the man of the hour … and killing him would alter the war’s path” in Afghanistan. 

Sarkozy says France has too many foreigniers

No kidding.  It must be at least half full of Frenchmen.

It is happening

Or at least Obama is trying to make it happen.  You remember when Obama got elected and we were all worried he was trying to make the US subservient to a new world order led by the UN and the Europeans.  Cuz they are soooooo much more civilized than we are?  He's tried it with things like AGW and carbon taxes/credits, but that whole thing was a house of cards so he had to jump off of the Kyoto through Durban fantasy of equalizing our wealth to everyone else for the greater good.  Well, Leon Panetta may have just crossed the line.  He told Congress the legal basis for enforcing a no-fly in Syria was international permission to do so.  Excuse me!?  Hitler and the Axis powers would have given international permission for us to start massacring Jews.  That is exactly why our founders placed the only limits on Executive military action within our Constitution.  Whether it is through a declaration of war, a separate war powers act or even a treaty (which must by ratified by the Senate to be effective), the Constitution prohibits any President from taking military action unless it is "legal" within these fifty states.  And if Panetta violates the Constitution for the benefit of and at the orders of another country, I believe the technical legal term is "treason."

What happens when you implement a failed social model with a centralized government overtaxing to provide too many "social services"?

You run out of money.  Just like the UK has.  Just ask Chancellor George Osborne.  Or you could re-elect Obama and find out on your own.

What could be worse than Federal Government control on the internet?

The International Telecommunications Union or "ITU" is a treaty based organization under the control of the UN.  Next week in Geneva the diplomatic process is beginning where a bunch of countries including Russia and China are pushing to throw out the 1988 international treaty that has allowed multiple private (non-governmental) parties to keep a bottom's up governance model with the internet.  Needless to say, the internet, business and even individuals have thrived in immeasurable ways.  As the Wall Street Journal points out:

Net access, especially through mobile devices, is improving the human condition more quickly—and more fundamentally—than any other technology in history. Nowhere is this more true than in the developing world, where unfettered Internet technologies are expanding economies and raising living standards.

 Farmers who live far from markets are now able to find buyers for their crops through their Internet-connected mobile devices without assuming the risks and expenses of traveling with their goods. Worried parents are able to go online to locate medicine for their sick children. And proponents of political freedom are better able to share information and organize support to break down the walls of tyranny.

So what's the problem?  Simple, governments and bureaucracies have been cut out.  First and foremost, no revenue.  Heaven forbid that there be commerce without the leeches sucking some money out.  Worse still, you have an Arab Spring, protests in Beijing and demonstrators in Moscow.  Can't have that, can we.  And certainly the new world order, er, I mean the UN bureaucracy has never seen an opportunity for growth and centralized control that it did not like.  The Wall Street Journal article outlines some of the proposed changes:

Reading even a partial list of proposals that could be codified into international law next December at a conference in Dubai is chilling:

• Subject cyber security and data privacy to international control;

• Allow foreign phone companies to charge fees for "international" Internet traffic, perhaps even on a "per-click" basis for certain Web destinations, with the goal of generating revenue for state-owned phone companies and government treasuries;

• Impose unprecedented economic regulations such as mandates for rates, terms and conditions for currently unregulated traffic-swapping agreements known as "peering."

• Establish for the first time ITU dominion over important functions of multi-stakeholder Internet governance entities such as the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the nonprofit entity that coordinates the .com and .org Web addresses of the world;

• Subsume under intergovernmental control many functions of the Internet Engineering Task Force, the Internet Society and other multi-stakeholder groups that establish the engineering and technical standards that allow the Internet to work;

• Regulate international mobile roaming rates and practices.

So what has the Obama administration done about this impending challenge that threatens freedom and free commerce?  Nothing.  As in they haven't even appointed a delegate to for the US in the treaty negotiations.

Two Lincolns

   

Believe it or not, the above two images are of the same thing.  At left are some crew members aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln.  At right is, well, Abraham Lincoln.  There are notable similarities between the two.  Both have/had balls and are/were not afraid to fight for what is right.  I dare say neither would lose just about any fight they picked, either.  So perhaps it is appropriate that the USS Lincoln Carrier Group just rounded the Straits of Hormuz into the Arabian Gulf today, only two days after what would have been Lincoln's 203rd birthday.  I am sure this has a lot to do with Iran's refusal to comply with international conventions governing nuclear power and weapons, as well as the recent attacks on Israeli diplomats in Georgia, India and last night in Bangkok (though this time the Iranian idiot blew his leg off in the attempt, but is going to survive, so there may be direct proof of Iranian involvement shortly).   The official line from the Navy is as follows:

"I wouldn't characterize ... us going through the strait as: 'Hey, this is a huge show of force, we're coming through.' It's an international strait to transit. We're going from one body of water to the other," said Capt. John Alexander, the Lincoln's commanding officer, as preparations for the trip got under way late Monday.

The Lincoln passed a few miles off the coast of Iran.  As you may recall, the last time an American Carrier Group (the USS John C. Stennis) transited the Straits in late December, Iran's Army chief warned them not to do it again.  Well the US Navy does not take its orders from Tehran.  Neither do the Brits or even the French, both of whom have ships in the group. One has to wonder if a little shock and awe is not too far away.  Maybe ours, maybe Israeli, but sanctions are not working which only leaves one other "deterrent".

What do you get when you cross James Bond with Fred Flintstone?

You get a fake rock that was obviously made by Q over at the MI6 lab. Kinda like the ones you hide your extra key in, only this one had electronics instead of keys. The only problem was that the FSB knew about the cliche bit of spy craft. So what did Putin do when he found out? What any politician would have done. He sat on it until he could get some political leverage out of it. In this case, he had the state TV do a documentary on it, complete with grainy footage of the British agent kicking it one night in a park to try to get it working correctly again. Putin first released the footage in 2006 so he could enact provisions that gave him far tighter reigns on so-called NGOs or non-governmental organizations--basically anything not run by the government or one of his oligarch buddies. And he has trotted it out again in the wake of criticism of the last election. Good job James, er, Fred.

Twinkie maker Hostess files for bankrutcy--this not a good sign

OK people, follow me closely here.  This is important.  Hostess, the maker of Twinkies, just filed for reorganization under chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code.  The Twinkie factory is in Natick, Massachusetts, so that is certainly not good for the local economy.  But that isn't what is so disturbing.  As we all know, Twinkies are the one food known to mankind that can survive a nuclear explosion.  This fact was popularized in the "da boom" episode (3rd episode, 2nd season) on the Family Guy which aired on Fox in December of 1999.

As I am sure you recall, Y2K caused a nuclear holocaust.  Peter Griffin, presciently and against great derision, locked his family in the basement instead of attending a New Year's Eve party.  Sure enough, at midnight the nukes launch and destroy much of civilization.  Peter, not surprisingly, gets hungry.  He remembers that Twinkies are the only food that can survive a nuclear explosion so he packs up the Griffin family and makes the trek from Rhode Island to nearby Natick.  Sure enough, the Twinkie factory is the only surviving structure.  The Griffins and humanity are saved.

This brings me to the troubling part.  Per my earlier post, the Iranians are getting closer to becoming armed with nuclear weapons.  If they get them, the nuclear holocaust will surely follow.  If so, what are we going to do without the Twinkie factory!?  Laugh if you want, but you ignore Peter Griffin's warning at your own peril.

Personally, I think it was just a brake line failure

The above picture is of what is left of Mostafa Roshan's car.  Professor Roshan is, excuse me, was the director of the Natanz uranium enrichment facility in central Iran.  Uranium enrichment is a prerequisite for making a nuclear weapon.  Of course, the Iranians overreact to every little thing and are blaming Israeli agents for "preventing progress."  The Israelis deny everything, though according to one US inteligence source, the denials come with a smile.  Personally, I am sticking to my brake line failure theory.  After all, that seems to happen a lot to cars being driven by Iranian nuclear scientists.

Another bust (at the taxpayers' expense) in the new green economy

According to www.barackobama.com:

The clean energy sector creates the jobs of today and tomorrow, helps protect our environment, and reduces our dependence on foreign oil.

According to Barack Obama:

 “I strongly agree with Vice President Gore that we cannot drill our way to energy independence, but must fast-track investments in renewable sources of energy like solar power, wind power and advanced biofuels, and those are the investments I will make as President. It's a strategy that will create millions of new jobs that pay well and cannot be outsourced, and one that will leave our children a world that is cleaner and safer." - Barack Obama, July 17, 2008

According to yesterday's Atlanta Journal Constitution:

Georgia ethanol plant sold, at taxpayers' loss
Dan Chapman 
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution 

The failed Range Fuels wood-to-ethanol factory in southeastern Georgia that sucked up $65 million in federal and state tax dollars was sold Tuesday for pennies on the dollar to another bio-fuel maker with equally grand plans to transform the alternative energy world.
LanzaTech, a New Zealand-based biofuel company, paid $5.1 million for the plant in Soperton. Its main financial backer: Vinod Khosla, a California entrepreneur who also bankrolled Range Fuels, and helped secure its government loans, before Range went bust last year.
LanzaTech hasn't received the same type of loans, but the company has received $7 million from the U.S. departments of Energy and Transportation to assist in the development of alternative fuels.
The Range fiasco harkens other, failed renewable energy companies that received major taxpayer funding. California solar panel maker Solyndra got $535 million in federal loan guarantees. Beacon Power of Massachusetts, which makes energy-storage equipment, took in $43 million in federal money. Both filed for bankruptcy last year.
Range cost U.S. taxpayers $64 million and Georgia taxpayers another $6.2 million. Tuesday's sale netted $5.1 million which will help offset losses suffered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Georgia's money, which paid for some of the ethanol-making equipment, won't be recouped outright, but state officials expect LanzaTech to use the machinery.

According to Sam Shelton, director of research programs at Georgia Tech's Strategic Energy Institute:

"It was too damn big a risk for an apparently unproven technology and the due diligence I personally performed on Range would not entice me to invest in it," Shelton said Wednesday. Shelton was invited by Range a few years back to check out its operation in Colorado where it was based.
"Government should not be in the venture capital business selecting technologies," he added.

By the way, LanzaTech got a $7 Million loan from the Obama Administration to buy for about $5.1 Million the failed company that owed taxpayers almost $70 Million.  So it used our money to "pay us" a few cents on the dollar for the assets securing the first loan from the Obama Administration where we got defaulted on (screwed out of) for more than $68 Million.  I do not know about you, but of the above choices, I am going with Mr. Shelton.

Who is Mohammed Fazl?

Mohammed Fazl is a high risk Guantanamo detainee.  Fortunately, for the sake of world safety and justice, Mr. Fazl has been in American custody since 2002.  (It is tempting to flash back to candidate Obama who insisted he would close Guantanamo, restore rights of habeas corpus to the non-citizen detainees and try them in American courts, but I will resit the urge to digress down that path.)  Reuters describes Fazl as follows:

As a senior commander of the Taliban army, Fazl is alleged to be responsible for the killing of thousands of Afghanistan's minority Shi'ite Muslims between 1998 and 2001.
According to U.S. military documents made public by WikiLeaks, he was also on the scene of a November 2001 prison riot that killed CIA operative Johnny Micheal Spann, the first American who died in combat in the Afghan war.

So assuming we have wrung out whatever useful information we can from the man, I personally would urge being very humanitarian in his treatment.  Give him what he wants and forthwith dispatch him to his seventy virgins.  However, that is not what President Obama wants to do.  He thinks it would be just ducky to give him back to the Taliban to curry some good will and then negotiate a "peace" with them.  Read my lips: you do not negotiate anything with terrorists (to say nothing of perpetrators of horrible war and humanitarian crimes).  You kill them.  All.

Iran and the US trade verbal volleys

Iran, who has been engaging in war games around the Strait of Hormuz where a great deal of the world's oil is shipped through, lobbed the first verbal shot:

"Closing the Strait of Hormuz for Iran's armed forces is really easy ... or as Iranians say it will be easier than drinking a glass of water," Iran's navy chief Habibollah Sayyari told Iran's English language Press TV.

I'll translate: I will ignore established International Law to destabilize the region and prove my relevance.

Then the US responded:

"The free flow of goods and services through the Strait of Hormuz is vital to regional and global prosperity," a spokesperson for the Bahrain-based [US Fifth] fleet said in a written response to queries from Reuters about the possibility of Iran trying to close the waterway.
"Anyone who threatens to disrupt freedom of navigation in an international strait is clearly outside the community of nations; any disruption will not be tolerated."
Asked whether it was taking specific measures in response to the threat to close the Strait, the fleet said it "maintains a robust presence in the region to deter or counter destabilizing activities," without providing further detail.

I'll translate again:  Go ahead, make my day.



Parallel tracks--Global warming and the Eurozone

What could AGW and the Euro possibly have in common?  A lot, it turns out, all of which are driven by the immutable laws of economics.  Steven Hayward at RealClearMarkets blogs about just how similar the two ill-conceived and ill-fated concepts are:

What do the endlessly repeating cycle of futile Eurozone rescue talks and the endlessly repeating cycle of futile annual UN climate summits have in common? Put more plainly, what accounts for the unreality of both efforts, such that "breakthrough" agreements are soon recognized to be ineffective, if not fraudulent?
It is probably not a coincidence that the Euro currency was launched at about the same moment as the Kyoto Protocol in the late 1990s, and that both are hitting the rocks at about the same time, and for the same reason: both flew in the face of economic reality. But as the inexorable economics of a common currency used across uncommon economies, and fossil fuel suppression in an energy-hungry world, have become more evident, the European and UN diplomatic corps (often the same people) have simply doubled down, holding bigger meetings, giving longer speeches, and crafting more paper agreements to find a process to develop a framework to come up with commitments to adopt meaningful measures and policies that will . . . do something. In the future. The proverbial can has been dented so hard and kicked so far down the road that it's no longer fit for the recycling bin.
It is tempting to chalk up the farcical solutions to simple ignorance of economics. In the case of the Eurozone crisis, the constituent nations of the European Union are resisting the implications the debt crisis poses, namely, the unsustainability of the lavish welfare states built increasingly on borrowed money and the asymmetries between northern and southern European economies. The hope is that another declaration of "we're-all-in-this-together" along with a new fillip of a bailout package that is a tiny fraction of the unpayable debt of the Euro's laggard nations will soothe the markets and extend the illusion that the political class has got things in hand. It worked the first few times, but the financial markets have stopped buying the inevitable sequels.  In the case of the climate change circus, the unreality of steep near-term emission cuts and the asymmetry between rich and "developing" nations like China and India turned the entire scheme of climate change diplomacy into the biggest farce since the Kellogg-Briand Pact promised to eliminate war in 1928. And so in recent years we've gone from the Bali Roadmap to the Copenhagen Accord to the most recent "Durban Platform," all of which promise to craft a legally binding treaty for real emissions cuts by everyone . . . a decade from now. In future years I expect we can look forward to the Frankfurt Farce, the Rio Reneg, the Tokyo Two-Step, the Melbourne Mumble, and the Marrakesh One-Two.

There is more.  And it is a good read.  I will try to summarize the way that my simple mind can understand it: Both are stupid ideas that are dead men walking and were since their inception.  I must also give Hayward credit for concluding his piece by quoting the Iron Lady, Margaret Thatcher (who presciently predicted that a single European currency was bound to fail): "During my lifetime most of the problems the world has faced have come, in one fashion or other, from mainland Europe, and the solutions from outside it."

Butterfly wings are beating faster

A while back I blogged about the popular "revolt" against the corrupt and heavy handed party officials in the little Chinese fishing village of Wukan.  An inside land deal by the local party boss, the suspected beating to death of a villager in police custody and other similar incidents had finally pushed the villagers to rise up and put their collective feet down.  The amazing thing was that nothing happened.  China-philes speculated that a conflict was raging behind the scenes between Yang Wang and Bo Xilai, who represented the liberal and hard line factions of the up and comers in the Communist Party.  Yang and the liberals may be winning.  The BBC is reporting that progress is being made, and by that I do not mean the extermination of the village of Wukan.  The land deal is being unwound, currently detained village leaders are going to be released and the body of the prisoner who died of a "sudden illness" while in police custody is being given to his family.  No hurricane yet, but I may feel a slight breeze.

Are you an ex-pat Brit in Spain?



If so, then you should take great solace from the fact that your Foreign Minister is on the ball and has foresight.  But that is about all you can take much solace in.  An article in the Mirror outlines deep concerns about what will happen to you if the Euro collapses.  It seems as though the Foreign Office has begun drawing up plans for at best illiquid and at worst destitute citizens who have their entire life savings frozen (if not wiped out) when the inevitable run on the Spanish banks starts with the currency collapse:

The drastic proposals emerged as a former Security Minister warned expats could be left stranded and destitute by the break-up of the single currency.
Brits who invested their savings in their adopted countries may not be able to withdraw cash and could even lose their homes if banks call in loans, worried ministers are warning.
The Foreign Office is preparing to bring them back from Spain and Portugal if the two countries are forced out of the euro, triggering a banking collapse

Since there are about a million ex-pat Brits in Spain (and another million total in the other Eurozone countries), the government is right to worry.  They may need to deal with all of the suddenly penniless people sleeping in airports or elsewhere with no access to money and no way to get home.  Planes, boats and quick cash loans are all being bandied about.  By the way, 10 Spanish banks were downgraded last week amid fears that the crisis had already spiralled out of control.

A butterfly is flapping its wings, but will a hurricane follow

History is proving that Communism is doomed to fail.  The only real questions are when and how.  Is China's time for political evolution, if not revolution, upon us?  Perhaps we are seeing just that.  Rahul Jacob has a great read in the Financial Times about a real life David and Goliath story.  The little fishing village of Wukan at the far southern tip of the country is defying the party bosses in Beijing.  The story started familiarly enough.  A corrupt party official sold some communally owned land to a well connected buddy in a sweetheart deal.  The villagers protested.  And nothing bad happened to them.  So first they kept it up, and then they ramped it up.  Just last week a bunch of high school aged kids marched on the now abandoned police headquarters.  Only now the protests are no longer about a duplicitous land sale, they want free elections.  Nationwide.  And so far the response hasn't been muted.  It has been silent.  Keep an eye on this, because behind the scenes two of the power players in the next generation of leaders are fighting it out.  Yang Wang is a provincial party chief who is viewed as liberal because he has sided with labor and entrepreneurs when it comes to deregulating and freeing up private businesses.  His rival is Bo Xilai, who thinks any protest against the party is a capital crime.  One has to wonder if even Wang will side with the protesters, though.  This time it is not a business principle at stake, it is a civil liberty.  So keep watching to see if little Wukan is the butterfly whose wings started the hurricane of change, or if Bo Xilai and the hardliners step on it like a fragile insect that they do not even bother to scrape off their boot.

Tragedy! Kim Jong Il has died!

Who will Team America satirize in the sequel!?