This song just gets to me...
(*PURSED LIPS*) (*NOD*)
America still exists. It's there. We're there... we're
here...!
Anyway... no newsbites yesterday. Sorry. Recovering from
the wedding weekend!
Great friggin' wedding! Held at the Olde Mill Inn in
Basking Ridge, New Jersey.
Mary and I had a beautiful second floor King room with a
balcony overlooking the courtyard.
A lovely outdoor service was held, followed immediately
by a sumptuous cocktail hour and then by the main reception which lasted till
midnight.
I danced... oh, yes... I danced...!!!
I sang... oh, yes... I sang...!!!
Bottom line: A good time was had by all!
And the next morning... continental breakfast from 8:30
a.m. to 9:30 a.m. followed by a full brunch from 10:00 a.m. till noon!
(Outstanding friggin' brunch... the full spread from fresh baked goods to salads to cold
seafood to hot seafood to a cheese board to hot chaffing dishes to a carving
station to an omelet station to eggs benedict with lobster hollandaise sauce!)
(Oh... and a separate dessert room!)
(*DROOLING JUST THINKING ABOUT IT*)
Anyway... now it's back to reality.
(*WINK*)
12 comments:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/president-obama-campaigner-in-chief/2012/04/30/gIQATAfbsT_story.html?hpid=z5
* THIS IS DANA FRIGGIN' MILBANK WRITING THIS!
The preezy of the United Steezy is making me queasy.
I’m not troubled by President Obama’s slow jam with Jimmy Fallon, who dubbed the commander in chief “preezy” during Obama’s appearance on late-night TV. No, preezy is making me queasy because his nonstop campaigning is looking, well, sleazy — and his ad suggesting that Mitt Romney wouldn’t have killed Osama bin Laden is just the beginning of it.
* WHEN EVEN ONE OF THE DEANS OF THE WASHINGTON LIBERAL MEDIA ESTABLISHMENT "GETS IT" THAT OBAMA IS A DOUCHE-BAG...
(*SHRUG*)
In a political culture that long ago surrendered to the permanent campaign, Obama has managed to take things to a whole new level.
* FOLKS... SERIOUSLY... THIS IS CRUCIAL TO UNDERSTAND! YEAH... THEY'RE ALL (THE POLITICANS, I MEAN) SCUMBAGS TO ONE EXTENT OR ANOTHER, BUT OBAMA MAKES CLINTON LOOK CLASSY!
According to statistics compiled for a book to be published this summer, the president has already set a record for total first-term fundraisers — 191 — and that’s only through March 6.
Measured in terms of events that benefit his reelection bid, Obama’s total (inflated in part by relaxed fundraising rules) exceeds the combined total of George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush, Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter.
* FOLKS... DID I MENTION THAT THIS IS DANA FRIGGIN' MILBANK WRITING THIS...?!?!
(*SNORT*)
The election is still six months away, but it’s increasingly difficult to distinguish Obama’s political events and speeches from the official ones. To a greater extent than his predecessors, Obama has used the trappings of his office to promote his reelection prospects even while handling taxpayer-funded business.
* YEP. AGAIN, FOLKS... THE "DEGREE" OF SLEEZINESS DOES MATTER! IN TRUTH, FOLKS, OBAMAISM IS ANTITHETICAL TO "HOPE AND CHANGE."
[President Obama] is erasing the already blurred lines between campaigning and governing. During his “official” speech to the union group Monday, he hailed Tim Kaine as “the next United States senator from the great commonwealth of Virginia,” and his partisan speech spurred audience members to shouts of “Vote ’em out!” and “Gotta throw ’em out!”
(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD IN DISGUST*)
“Not everything should be subject to thinking about the next election instead of thinking about the next generation,” Obama said of the Republicans. “Not everything should be subject to politics.”
He should follow his own advice.
* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ex-cia-counterterror-chief-pelosi-lied-about-waterboarding/2012/04/30/gIQAQFGtrT_story.html
In an explosive memoir released today, former CIA counter-terrorism chief Jose Rodriguez provides new evidence that Rep. Nancy Pelosi lied when she declared she had not been briefed about the use of waterboarding.
* DID SHE LIE UNDER OATH? IF NOT... (*SHRUG*)
Recall that in a Capitol Hill news conference three years ago, Pelosi (D-Calif.) vehemently denied being told about the use of waterboarding at a CIA briefing in September 2002. “We were not — I repeat — were not told that waterboarding or any of these other enhanced interrogation methods were used,” Pelosi said.
* WELL OBVIOUSLY THAT WAS A LIE. BUT, AGAIN... (*SHRUG*)... IT WASN'T A LIE UNDER OATH. IT WAS THUS A BREACH OF ETHICS (IS ANYONE SURPRISED OR SHOCKED?) AND NOT A BREACH OF LAW.
She later changed her story, telling reporters, “We were told explicitly that waterboarding was not being used.”
(*ROLLING MY EYES*)
* MORE LIES, I'M GUESSING.
She claimed she learned about the use of waterboarding the following year, only after other lawmakers were told by the CIA. “I wasn’t briefed, I was informed that somebody else had been briefed about it,” she said.
* OH, PLEEEASE...!
If Rodriguez is right, each of these statements is false. But other than a chart released by the CIA noting that Pelosi, then the ranking member of the House intelligence committee, and Rep. Porter Goss (R-Fla.), then chairman of the committee, had been given a “description of the particular [enhanced interrogation techniques] that had been employed,” there was little public evidence to contradict Pelosi’s claims. So she got away with it — until today.
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)
In his new book, “Hard Measures,” Rodriguez reveals that he led a CIA briefing of Pelosi, where the techniques being used in the interrogation of senior al-Qaeda facilitator Abu Zubaida were described in detail. Her claim that she was not told about waterboarding at that briefing, he writes, “is untrue.”
* JEEZUS...
(*SIGH*)
“We explained that as a result of the techniques, Abu Zubaydah was compliant and providing good intelligence. We made crystal clear that authorized techniques, including waterboarding, had by then been used on Zubaydah.” Rodriguez writes that he told Pelosi everything, adding, “We held back nothing.”
* NANCY PELOSI IS A LYING PIECE OF GARBAGE. THIS MUCH IS CLEAR.
How did Pelosi respond when presented with this information?
Rodriguez writes that neither Pelosi nor anyone else in the briefing objected to the techniques being used.
Indeed, he notes, when one member of his team described another technique that had been considered but not authorized or used, “Pelosi piped up immediately and said that in her view, use of that technique (which I will not describe) would have been ‘wrong.’ ” She raised no such concern about waterboarding, he writes.
“Since she felt free to label one considered-and-rejected technique as wrong,” Rodriguez adds, “we went away with the clear impression that she harbored no such feelings about the ten tactics [including waterboarding] that we told her were in use.”
* SOUNDS LOGICAL TO ME!
If Rodriguez is [telling the truth], it means that Pelosi stood up in a Capitol Hill news conference and lied with a straight face to the American people; that she falsely accused a dedicated civil servant of lying to Congress as part of a political cover-up.
Rodriguez writes that there’s contemporaneous evidence to back his account of the briefing.
Six days after the meeting took place, Rodriguez reveals, “a cable went out from headquarters to the black site informing them that the briefing for the House leadership had taken place.” He explains that “[t]he cable to the field made clear that Goss and Pelosi had been briefed on the state of AZ’s interrogation, specifically including the use of the waterboard and other enhanced interrogation techniques.”
There is a simple way to settle this once and for all. Pelosi should formally request that the Obama administration declassify the cable that was sent from headquarters to the field reporting on the details of her Sept. 4, 2002, briefing. If she refuses to do so, it should be taken as an admission by Pelosi that her account of events is a fabrication.
http://hamptonroads.com.nyud.net/2012/05/beating-church-and-brambleton
* READ THIS AND TELL ME WE'RE NOT LOSING OUR COUNTRY...
Forster and Rostami, both white, suffered a beating at the hands of a crowd of black teenagers.
* THIS "DESCRIPTIVE CLARIFICATION" DIDN'T APPEAR TILL PARAGRAPH 19 OF A 23 PARAGRAPH NEWS STORY!
* FOLKS... HERE'S PARAGRAPH 1:
Wave after wave of young men surged forward to take turns punching and kicking their victim.
* TALK ABOUT BURYING THE LEAD...!
* PARAGRAPH 5:
Two weeks have passed since reporters Dave Forster and Marjon Rostami - friends to me and many others at the newspaper - were attacked on a Saturday night as they drove home from a show at the Attucks Theatre. They had stopped at a red light, in a crowd of at least 100 young people walking on the sidewalk. Rostami locked her car door. Someone threw a rock at her window. Forster got out to confront the rock-thrower, and that's when the beating began.
* "...100 YOUNG PEOPLE..." YOU KNOW... BOY SCOUTS, PROBABLY; PERHAPS MEMBERS OF THE LOCAL 4-H CLUB.
(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)
* FOLKS... WE ARE LOSING CONTROL OF OUR FRIGGIN' COUNTRY!
* FOLKS... I URGE YOU TO READ THE FULL STORY - IT ACTUALLY COMPARES AND CONTRASTS TWO SEPARATE "INCIDENTS" TAKING PLACE FIVE YEARS APART.
http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2012/apr/30/dea-abandoned-suspect-custody-5-days/
A drug suspect was taken to a federal holding facility and “accidentally left in one of the cells” last month until he was found with methamphetamines and and taken to the hospital, the Drug Enforcement Administration said Monday.
* OoooH... KaaaY...
The DEA said Monday that the suspect was one of nine people detained April 21 following a drug raid that yielded 18,000 ecstasy pills, marijuana, hallucinogenic mushrooms, a Russian rifle, two handguns and thousands of rounds of ammunition.
Roderick said all of the detainees were brought to the DEA field office at an office building in Kearny Mesa, where they were questioned, fingerprinted and photographed.
“Each suspect was interviewed in separate interview rooms, and frequently moved around between rooms and cells,” Roderick said.“All suspects were searched incident to arrest, but none were strip or body cavity searched.”
* WHY NOT...?!?!
“When agents found the individual in question, they were told by the individual that he had used a white powdery substance that he found in the cell,” Roderick said. “The agents who found the young man in question called EMS, and field tested the substance, which tested positive for methamphetamine.”
* AGAIN, FOLKS... THE SECRET SERVICE... THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT... THE PENTAGON AND STATE DEPARTMENT... TSA...
(*SIGH*)
* AND NOW THE DIA...?!?!
* IS THERE ONE DEPARTMENT OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT WHICH HASN'T DETERIORATED UNDER OBAMA'S LEADERSHIP...?!?!
The suspect was “left” on April 21, according to the agency. The paramedics were called on April 25, the San Diego Fire-Rescue Department confirmed. The DEA was not answering questions on Monday about what happened in the five days in between: Did the suspect have food and water and a toilet? How did he get methamphetamines while in custody?
(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD IN ABSOLUTE AMAZEMENT AT THE LEVEL OF INCOMPETENCE*)
* NOW HERE'S WHERE IT GETS REALLY CRAZY, FOLKS - READ ON!
The man is a student at the University of California San Diego. He was reported missing by his roommate last Friday, two days after he was taken to the hospital, UCSD police said. Campus police said the man notified officers on Saturday that he was OK and the missing-persons report was canceled.
He offered no details about where he had been over the previous week, and simply wanted the missing-person case closed, UCSD Police Chief Orville King said.
It is not clear whether the man will face any criminal charges related to the drug raid, but the DEA said he is not under arrest.
* BUT... BUT... BUT... WHAT ABOUT... (REITERATING):
The DEA said Monday that the suspect was one of nine people detained April 21 following a drug raid that yielded 18,000 ecstasy pills, marijuana, hallucinogenic mushrooms, a Russian rifle, two handguns and thousands of rounds of ammunition.
(*HEADACHE*)
* BUT NOW HE'S NOT UNDER ARREST...?!?!
http://paul.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1968:the-costs-of-war&catid=62:texas-straight-talk&Itemid=69
According to an article in the Air Force Times this month, suicides among airmen are up 40% over last year.
Unfortunately, when presidents misuse our military on an unprecedented scale – and Congress lets them get away with it – the resulting stress causes military suicides to increase dramatically, both among active duty and retired service members.
In fact, military deaths from suicide far outnumber combat deaths.
* BUT, HEY... DON'T WORRY ABOUT IT, FOLKS; AS LONG AS YOU "SUPPORT THE TROOPS" WITH A YELLOW RIBBON ON YOUR CAR'S BUMPER YOU'VE... er... DONE YOUR DUTY.
* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-path-to-osama-bin-ladens-death-didnt-start-with-obama/2012/04/30/gIQAfFmdsT_story.html
As we mark the anniversary of Osama bin Laden’s death, President Obama deserves credit for making the right choice on taking out Public Enemy No. 1.
* AS OPPOSED TO...? NO... SERIOUSLY... AS OPPOSED TO WHAT - NOT AUTHORIZING THE OPERATING AFTER WE FOUND HIM? THINK ABOUT IT...
(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)
* ALSO THINK ABOUT HOW LONG - HOW MANY MONTHS - OBAMA DELAYED ACTING... DELAYED AUTHORIZING THE MISSION...
(*SIGH*)
[In any case, Obama's] administration never would have had the opportunity to do the right thing had it not been for some extraordinary work during the George W. Bush administration.
* AND RECALL, FOLKS...
Much of that work has been denigrated by Obama as unproductive and contrary to American principles.
[And that denigration] was wrong on both counts.
(*NOD*)
Shortly after bin Laden met his maker last spring, courtesy of U.S. Special Forces and intelligence, the administration proudly announced that when Obama took office, getting bin Laden was made a top priority. Many of us who served in senior counter-terrorism positions in the Bush administration were left muttering: “Gee, why didn’t we think of that?”
* BTW, THE AUTHOR OF THIS PIECE IS A GUY BY THE NAME OF JOSE A. RODRIQUEZ, Jr., a 31-YEAR VETERAN OF THE CIA.
The truth is that getting bin Laden was the top counter-terrorism objective for U.S. intelligence since well before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING... (PART 2 of 2)
[The Obama] administration built on work painstakingly pursued for many years before Obama was elected — and without this work, Obama administration officials never would have been in a position to authorize the strike on Abbottabad, Pakistan, that resulted in bin Laden’s overdue death.
In 2004, an al-Qaeda terrorist was captured trying to communicate with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of the terror organization’s operations in Iraq. That captured terrorist was taken to a secret CIA prison — or “black site” — where, initially, he was uncooperative. After being subjected to some “enhanced interrogation techniques” — techniques authorized by officials at the most senior levels of the U.S. government and that the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel confirmed were consistent with U.S. law — the detainee became compliant. He was not one of the three al-Qaeda operatives who underwent waterboarding, the harshest of the hard measures.
Once this terrorist decided that non-cooperation was a non-starter, he told us many things — including that bin Laden had given up communicating via telephone, radio or Internet, and depended solely on a single courier who went by “Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti.”
At the time, I was chief of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center. The fact that bin Laden was relying on a lone courier was a revelation that told me bin Laden had given up day-to-day control of his organization. You can’t run an operation as large, complex and ambitious as al-Qaeda by communicating only every few months. It also told me that capturing him would be even harder than we had thought.
Armed with the pseudonym of bin Laden’s courier, we pressed on. We asked other detainees in our custody if they had ever heard of “al-Kuwaiti.” Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the mastermind of 9/11, reacted in horror when he heard the name. He backed into his cell and vigorously denied ever hearing of the man. We later intercepted communications KSM sent to fellow detainees at the black site, in which he instructed them: “Tell them nothing about the courier!”
In 2005 another senior detainee, Abu Faraj al-Libi, told us that this courier had informed him that Libi had been selected to be al-Qaeda’s No. 3 official. Surely that kind of information is delivered only by highly placed individuals.
A couple of years later, after I became head of the National Clandestine Service, the CIA was able to discover the true name of the courier. Armed with that information, the agency worked relentlessly to locate that man.
Finding him eventually led to tracking down and killing bin Laden.
With some trying to turn bin Laden’s death into a campaign talking point for Obama’s reelection, it is useful to remember that the trail to bin Laden started in a CIA black site — all of which Obama ordered closed, forever, on the second full day of his administration — and stemmed from information obtained from hardened terrorists who agreed to tell us some (but not all) of what they knew after undergoing harsh but legal interrogation methods. Obama banned those methods on Jan. 22, 2009.
* REPEAT:
Obama banned those methods on Jan. 22, 2009.
(*SMIRK*)
This past weekend, Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Carl Levin attacked statements made in May 2011 by me, former CIA director Michael Hayden and former attorney general Michael Mukasey regarding what led to bin Laden’s death. They misunderstood and mischaracterized our positions.
* THEY MISUNDERSTOOD NOTHING! THEY'RE SIMPLY FULL OF SHIT!
No single tactic, technique or approach led to the successful operation against bin Laden. But those who suggest it was all a result of a fresh approach taken after Jan. 20, 2009, are mistaken.
* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)
http://www.elpasotimes.com/news/ci_20518887/report-guns-used-mexico-lawyers-murder-traced-atf-operation
Firearms connected to Operation Fast and Furious were used in the 2010 slaying of the brother of the former Chihuahua state attorney general, according to a U.S. congressional report.
The report said the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives traced two of the weapons suspected in the murder of lawyer Mario González Rodríguez, but did not report this fact to the Mexican government until eight months after the tracing.
* JEEZUS...
The joint congressional staff report "The Department of Justice's Operation Fast and Furious: Fueling Cartel Violence" was prepared for U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-IA, and U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa, R-CA, two lawmakers who are spearheading an ongoing investigation into the ATF's controversial operation.
"On October 21, 2010, drug cartel members kidnapped Mario González Rodríguez from his office," according to the 2011 congressional report. "At the time of the kidnapping, his sister Patricia González Rodríguez was the attorney general of the state of Chihuahua."
"A few days after the kidnapping," the congressional report said, " a video surfaced on the Internet in which Mario González Rodríguez sat handcuffed, surrounded by five heavily armed men wearing masks, dressed in camouflage and bullet-proof vest."
The body of the well-known Chihuahua City lawyer was found Nov. 5, 2010, in a shallow grave.
Then, Mexican federal authorities, following a shootout with drug cartel suspects, seized 16 weapons and arrested eight men in connection with Mario González Rodríguez's murder.
Mexican officials submitted information about the weapons to the ATF's e-trace system, and the ATF traced two AK-47s to Operation Fast and Furious.
(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)
The congressional report said that an ATF email indicated that ATF officials in Phoenix who knew the two assault rifles came from the controversial operation withheld the information from Mexican officials until June 2011.
In congressional testimony, Carlos Canino, the ATF's acting U.S. attaché in Mexico, said he's the one who finally notified Mexican federal Attorney General Marisela Morales about the weapons-tracing and their link to the death of Mario González Rodríguez.
The report said Morales was shocked...[that]...firearms connected to Operation Fast and Furious were used in the 2010 slaying of the brother of the former Chihuahua state attorney general[.]
Canino feared an international incident might break out with Mexico if the information leaked out to the news media instead of being sent through government channels. He told U.S. lawmakers that he did not want to undermine the trust that U.S. law enforcement had developed with their Mexican counterparts in the war against the drug cartels.
Ricardo Alday, spokesman for the Mexican Embassy in Washington, D.C., said Saturday in response to the U.S. congressional report's findings that "the government of Mexico has not granted, nor will grant, under any circumstance, tacit or explicit authorization for the deliberate walking of arms into Mexico. "As a matter of policy, we do not comment on ongoing investigations, and therefore will await the outcome of both the U.S. and Mexican investigations, and then react accordingly."
Last week, the ATF released a report that said 68,000 weapons recovered in Mexico between 2007 and 2011 were traced back to U.S. sources. (That report does not mention which of the weapons were part of the undercover Operation Fast and Furious.)
Weapons traced back to the operation have been recovered in eight Mexican states and in Mexico City, and most of them were destined for the Sinaloa drug cartel led by Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzmán, the congressional report said.
And, at least eight Fast and Furious-connected weapons were recovered at crime scenes in Juárez and four in Chihuahua City between 2010 and 2011.
The Sinaloa cartel has been waging a bloody battle against the Carrillo Fuentes organization that's killed nearly 9,500 people in Juárez alone since 2008.
On Jan. 13, 2010, the El Paso Police Department seized 40 rifles on the East Side that the congressional report said were connected to Fast and Furious. Weapons connected to the operation also were recovered in Columbus, N.M.
The number of Fast and Furious weapons found at Mexican crime scenes could be higher because the information provided to congressional investigators remains incomplete, the report said.
ATF officials launched Operation Fast and Furious in 2009 in Phoenix in an attempt to identify high-level arms traffickers who were supplying the Mexican drug cartels with weapons. The operation allowed weapons purchased in the United States to cross the border into Mexico.
ATF shut down the operation about a month after Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was found murdered in the Arizona desert in December 2010. Two AK-47s, originally purchased as semiautomatics and connected to Fast and Furious, were found near Terry's body.
The latest ATF report does not break down the 68,000 weapons traced to U.S. sources by states.
ATF spokesman Tom Crowley said the agency previously reported that most of the guns recovered in Mexico came from Texas, the border state that has the most gun stores.
http://www.discovery.org/a/18801
The U.S. dollar is getting perilously close to losing its status as the world’s reserve currency. Should it cross the line, the 2008 financial crisis could look like a summer storm.
Yes, worries about insolvency in Europe dominate the headlines. Last week, Standard & Poor’s cut Spain’s bond rating to BBB+ — a clear sign that Europe’s financial crisis is far from over. But America’s escalating debt problem is far more likely to precipitate a truly global crisis, because the dollar has for decades played such a central role in the world economy.
How bad is the U.S. problem?
Former Treasury official Lawrence Goodman recently pointed out that investors are shunning US bonds and notes; the lack of other buyers forced the Federal Reserve to buy “a stunning . . . 61% of the total net issuance of U.S. government debt” last year.
But the even larger risk is the potential loss of the dollar’s “reserve currency” status — a key support of the world economy for the last four decades.
It started with the 1973 Saudi commitment to accept only U.S. dollars as payment for oil, followed by OPEC’s 1975 agreement to trade only in dollars.
Trading of other commodities came to be priced in dollars, reinforcing the dollar’s “reserve” status.
As a result, central banks worldwide have held onto large reserves of dollars to facilitate trade. That, in turn, has enabled the U.S. to print much larger amounts of its currency, with seemingly little inflationary consequences.
* WELL... UNTIL AROUND 2005; SINCE THEN, INFLATION (DELIBERATELY UNDER-ESTIMATED VIA OFFICIAL GOVERNMENT STATS) HAS BECOME A REAL PROBLEM. FILLED UP YOUR CAR LATELY? BOUGHT GROCERIES LATELY? HOW'RE THOSE INSURANCE PREMIUMS GOING...? EDUCATION COSTS...? TAXES? TOLLS?
(*SHRUG*)
[A dollar dominated world] also made it easier for Americans to import more than they export, to consume more than they produce, and to spend more than they earn. But all that is changing rapidly.
A number of countries are abandoning the dollar for the Chinese yuan.
Last December, Japan and China agreed to trade in yen and yuan.
In January, the 10 nations of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations finalized a non-dollar credit agreement equivalent to $240 billion, strengthening their economies’ links with China, Japan and South Korea.
That same month, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao signed a currency-swap agreement with the United Arab Emirates, which holds 7% the world’s oil reserves.
Iran has agreed to accept rubles and yuan in trade with Russia and China, and now is trading oil with India in rupees and gold.
In late March, the China Development Bank agreed with its counterparts in Brazil, Russia, India and South Africa to eschew dollar lending and extend credit to each other in their own respective currencies.
With global demand for dollars falling, central banks around the world will inevitably reduce their dollar reserves. That selloff further weakens the dollar against other currencies and in turn drives up inflation.
All this comes as U.S. federal debt is soaring, adding to concerns about the future value of that debt and of the dollar.
It’s suddenly much easier to imagine a dollar collapse — which would be a highly unexpected occurrence, known as a “black swan” event. This would precipitate unprecedented disruption, because the dollar remains the world’s most important currency.
Let’s hope we can avert a global crisis triggered by reckless U.S. government spending.
What’s needed is new leadership in Washington with the courage to get our fiscal house in order and to defend the dollar against attack in a competitive global market.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/post/exclusive-richard-grenell-hounded-from-romney-campaign-by-anti-gay-conservatives/2012/05/01/gIQAccGcuT_blog.html
Richard Grenell, the openly gay spokesman recently hired to sharpen the foreign policy message of Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign, has resigned in the wake of a full-court press by anti-gay conservatives.
According to sources familiar with the situation, Grenell decided to resign after being kept under wraps during a time when national security issues, including the president’s ad concerning Osama bin Laden, had emerged front and center in the campaign.
The ongoing pressure from social conservatives over his appointment and the reluctance of the Romney campaign to send Grenell out as a spokesman while controversy swirled left Grenell essentially with no job.
Grenell has been a loyal Republican for many years, working for esteemed foreign policy figures including former Ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton.
During the two weeks after Grenell’s hiring was announced the Romney campaign did not put Grenell out to comment on national security matters and did not use him on a press foreign policy conference call. Despite the controversy in new media and in conservative circles, there was no public statement of support for Grenell by the campaign and no supportive social conservatives were enlisted to calm the waters.
* JEEZUS... I JUST HATE MITT ROMNEY.
* WHAT AN ASS! THIS IS "PRAGMATISM" - THIS IS STUPIDITY! IT'S THE WORST OF ALL POSSIBLE WORLDS! "ANTI-GAY CONSERVATIVES" (WHOEVER THE HELL THEY ARE) WILL NEVER "FORGIVE" ROMNEY FOR HIRING THE GUY IN THE FIRST PLACE AND SANE REPUBLICANS WILL BE ASHAMED AND APPALLED THAT ROMNEY CAVED AND ALLOWED THE GUY TO RESIGN!
* MITT ROMNEY IS A PIECE OF GARBAGE. BETTER THAN OBAMA? YEAH. BUT NOT BY MUCH.
* GOD HELP THIS ONCE GREAT NATION.
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