Speaking of Israel and not real smart

Man, Israel must not be feeling the whole idea of, “we need to be careful, we do not have a friend in the White House,” at all.

The Story via the WSJ:

WASHINGTON—U.S. defense leaders are increasingly concerned that Israel is preparing to take military action against Iran, over U.S. objections, and have stepped up contingency planning to safeguard U.S. facilities in the region in case of a conflict.
Iranians on Friday carried the flag-draped coffin of Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, a scientist working in Iran’s nuclear sector assassinated in Tehran.
President Barack Obama, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and other top officials have delivered a string of private messages to Israeli leaders warning about the dire consequences of a strike. The U.S. wants Israel to give more time for the effects of sanctions and other measures intended to force Iran to abandon its perceived efforts to build nuclear weapons.
Stepping up the pressure, Mr. Obama spoke by telephone on Thursday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and U.S. Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, will meet with Israeli military officials in Tel Aviv next week.
The high-stakes planning and diplomacy comes as U.S. officials warn Tehran, including through what administration officials described Friday as direct messages to Iran’s leaders, against provocative actions.

Again, I am sure some will disagree; but this just does not strike me as being overly smart. At least, not right now. I would be able to understand, if there was a Republican in the White House; but there is not, and Democrats abandoned Israel years ago. Choose wisely Israel — choose very wisely.

Five European Nations to Be Downgraded by S&P

The fallout from the housing market bust here in America continues:

The Story:

Standard & Poor’s will cut the credit ratings of Italy, Spain and Portugal by two notches and downgrade France and Austria by one notch, a French newspaper said Friday, without citing its sources.
The newspaper, Les Echos, said that S&P would spare Germany, the Netherlands, Finland and Luxembourg in its long-awaited adjustment of euro zone sovereign ratings.
It said the announcement would come at around 4:30 pm ET, after the US stock market has closed.
“Remain alert tonight when U.S. markets close,” one euro zone source told Reuters.
US stocks slumped in reaction, though were well off their lows, while European shares closed lower.
In December, S&P placed the ratings of 15 euro zone countries on credit watch negative— including those of top-rated Germany and France, the region’s two biggest economies—and said “systemic stresses” were building up as credit conditions tighten in the 17-nation bloc.
Since then, the European Central Bank has flooded the banking system with cheap three-year money to avert a credit crunch. At the time, the U.S.-based ratings agency said it could also downgrade the euro zone’s current bailout fund, the EFSF.
Five European Nations to Be Downgraded by S&P: Report – Business News – CNBC.

This is what happens when progressives game a system and it comes all crashing down around them. Now you would think that they would learn from this little idiotic mistake; well, you would be wrong. They honestly believe the way to recover from this, is by spending their way out of a recession. Idiots, all of them. 🙄

Speaking of the Federal Reserve

Speaking of the federal reserve bank’s stupidity….

You would not believe what they are thinking of doing again: (H/T HotAir.com)

Federal Reserve officials are seriously considering giving the US economy—and especially the housing market—an added jolt with more quantitative easing.
Fed officials are likely to discuss such a move at their Jan. 24-25 meeting, when the central bank will issue its first quarterly forecast on interest rates under the new communication policy.
Two of the new voting members this year on the Federal Open Market Committee , which sets interest-rate policy, have recently suggested they would support more assets purchases.
San Francisco Fed President John Williams said that sustained high levels of unemployment, as forecast by many Fed members, “does make an argument that we should have more stimulus.”
Another new voter, Cleveland Fed President Sandra Pianalto, said in a recent speech that economic models indicate the Fed “should be even more accommodative than it is today.”
They join other members, including New York Fed President Bill Dudley and several Fed governors, who have openly suggested they would support more QE .
As part of an normal rotation of presidents, the makeup of the FOMC will become more dovish this year.
Three hawkish members are losing their FOMC vote—Richard Fisher of Dallas, Narayana Kocherlakota of Minneapolis and Charles Plosser of Philadelphia—along with only one dovish member, Charles Evans of Chicago.
They will be replaced by two more dovish members—Williams and Pianalto—and Dennis Lockhart of Atlanta, who is moderate but is seen as unlikely to dissent.
But a more dovish makeup is just one reason that more QE could become a reality this year.
Fed officials harbor doubts about the strength of the economic recovery and note there is considerable slack. And they expect inflation to remain moderate this year.
It is also significant that financial markets expects the Fed to act.
The newly released primary dealer survey from the Fed shows that top Wall Street fixed income dealers put a 60% probability on the Fed boosting the size of its balance sheet within a year.
Much will depend on the economic data during the first quarter. One concern inside the Fed is that much of the recent economic strength results from one-time factors, such as rebuilding inventories.
Taking out inventories, underlying GDP still looks weak to some Fed officials. Meanwhile, income growth has also been lagging, suggesting any spending gains from the holiday season likely came from savings. Fed officials generally see this as unsustainable.
The most likely course for the Fed is to gauge what kind of effect its latest innovation—publishing the expected interest rate path from its members—will have on bond yields.
There is hope that if the path shows that Fed officials put the date of the first rate increase further down the road than the market expects, that could edge down long-term rates.
But the minutes of the December meeting also showed that for “a number” of officials, this new communications strategy is not a replacement for more easing, but rather, a precondition.
Already some Wall Street banks are building QE3 into their forecasts. Morgan Stanley fixed income economist David Greenlaw said he expects more easing to be announced this spring.

I believe that it would be a accurate statement that the psychos are running the nut house. I wrote that once, it is still true. I should also point out, that doing this to our money supply does nothing to stimulate economic growth at all. If anything, it causes inflation of the money supply, which drives the cost of everything up, which kills jobs growth; because if you are a business and you are having to pay more for everything, you are going to be less likely to hire people to work for you. But with Liberals, it is like talking to a tree; this is normal for them.

The United States Debt Ceiling Hits $15.194 Trillion

So, what does President want? More of your money of course!

The story via WSJ:

The Treasury Department has begun maneuvers to avoid hitting the debt ceiling, as the Obama administration waits for Congress to return from the holiday break before it can raise the federal borrowing limit.
The U.S. government was just a hair below the $15.194 trillion debt ceiling on Tuesday, $25 million shy of the limit Congress set last summer. President Barack Obama sent a letter to congressional leaders Thursday, saying the U.S. debt was within $100 million of the ceiling “and that further borrowing is required to meet existing commitments.”

…and of course:

President Obama formally notified Congress on Thursday of his intent to raise the nation’s debt ceiling by $1.2 trillion, two weeks after he had postponed the request to give lawmakers more time to consider the action.
Congress will have had 15 days to say no before the nation’s debt ceiling automatically is raised from $15.2 trillion to $16.4 trillion.
In a letter to House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), Obama wrote that ”further borrowing is required to meet existing commitments.”
Obama had sought to make the request at the end of last month, when the Treasury came within $100 billion of its borrowing limit. However, with Congress on recess, lawmakers from both parties asked the president to hold off. The House is out of session until Jan. 17, and the Senate until Jan. 23.
Since then Treasury officials have used special revenue and accounting measures to maintain the nation’s solvency. Yet the White House cast the delay as a technicality, saying there is no chance the limit will not be increased, even if Republican lawmakers attempt to object.

16.4 trillion dollars?!?! 😯 That is 16.4 trillion of money from China and/or your money through taxes. Either that or it would have to come from slapping tariffs on imports; and we know an internationalist Democrat like Barack Obama would never do that.

So, to be brief; we’re screwed….badly.

UPDATED! PLEASE READ!: Quote about President Barack Obama

Who said this?

“My question is, what legacy will he leave, having the opportunity to serve under such hugely dramatic circumstances and had such a huge impact on the universal state of things … how could he have had such a splendid opportunity to do more than most presidents would have ever been able to do, and he let that opportunity slip away from him.
I’m very cautious of the fact that those who think he has some second agenda and only if he could be given a second term for us to see the new light, new things will be revealed, new efforts will be made to take us to a place other than where we’ve been and where we languish. I just don’t trust that. I don’t believe that’s a safe way and accurate way to look at this scenario. If there was the kind of moral compass serving Barack Obama the way we hoped, the moral force would have helped him make choices, the absence of that force in his equations, that barometer to guide him when he has to make these decisions that are hugely complicated, he should have come to the table with the things that would have helped us in this moment of crisis.”

Continue reading “ UPDATED! PLEASE READ!: Quote about President Barack Obama” →

Hannity to Perry: You sound like the #OWS crowd!

I have to hand it to Hannity, when he is right, he is right. I wrote the same thing. Which means I actually agree with Sean Hannity! Horrors! 😯

Video: (Via Mediaite) (H/T to HotAir Headlines)

Money quote:

Perry began the segment attacking President Obama, but Hannity quickly shifted gears to the “very harsh words” Perry has had for Romney. “It almost sounds like Occupy Wall Street,” he noted, “it doesn’t sound like someone who is governing Texas as a conservative.”
“There is a real difference between venture capitalism and vulture capitalism,” Perry replied, adding that “venture capitalism we like; vulture capitalism, no.” He justified his attacks saying that “the fact of the matter is he’s going to have to face up to this at some time or another.” Hannity wasn’t satisfied with this answer, asking Perry whether he was saying “that Mitt Romney is a vulture capitalist, that he is unethical.” Perry specified that he thought what happened with two specific companies bought by Bain was “irresponsible,” and that “the folks in South Carolina agree with that.” Hannity replied that it was still “as severe as they can get” as far as attacks go, though Perry insisted there were places where Bain had “destroyed people’s lives.

Rick Perry, making the Democrats arguments for them. Nice Ricky….real nice… 🙄

Obama’s World? — Fines for Bio fuel that does not exist is stupid, says… The New York Times?!?!

When the Obama lead Government loses the New York Times, something is horribly wrong:

WASHINGTON — When the companies that supply motor fuel close the books on 2011, they will pay about $6.8 million in penalties to the Treasury because they failed to mix a special type of biofuel into their gasoline and diesel as required by law.
But there was none to be had. Outside a handful of laboratories and workshops, the ingredient, cellulosic biofuel, does not exist.
In 2012, the oil companies expect to pay even higher penalties for failing to blend in the fuel, which is made from wood chips or the inedible parts of plants like corncobs. Refiners were required to blend 6.6 million gallons into gasoline and diesel in 2011 and face a quota of 8.65 million gallons this year.
“It belies logic,” Charles T. Drevna, the president of the National Petrochemicals and Refiners Association, said of the 2011 quota. And raising the quota for 2012 when there is no production makes even less sense, he said.
Penalizing the fuel suppliers demonstrates what happens when the federal government really, really wants something that technology is not ready to provide. In fact, while it may seem harsh that the Environmental Protection Agency is penalizing them for failing to do the impossible, the agency is being lenient by the standards of the law, the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act.
The law, aimed at reducing the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions, its reliance on oil imported from hostile places and the export of dollars to pay for it, includes provisions to increase the efficiency of vehicles as well as incorporate renewable energy sources into gasoline and diesel.
It requires the use of three alternative fuels: car and truck fuel made from cellulose, diesel fuel made from biomass and fuel made from biological materials but with a 50 percent reduction in greenhouse gases. Only the cellulosic fuel is commercially unavailable. As for meeting the quotas in the other categories, the refiners will not close their books until February and are not sure what will happen.
The goal set by the law for vehicle fuel from cellulose was 250 million gallons for 2011 and 500 million gallons for 2012. (These are small numbers relative to the American fuel market; the E.P.A. estimates that gasoline sales in 2012 will amount to about 135 billion gallons, and highway diesel, about 51 billion gallons.)
Even advocates of renewable fuel acknowledge that the refiners are at least partly correct in complaining about the penalties — Via NYT: Companies Face Fines for Not Using Unavailable Biofuel – NYTimes.com

It is very obvious that the attempt to inject politics into our economy has failed. This means vote different in 2012.

Others: National Review, The Enterprise Blog, Weasel Zippers, The Volokh Conspiracy, Doug Ross and The Jawa Report

Jay Nordlinger makes a good point

Now some people would say that this is typical Republican establishment stuff, but I do not see it that way. He is making the same point as Michelle Malkin did, and she is not an establishment Republican, not by a long shot.

Via NRO’s the Corner:

The last two presidential election cycles have revealed a stinking hypocrisy in conservatives: They profess their love of capitalism and entrepreneurship, but when offered a real capitalist and entrepreneur, they go, “Eek, a mouse!” And they tear him down in proud social-democrat fashion. In the off season, they sound like Friedrich Hayek. When the game is on, they sound like Huey Long, Bella Abzug, or Bob Shrum.
Last time around, Mike Huckabee said Romney “looks like the guy who laid you off.” Conservatives reacted like this was the greatest mot since Voltaire or something. To me, Romney looked like someone who could create a business and hire the sadly unentrepreneurial like me.
Others said, “He looks like a car salesman,” or, worse, “a used-car salesman.” Ho ho ho! Commerce, gross, icky, yuck. Better Romney looked like an anthropology professor.
[…..]
Now Romney has said, “I like being able to fire people who provide services to me. You know, if someone doesn’t give me the good service I need, I want to say, ‘You know, I’m going to get someone else to provide that service to me.’” Simple, elementary competition. Capitalism 101. And conservatives go, “Eek, a mouse!”
I could go on: the $10,000 bet, the pink slips, conservatives wetting their pants, over and over. They have no appetite to defend capitalism, to persuade people, to encourage them not to fall for the old socialist and populist crap. I fled the Democratic party many years ago. And one of the reasons was, I couldn’t stand the class resentment, the envy, the hostility to wealth, the cries of “Richie Rich!” And I hear them from conservatives, at least when Romney is running.
Go ahead, have your “bloodbath” in South Carolina. Make Romney the little guy in the top hat and tails, from the Monopoly game. Have your Santorum, your Perry, your Newt. They may carry something like four states in the fall, but at least they’ve never sullied their hands with — eek! — business.
Perhaps after the election, while Obama is deepening the country’s poverty, Romney and others like him can find a party friendly to capitalism. We conservative Republicans turn out to be cradle-to-gravers, like everyone else.

Now obviously the man is a Romney supporter, because he does believe that nobody can win, but Romney. Now that I disagree with, because the grassroots no not like the man, either does most of the evangelical Christian base. Evangelicals just do not trust Mormons; they never have and most of them, when they are being very honest — do not really believe Mormons are Christians either.

One part that I totally relate to, as former “blue dog” or “Reagan” Democrat, is this:

I fled the Democratic party many years ago. And one of the reasons was, I couldn’t stand the class resentment, the envy, the hostility to wealth, the cries of “Richie Rich!”

Boy can I even relate to this one. This was it for me too. Although, the main reason for my leaving the Democratic Party for me was the stoking of the racial resentment towards white people, like me. I mean, the, “You got what you have, because you is white and it was all handed to you on a platter!” gets a little old after a while. The truth is I got everything that I own and have owned in the past was because I worked for it. I did a good deal of tail busting to buy the stuff that I had and still do have; and I am not talking about sitting at a desk —- I did a good amount of back-breaking work! Nobody ever handed me anything on a platter. Heck, I will be honest. I do not have a high school diploma. I have A.D.H.D and I suck very badly at math. Oh, I can keep my checking account balanced. (Thank You GOD for technology!) However, I will not be applying at NASA anytime soon.

Another point that I believe is fair to make this; and I have made this on my previous blog and I think on this one too. Populists — whether progressive or conservative — are under the impression that “big business” is the enemy. This is a lie that has origins in the era before the progressive movement; I am referring to the populist era that lasted from 1891 until 1908. The truth is, big business is not the enemy, big Government, and regulation is the enemy of the American people. As much as it sounds like I am being heartless; but, in a capitalistic society like ours, which is a free society, businesses who produce and make a profit succeed, those who are failing lose and usually close up. Because of this, people lose jobs — it happens and it is a part of the process. A Presidential candidate that is running as a Conservative that accuses someone of being overtly evil, because they happen to be a part of the process of capitalism — is making the Democrat’s argument for them, and should not be calling himself or herself even remotely a Conservative.

MAJORLY MAJOR UPDATE JAN 11, 2011 – My friends, I do really believe what I wrote above; please do not think that I don’t. Because I do. However, after watching this video here; I could not ever, in good conscience; support Mitt Romney. Why? Because I was under the impression that a few small companies got shut down; these were not small companies, these were HUGE companies and a WHOLE BUNCH OF PEOPLE got hurt because of simple greed. To me, as a born-again Christian, there is just something very unchristian about ruining people’s lives — just because you can — sorry my friends, I am all for business. But I am not, nor have I ever been for, capitalism at the expense of other people’s lives and livelihoods. I just cannot support that at all. 😡

Is China’s Economy about to collapse?

This is not the first time I have heard this, but:

Which does China face? A popped real estate bubble could exert a big drag. Housing construction exceeds 10 percent of GDP. That’s historically high, says Lardy. At a similar stage of economic development, Taiwan’s housing investment was 4.3 percent of GDP. In the recent U.S. real estate boom, housing peaked at 6 percent of GDP. In China, housing stimulates much consumer spending (furniture, appliances) and accounts for 40 percent of steel production, notes Lardy. Land sales are also a big revenue source for local governments. All would suffer from a housing bust.
There are mitigating factors. Outside Beijing and Shanghai, it’s unclear that housing prices are “out of line with household income growth,” says economist Eswar Prasad of Cornell University. Chinese buyers also typically make large cash payments for their properties. Compared to United States, a housing bust is less likely to become a banking crisis as mortgages sour.
Whatever happens, China’s economic model is reaching its limits, as Lardy argues. It has relied on exports, promoted through the controlled exchange rate, and investment, including housing, subsidized by cheap credit. Meanwhile, Chinese savers have been punished by the low returns on deposits. This dampens their incomes and consumption spending. The trouble is that the global slowdown threatens exports and housing’s excesses threaten investment. Unless China can switch to stronger consumption spending, its economy will slow — or it will achieve growth by becoming even more predatory toward other countries. — Is a Chinese economic slump on the horizon? – The Washington Post

Go read that whole thing, because this is the best case for this belief. The funny thing, the people over a GoldSilver.com have been saying this for a while:

Go check them out and get into Gold and Silver; before you lose it all.

Here is a good reason why I will be voting Republican in 2012

This is very scary…:

In his remarks, Genachowski said the program has been successful, but has also been plagued with problems of accountability and efficiency. Multiple service providers are often supplying Lifeline subsidies to the same households, he said, because there is no centralized system. To address the issue, Genachowski said, the draft proposal creates a national database of Lifeline users to prevent duplicative billing. It also sets a budget for Lifeline aimed at connecting eligible consumers while staying within budget, and requires that participating companies be subject to independent audits every two years. — via FCC’s Genachowski proposes broadband reform – Post Tech – The Washington Post

National Database of internet users? Yeesh. 🙁 The Democratic Party has gone mad. Go read, that whole thing. I will say this; that low income thing is a crock; if they do it for them, they will do it for everyone. This is why we have to win in 2012 and further more, Why we also have to pick a real Conservative and not some idiotic Rockerfeller big-goverment Republican. Which is why I do not quite understand why people like Michelle Malkin get upset over the back and forth that is going on.

The Republican grassroots and the Conservative grassroots; which does include me — needs to know what they are getting this time. The last time around, everyone just followed behind what the Republican establishment gave them. Not this time; we are better informed, and thanks to twitter, facebook and blogs, we communicate better. Which is why elitists like President Barack Obama hate the internet so much. To be fair, I would be willing to bet some Republicans dislike it too.

(H/T Drudge)