Let's start today off with a bit of Ol' Blue Eyes...
Yep... one of my favorites!
Perhaps just a coincidence... perhaps a sign from up above... today's first newsbite (newsbites found within the comments section) is a piece by Patrick J. Buchanan that kinda fits in with Sinatra's "throwin' the dice" theme!
16 comments:
* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)
http://www.humanevents.com/2012/08/14/mitts-damn-the-torpedoes-decision/
* BY PATRICK J. BUCHANAN
Mitt Romney’s decision to select Rep. Paul Ryan as his running mate speaks well of the man who made it. Indeed, it seemed less like the moderate man we have come to know than Adm. David Farragut in Mobile Bay:
“Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!”
* I'D AGREE.
Facing sinking polls, endless attack ads on his tax returns and Bain Capital record, and venomous lies that he was culpable in the cancer death of the wife of a steelworker seven years after he left Bain, Romney decided to convert this dismal campaign into a stark choice of philosophies and policies.
* YEP.
Picking Ryan, Mitt shoved his whole stack of chips into the middle of the table and sent this message to the American people:
“Friends, our country is in trouble. If we do not lift the burden of taxation, regulation and spending that has produced $5 trillion in new debt in four years, we are going the way of Spain and Greece. I have chosen this young leader Paul Ryan to be my partner because he has thought more deeply and read more closely into the causes and consequences of our fiscal crisis than any other man in Washington."
* WELL... RYAN IS DEFINITELY ONE OF A VERY SMALL NUMBER OF DEEP THINKERS... I'M LOOKING FORWARD TO HEARING RON PAUL OPINE ON RYAN.
Romney continued, “Now President Obama says his approach to solving America’s fiscal crisis has ‘worked.’ If you believe that, go ahead and vote for him. But Paul Ryan and I believe that 42 straight months of 8% [plus] unemployment, $5 trillion in new debt and trillion-dollar deficits staring at us all the way to the horizon is a course to fiscal and financial ruin. He and I do not believe America can survive many more years of what Barack Obama has produced and promises to produce. We are offering America a different direction from the radical-liberal path of Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, where the federal government consumes a fourth of the entire economy. We are offering a Romney-Reagan-Ryan conservative road to prosperity."
* HEY... FOLKS... THERE ARE ONLY TWO CHOICES: ROMNEY/RYAN OR OBAMA/BIDEN. SO IN FACT... THERE IS NO CHOICE.
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)
Romney went on to say, “I am not going to tell you this will not involve sacrifice. But if you believe this country needs a course correction, then we are asking you to take a chance with change to restore an America where our children can anticipate the better future we all could when we were growing up. You know and I know there is something fundamentally wrong with the direction in which we are headed. And the proof lies in the grim statistics that keep coming in month after month after month.”
* FOLKS... THERE'S SIMPLY NO ARGUING WITH HIM THERE.
Romney’s choice of Ryan makes the election of 2012 not only a report card and referendum on Obama, but a clear choice between philosophies.
Obama believes government is the engine of prosperity. Romney and Ryan believe people, private institutions, entrepreneurs and businesses are the creative and energizing forces in society. And what a difference four years have made in this president.
In 2008, Obama was the candidate of “hope and change.” In 2012, Obama is the candidate of inflexibility and fear.
Look at him, his surrogates and his ads. Do they not all say to the American people: Be afraid, be terrified of what Romney and that dangerous Ryan would do. Be fearful, for Romney and Ryan will take from you what you have, while we will make sure you keep what you have, and we promise you more.
With the selection of Ryan, Mitt Romney has made this election a test of the people themselves. Two-thirds of all Americans, according to polls, believe the country is headed in the wrong direction. Will they vote for Romney-Ryan to change course, or for Obama to continue on that course because they fear the unknown to the known?
The predictable Democratic response to Ryan’s candidacy has begun. They are rummaging through his budget to find proposed cuts and crafting ads to frighten portions of the population about what those terrible cuts might mean to them.
Will it work?
Well, this will be a test of the communications skills of the Romney-Ryan campaign. Can they persuade the people to boot the Obamaites out of the wheelhouse and entrust them with the leadership of the nation?
Romney is owed a debt for choosing a man of principles and conservative philosophy as a running mate, thereby giving this country a clear choice as to the future it wants to live in.
However it comes out, this decision was a gutsy call.
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/losing_ground_in_the_middle_east_taAtZyBP32XPoCOmG8VyfK
While we have focused on the Olympics and presidential politics, strategic security for America and its key Middle East allies has deteriorated significantly.
* HIL-LAR-Y! HIL-LAR-Y! HIL-LAR-Y!
[I]n Egypt, Sunday’s forced “retirement” of top military officials, including Defense Minister Mohammed Tantawi, epitomizes the shift. Egypt’s new Muslim Brotherhood president, Mohammed Morsi, also purportedly rescinded a military decree that had sought to restrict his powers.
How this unfolding struggle will play out is unclear, but the stakes are enormous. Already, Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula has descended into anarchy since Hosni Mubarak’s fall last year, and is now a terrorist thoroughfare and Hamas missile-testing ground.
Israel had earlier consented to Egyptian troops moving into the Sinai, but the situation only deteriorated. On Aug. 5, for example, Bedouins attacked an Egyptian base, killing 15 soldiers, and then tried but failed to infiltrate into Israel.
While increasing Egypt’s Sinai deployments seemed sensible in the near-term, what happens when and if the terrorist threat is eliminated? Will Egypt’s forces largely return to the Suez Canal’s west bank, or will “land for peace” (the Camp David Accord’s central element) be gutted? If the increasingly assertive Morsi government grows stronger and more radical, Israel may find it has traded land for nothing.
(*PURSED LIPS*)
While terrorist threats from the Sinai are palpable risks, a large Egyptian military presence, especially under an Islamicist government, would reprise the dangerous era before the Six Day War.
* GOTTA LUV THAT ARAB SPRING, HUH?!
Chaos is also evident on Israel’s northern flank. ... While Assad’s defeat would be welcome, what kind of regime would follow — one dominated by radical Islamicists even more devoted to Israel’s destruction?
Then there’s the risk that Syria’s chemical-weapons stockpile will fall into the wrong hands. (Lebanon’s Hezbollah, for example, could well gain access to these weapons, with frightening implications.)
In Libya, the assassination of officials who defected from Khadafy’s regime continues apace, most recently on Aug. 10 in Benghazi. This hardly signals stability in Libya’s new government, or that more conflict can be avoided.
Yemen remains a cauldron of instability, despite the administration’s self-congratulations for removing the Saleh regime.
Just beyond Iran, in Afghanistan, Obama’s desperation to negotiate a settlement with the Taliban, including the release without condition of terrorists from Guantanamo Bay, continues. U.S. and NATO forces are in peril even from supposedly friendly Afghan troops...
* HIL-LAR-Y! HIL-LAR-Y! HIL-LAR-Y!
* IN ALL SERIOUSNESS, FOLKS... (*SIGH*)... THE OBAMA/CLINTON FOREIGN POLICY HAS BEEN LARGELY A DISASTER.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2012/08/13/how-obama-is-robbing-the-suburbs-to-pay-for-the-cities/
President Obama’s plans for a second-term include an initiative to systematically redistribute the wealth of America’s suburbs to the cities.
* FOLKS... THIS IS FORBES MAGAZINE... KEEP READING... (*SMILE*)
As many Americans do not know, in the eyes of the leftist community organizers who trained Obama, suburbs are instruments of bigotry and greed — a way of selfishly refusing to share tax money with the urban poor. Obama adopted this view early on, and he has never wavered from this ideological commitment, as a review of his actions in office goes to show.
* I KNOW IT SOUNDS "HARSH," FOLKS... BUT IT'S TRUE. (KEEP READING!)
Obama has worked on this project in collaboration with Mike Kruglik, one of his original community organizing mentors. Kruglik’s new group, Building One America, advocates “regional tax-base sharing,” a practice by which suburban tax money is directly redistributed to nearby cities and less-well-off “inner-ring” suburbs. Kruglik’s group also favors a raft of policies designed to coerce people out of their cars and force suburbanites (with their tax money) back into densely packed cities. It’s a transformative idea, and deserves to be fully aired before the election. But like a lot of his major progressive policy innovations, Obama has advanced this one stealthily–mostly through rule-making, appointment, and vague directives.
A federal program called the Sustainable Communities Initiative, for example, has salted planning commissions across the country with “regional equity” and “smart growth” as goals. These are, of course, code words. “Regional equity” means that, by their mere existence, suburbs cheat the people who live in cities. It means, “Let’s spread the suburbs’ wealth around” – i.e., take from the suburbanites to give to the urban poor. “Smart growth” means “Quit building sub-divisions and malls, and move back to where mass transit can shuttle you between your 800 square foot apartment in an urban tower and your downtown job.”
In all likelihood, these planning commissions will issue “recommendations” which Obama would quickly turn into requirements for further federal aid.
In fact, his administration has already used these tactics to impose federal education requirements on reluctant states. Indeed, part of Obama’s assault on the suburbs is his effort to undercut the autonomy of suburban school districts.
(*NOD*)
* FOLKS... UTILIZE THE LINK PROVIDED UP ABOVE TO READ THE WHOLE TWO-PAGE ARTICLE. IT'S VERY INTERESTING. I INVITE YOU TO MAKE OF IT WHAT YOU WILL.
(*SHRUG*)
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/counterpunch_649894.html
While President Obama has shown appallingly little seriousness in dealing with our runaway deficit spending or the runaway entitlement spending that drives it, he does have his own plan to reduce Medicare costs.
It relies upon the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB), a creation of ObamaCare.
The IPAB is a board of 15 unelected and largely unaccountable bureaucrats who would be empowered to cut payments to Medicare providers.
(Amazingly, ObamaCare [legislates] that Congress wouldn’t even be allowed to overrule the IPAB’s decisions with a majority vote, thereby also making the IPAB quite constitutionally dubious.)
Under Obamacare and the IPAB — according to the Medicare chief actuary — Medicare providers would be paid less than Medicaid providers by the end of this decade.
(Good luck getting in to see medical professionals when they wouldn’t even get paid as much to see you as they’d get paid for seeing Medicaid patients.)
Moreover, Obama has doubled-down on the IPAB.
Not content with the largely unchecked powers that ObamaCare grants it, he has subsequently called for strengthening it.
The second counterpunch, to follow immediately upon the first, is this: Any money that the IPAB or other parts of ObamaCare would wring out of Medicare wouldn’t go to making Medicare, or the country, more solvent — or to extending the life of Medicare. It would go to ObamaCare.
That’s right: Obama’s centerpiece legislation would use Medicare as a piggybank — which (given Medicare’s dire financial straits) makes about as much sense as using Greece as a piggybank.
(*RUEFUL CHUCKLE*)
Indeed, the most politically brazen feature of ObamaCare has always been its looting of Medicare.
About half of ObamaCare’s funding would come from siphoning money out of Medicare, while the other half would come from raising taxes on Americans and on American businesses.
In fact, Obama is aware enough of this vulnerability that he recently initiated the $8.35 billion Senior Swindle — an unscrupulous and probably illegal ploy to attempt to hide the effects of Medicare Advantage cuts from seniors until after his “last election.”
* SEE: http://amac.us/another-gotcha-moment-gao-confirms-obamacares-senior-swindle
* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/08/14/why-goldman-sachs-other-wall-street-titans-are-not-being-prosecuted.html
On Thursday [Eric Holder's] Department of "Justice" announced it will not prosecute Goldman Sachs or any of its employees in a financial-fraud probe.
(*SMIRK*)
The news is likely to raise the ire of the political Left and Right, both of which have highlighted one of the most inconvenient facts of Attorney General Eric Holder’s Justice Department: despite the Obama administration’s promises to clean up Wall Street in the wake of America’s worst financial crisis, there has not been a single criminal charge filed by the federal government against any top executive of the elite financial institutions.
* ONE WOULD HOPE SO... BUT THIS HOPE MAY WELL BE IN VAIN. AFTER ALL... THE OLIGARCHY PROTECTS ITS OWN.
(*PURSED LIPS*)
Thursday’s announcement that there will be no prosecutions should hardly come as a surprise. In 2008, Goldman Sachs employees were among Barack Obama’s top campaign contributors, giving a combined $1,013,091.
Eric Holder’s former law firm, Covington & Burling, also counts Goldman Sachs as one of its clients.
Furthermore, in April 2011, when the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations issued a scathing report detailing Goldman’s suspicious Abacus deal, several Goldman executives and their families began flooding Obama campaign coffers with donations, some giving the maximum $35,800.
(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD IN DISGUST*)
That’s not to say Holder’s Justice Department hasn’t gone after any financial fraudsters. But the individuals the DOJ’s “Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force” has placed in its prosecutorial crosshairs seem shockingly small compared with the Wall Street titans the Obama administration promised to bring to justice.
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)
Consider the following small-time operators as listed on the Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force website:
• “Three Connecticut Women Charged with Overseeing ‘Gifting Tables’ Pyramid Scheme.” Three women in their 50s and 60s were indicted for conspiracy, tax, and wire-fraud charges. “These arrests should send a strong message to all who threaten the financial health of our communities,” one federal agent declared.
• In March, 2012, the DOJ sent a property appraiser in Washington, D.C., to the slammer for 65 months for fraudulently inflated prices in a scheme to “flip” properties. The scheme was a small-time $1 million operation, a sharp contrast with the billions on Wall Street.
• The DOJ’s “get tough” on financial crime strategy included sending two health-care software company executives to the clink for 13 and 15 years.
• A Florida resident was charged and sentenced to 14 months in federal prison for falsifying documents, thereby resulting in the obstruction of an SEC investigation.
• Five people in California were charged with bid-rigging foreclosure auctions. The individuals have been charged with violating the Sherman Act and could face up to 10 years in jail.
• Federal officials went after 10 people in Las Vegas because they tried to “fraudulently gain control of condominium homeowners’ associations in the Las Vegas area so that the HAOs would direct business to a certain law firm and construction company.”
• The owner of a Miami company got 46 months in prison for creating fake loan applications.
• Four people in Tacoma, Wash., were indicted for conspiracy that caused a small bank to fail. Their crime: making false statements on loan applications and to HUD.
To be sure, financial fraud of any kind is wrong and should be prosecuted. But locking up “pygmies” is hardly the kind of financial-fraud crackdown Americans expected in the wake of the largest financial crisis in U.S. history.
Increasingly, there appear to be two sets of rules: one for the average citizen, and another for the connected cronies who rule the inside game.
* DUH!
That could be changing, as critiques of Eric Holder’s lack of financial prosecutions have now come from the political Left and Right; indeed, battling cronyism may represent one of the rare points of common ground in today’s fractious political environment.
* YEAH...? I DON'T HEAR ROMNEY TALKING ABOUT IT. I DON'T HEAR RYAN TALKING ABOUT IT. I DON'T HEAR JOHN BOEHNER NOR MITCH MCCONNELL TALKING ABOUT IT. I DON'T HEAR NANCY PELOSI TALKING ABOUT IT. I DON'T HEAR HARRY REID TALKING ABOUT IT. I CERTAINLY DON'T SEE PRESIDENT OBAMA DOING ANYTHING ABOUT IT... BESIDES ACCEPTING DONATIONS FROM THESE CRETINS. (*SHRUG*) SO WHERE IS ALL THIS "OUTRAGE?"
As progressive Richard Eskow of the Huffington Post recently wrote: “More and more Washington insiders are asking a question that was considered off-limits in the nation's capital just a few months ago: Who, exactly, is Attorney General Eric Holder representing?
* I'LL TAKE THE AUTHOR'S WORD FOR THIS... BUT I'M NOT HEARING IT - ARE ANY OF YOU?
As scandal after scandal erupts on Wall Street, involving everything from global lending manipulation to cocaine and prostitution, more and more people are worrying about Holder's seeming inaction — or worse — in the face of mounting evidence.”
* JEEZUS... FRIGGIN'... CHRIST... (*SNORT*)... EVERYONE IN WASHINGTON KNEW WHO ERIC HOLDER WAS WHEN OBAMA APPOINTED HIM AND THE SENATE - IN "BIPARTISAN FASHION" - CONFIRMED HIM. AGAIN... THE OLIGARCHY STANDS BY THEIR OWN.
Will bipartisan outrage boost the decibels in D.C. loud enough for Holder to hear and heed?
* NOPE.
We’ll see. He’s got at least three months to get moving.
* HE'LL SERVE OUT HIS FULL TERM. THAT'S MY PREDICTION.
* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)
http://reason.com/archives/2012/08/11/congress-isnt-gridlockedmdashits-just-to
Despite looming deadlines related to budget sequestration and decade-old “temporary” tax rates that expire at year’s end, massive entitlement crises, and much more, Congress has effectively stopped work on serious legislation until at least some time after November’s election.
Many observers and participants — including the entire GOP and Democratic leadership — are quick to cry gridlock and to blame inaction on some new awful hyper-partisan or ideological era. But there isn’t gridlock, which usually results from Democrats and Republicans sharing power and clashing over alternative positions. Gridlock slows things down—almost always a good thing — but it doesn’t stop serious legislation from happening. Welfare reform, balanced budgets, defense cuts, and capital-gains tax rate cuts in the 1990s were all the product of gridlock that slowly gave way to consensus.
And today’s Congress is more than happy to pass legislation when it suits members’ interests.
In just the past few months, for instance, the ostensibly gridlocked Congress reauthorized the Export-Import Bank program that gives money to foreign companies to buy U.S. goods; extended sharply reduced rates for government-subsidized student loans; re-upped the Essential Air Service program that subsidizes airline service to rural communities; and voted against ending the 1705 loan-guarantee program that gave rise to green-tech boondoggles such as Solyndra and Abound.
None of these were party-line votes — all enjoyed hearty support from both Democrats and Republicans.
* THEORETICALLY SPEAKING... VIOLENCE IS THE ONLY ANSWER. (*SHRUG*)
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)
Another instance of budding bipartisanship is the pork-laden farm bill that extends sugar subsidies, maintains crop subsidies, and creates a “shallow-loss program” that effectively guarantees incomes for farmers at a time when that sector is doing historically well. The bill passed the Senate with 16 GOP votes.
(Though the House version of the bill is still being worked out, no one doubts it will not only pass, but largely resemble the Senate version.)
What we’re actually witnessing — and have been for years now — is not gridlock, but the abdication of responsibility by Congress and the president for performing the most basic responsibilities of government.
* VI-O-LENCE! VI-O-LENCE! VI-O-LENCE! (COM'ON... CHANT IT WITH ME, FOLKS...!)
Despite the fiscal crisis that Washington knows will occur if it fails to deal with unsustainable spending and debt, it hasn’t managed to produce a federal budget in more than three years.
* THIS... IS... THE... REALITY...!!!
To their credit, House Republicans have drafted, voted on, and passed a budget, but they are busy now trying to worm their way out of the very spending cuts — the sequestration deal —they insisted on as a condition for raising the debt limit last summer.
* YEP! (*NOD*)
One of the most egregious failures of the president’s budget was that it, as in his previous budgets, offered no serious plan to stabilize the largest entitlement programs. Instead, the president and congressional Democrats lambasted Republicans for actually addressing the problem in their budget.
* YEP... (*SIGH*)... BOTH PARTIES ARE LARGELY POPULATED BY SCUMBAGS AT THE HIGHER LEVELS... (*PAUSE*)... BUT THE DEMS ARE WORSE.
* THING IS... BY PICKING PAUL RYAN, ROMNEY HAS AT LEAST GIVEN US HOPE THAT HE'S READY TO ENGAGE THE NATION IN DEBATE AND TAKE A STAND ON ONE SIDE OF THAT DEBATE!
Regardless of how the elections shake out, the parties’ punting on serious attempts at governing has set the stage for the most jam-packed and manic lame-duck session of Congress since 2010, when legislators signed off on a two-year extension of Bush’s tax rates, adopted a new START nuclear arms treaty and voted to end “Don’t ask, don’t tell” in the military.
Congress and the president are once again acting like errant school children who are waiting until the end of the semester to finish their work. Of course, it is ridiculous to imagine this post-election glut of legislation will produce any meaningful spending reform, coherent tax policy or a wise plan to implement the sequestration cuts.
Simply put, this is no way to run a country.
* HOPEFULLY THE RYAN PICK SIGNALS THAT ROMNEY UNDERSTANDS THIS.
http://dailycaller.com/2012/08/14/whistle-blower-documents-ill-state-workers-forced-to-attend-pelosi-jesse-jackson-jr-event-on-taxpayer-dime/
Documents and a whistle-blower affidavit obtained by The Daily Caller charge that House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Illinois Democratic Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., and Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr., participated in an unethical — and possibly illegal — effort to force 76 employees of an Illinois state agency to engage in political activity on the taxpayers’ dime.
* FAIRLY STANDARD STUFF FOR THE PARTY OF PELOSI, JACKSON, RANGEL, AND OBAMA, HOWEVER... (KEEP READING!)
According to the whistle-blower, Rev. Jackson also encouraged the government employees to load first-generation and low-income college students up with student loan debt — because Democrats in Congress, he allegedly promised, would eventually pass laws to forgive that debt later. “[T]hose people will continue to vote Democratic,” Jackson Sr. said, according to the whistle-blower.
* IF TRUE... TRULY DISGUSTING... TRULY REVEALING...
* HERE'S THE LINK TO THE AFFIDAVIT: http://www.scribd.com/document_downloads/102812331?extension=pdf&from=embed
Representatives for Jackson Jr., Jackson Sr. and Pelosi have not responded to TheDC’s requests for comment.
* FOLKS... IT'S GONNA TAKE MORE THAN ONE AFFIDAVIT... BUT THIS STORY IS WELL WORTH READING IN IT'S ENTIRETY. IT'S FOUR PAGES LONG (THE AFFIDAVIT IS 8 PAGES LONG) AND AS ALWAYS... I'VE PROVIDED THE LINKS.
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/08/president-obama-in-2009-pledged-to-veto-attempts-to-undo-medicare-cuts/
As Democrats attack Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan for their proposals regarding Medicare, Republicans are circulating this clip from a November 9, 2009 interview we had with President Obama in which he not only acknowledged that one third of his health care bill was paid for by cuts to Medicare, but that he would veto attempts to undo those cuts.
(*SNORT*)
* READ THE TRANSCRIPT... WATCH THE VIDEO... JAKE TAPPER, ABC FRIGGIN' NEWS...
(*SNICKER*)
http://blog.heritage.org/2012/08/09/morning-bell-higher-gas-prices-add-to-economic-slump/?roi=echo3-12793541554-9373068-6e7f3c9d8ec950533617a696dcc770ea&utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Morning%2BBell
Unemployment is at 8.3%.
The economy is sputtering at 1.5% growth.
Food prices are...
* AND...
(*DRUM ROLL*)
According to AAA’s Fuel Gauge Report, the current national average for regular is $3.66 per gallon. That’s up 28 cents per gallon from a month ago, and July had its biggest price jump since AAA started tracking prices in 2000.
* WHAT WAS THAT...
"...its biggest price jump since AAA started tracking prices in 2000.
(*SARCASTIC CLAP-CLAP-CLAP*)
There are many factors affecting prices that we cannot control...but after three years of adding regulatory hurdles and blocking exploratory access and development, President Obama’s policies are helping keep prices higher than necessary.
If the President truly wanted to lower gas prices, he would work to increase supply. But when given the opportunity, he has done the opposite. He turned down the Keystone XL pipeline, which would bring up to 830,000 barrels of oil per day from Canada. His Administration has made it even harder for companies to explore and extract domestic energy resources by canceling, delaying, or withdrawing a number of lease sales for exploration and development. Meanwhile, huge swaths of federal lands have been put off limits for energy exploration.
* ACTUALLY, OVER THE LAST COUPLE DAYS THE ADMINISTRATION HAS BEEN MAKING NOISES ABOUT OPENING SOME LANDS UP... THREE MONTHS BEFORE THE ELECTION...
(*SMIRK*)
Domestic refinery outages have had a recent impact on gas prices. Two of the factors holding back domestic energy production are regulatory red tape and litigation — and these, we can do something about.
As Heritage’s Nicolas Loris notes:
Environmental activists delay new energy projects by filing endless administrative appeals and lawsuits. Creating a manageable time frame for permitting and for groups or individuals to contest energy plans would keep potentially cost-effective ventures from being tied up for years in litigation while allowing the public and interested parties to voice opposition or support for these projects.
We don’t have to stand still. Congress could alleviate the energy crunch in 10 different ways by taking action on things we can control, like restrictions on oil shale development and offshore drilling.
One of the most common objections is that increasing domestic oil production takes too long and would not impact the market for at least a decade. The longer people make this argument, however, the longer it will take. The sooner we make investments in domestic energy, the sooner those benefits will be realized. And with some serious reforms, some of this oil can reach the market in much less than a decade.
Gas prices aren’t under the control of any one President. But Americans shouldn’t settle for policies that restrict oil exploration, refining, and production and artificially drive prices higher.
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2012/08/have-obama-and-romney-forgotten-afghanistan.html
How’s this for a conspiracy of silence - with less than three months to go until Election Day, President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney have successfully avoided saying almost anything about America’s war in Afghanistan.
Remember that war? You will at some point, however little the two candidates talk about it.
* I REMEMBER!
You can make your own guesses about why the candidates have said so little about Afghanistan — their positions are virtually identical, the economy is more important, etc. My own guess: neither of them knows what to do about the place.
* IT WOULDN'T SURPRISE ME A BIT... (*SIGH*)
In a mere twenty-eight months, the United States is scheduled to stop fighting, and every day brings new evidence that the Afghan state that is supposed to take over is a failing, decrepit enterprise.
(*NOD*) AS PREDICTED... (*SHRUG*)
The latest bit of evidence: in the past several days, three of the most powerful people around President Hamid Karzai have come under fire, and now either are gone from their jobs, have promised to leave, or are hunkered down while clinging to what’s left of their legitimacy. Earlier this month, the Afghan parliament voted to impeach the two Afghan officials responsible for overseeing the war: Abdul Rahim Wardak, the minister of defense, and Bismullah Khan Mohammadi, the minister of the interior, on allegations of corruption, favoritism, and incompetence.
* I GOTTA ADMIT... (*SHEEPISH BLUSH*)... THIS GOT UNDER MY RADAR. (WOW...)
[T]he most interesting case concerns Omar Zakhilwal, the Afghan finance minister. Reporters for Tolo, the country’s largest private media network, obtained bank statements for at least two of Zakhilwal’s accounts, dating back several years. Those accounts show deposits totaling nearly a million dollars, most of which were made while Zakhilwal was a public servant. Many of the deposits — like the hundred thousand dollars he deposited on July 16, 2009 — were made in cash. At the time of that deposit, Zakhilwal was Karzai’s minister of finance as well as the finance chairman for his re-election campaign.
(*PURSED LIPS*)
Why does all this matter to American voters? Look at this way: after eleven years, more than four-hundred billion dollars spent and two thousand Americans dead, this is what we’ve built: a deeply dysfunctional, predatory Afghan state that seems incapable of standing on its own — even when we’re there.
What happens when we’re not?
You can bet that, whoever the President is, he’ll be talking about it then.
* THREE-PARTER... (Part 1 of 3)
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/08/10/the-screwed-election-wall-street-can-t-lose-and-america-can-t-win.html?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=cheatsheet_morning&cid=newsletter%3Bemail%3Bcheatsheet_morning&utm_term=Cheat%20Sheet
Americans are angry at the big-time bankers and brokers, and yet, far from a populist attack on crony capitalism, Wall Street is sitting pretty, looking ahead to a presidential election that it can’t possibly lose. They have bankrolled a nifty choice between President Obama, the largest beneficiary of financial-industry backing in history and Mitt Romney, one of their very own.
One is to the manner born, the other a crafty servant; neither will take on the power.
Think of this: despite taking office in the midst of a massive financial meltdown, Obama’s administration has not prosecuted a single heavy-hitter among those responsible for the financial crisis.
To the contrary, he’s staffed his team with big bankers and their allies.
Under the Bush-Obama bailouts the big financial institutions have feasted like pigs at the trough, with the six largest banks borrowing almost a half trillion dollars from uncle Ben Bernanke’s printing press.
In 2013 the top four banks controlled more than 40% of the credit markets in the top 10 states — up by 10 points from 2009 and roughly twice their share in 2000. Meantime, small banks, usually the ones serving Main Street businesses, have taken the hit along with the rest of us with more than 300 folding since the passage of Dodd-Frank, the industry-approved bill to “reform” the industry.
Yet past the occasional election-year bout of symbolic class warfare, the oligarchs have little to fear from an Obama victory.
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONTINUING... (Part 2 of 3)
“Too big to fail,” enshrined in the Dodd-Frank bill, enjoys the full and enthusiastic support of the administration.
Obama’s financial tsar on the GM bailout, Steven Rattner, took to The New York Times to stress that Obamians see nothing systemically wrong with the banking system we have now, blaming the 2008 market meltdown on “old-fashioned poor management.”
As anger at the banks builds, Republicans nominate a Wall Street patrician whose idea of populism seems to be donning a well-pressed pair of jeans and a work shirt. “In a world of behemoth banks,” he explained to we mere mortals, “it is wrong to think we can shrink ours to a size that eliminates the ‘too big to fail’ problem without emasculating one of our most successful industries.”
(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)
But consider the messenger. Rattner, [once again... Obama’s financial tsar on the GM bailout] while denying wrongdoing paid $6.2 million and accepted a two-year ban on associating with any investment adviser or broker-dealer to settle with the SEC over the agency’s claims that he had played a role in a pay-to-play scheme involving a $50,000 contribution to the now-jailed politician who controlled New York State’s $125 billion pension fund.
* YOU JUST CAN'T MAKE THIS SHIT UP, FOLKS!
He’s also expressed unlimited admiration for the Chinese economic system, the largest expression of crony capitalism in history. Expect Rattner to be on hand in September, when Democrats gather in Charlotte, the nation’s second-largest banking city, inside the Bank of America Stadium to formally nominate Obama for a second term.
(*PURSED LIPS*)
In a sane world, one would expect Republicans to run against this consolidation of power that has taxpayers propping up banks that invest vast amounts in backing the campaigns of the lawmakers who levy those taxes. The party would appeal to grassroots capitalists, investors, small banks and their customers who feel excluded from the Washington-sanctioned insiders' game. The popular appeal is there. The Tea Party, of course, began as a response against TARP. Instead, the party nominated...Mitt Romney...
Romney himself is so clueless as to be touting his strong fund-raising with big finance!
His top contributors list reads something like a rogue’s gallery from the 2008 crash: Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse, Citicorp, and Barclays.
(If Obama’s Hollywood friends wanted to find a perfect candidate to play the role of out-of-touch-Wall Street grandee, they could do worse than casting Mitt.)
* THE ONLY PROBLEM IS... OBAMA'S TOP CONTRIBUTORS IN 2008 - AND EVEN NOW - ARE THESE SAME ROGUES!
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 3 of 3)
For the most part Obama has maintained the loyalty of those financiers, like Rattner, who seek out pension funds to finance their business. Those who underwrite and speculate on public debt have reason to embrace Washington’s free spenders. They are also cozy to financiers like John Corzine, the former Goldman Sachs CEO and governor of New Jersey, whose now-disgraced investment company MF Global is represented by Attorney General Eric Holder’s old firm.
(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)
The big-government wing of the financial elite remains firmly in Obama’s corner, as his bundlers (including Corzine) have already collected close to $20 million from financial interests for the president.
(*PURSED LIPS*)
Record support has also poured in from Silicon Valley, which has become ever more like a hip "Wall Street West." Like its east-coast brethren, Silicon Valley has also increased its dependence on government policy, as well-connected venture capitalists and many in the tech community have sought to enrich themselves on the administration’s “green” energy schemes.
Romney, on the other hand, has done very well with capital tied to the energy industry, and others who invest in the broad private sector, where government interventions are more often a complication than a means to a fast buck. His broad base of financial support reflects how relatively few businesses have benefited from the current regime.
(*NOD*)
Who loses in this battle of the oligarchs? Everyone who depends on the markets to accurately give information, and to provide fundamental services, like fairly priced credit.
And who wins?
The politically well-situated, who can profit from credit and regulatory policies whether those are implemented by Republicans or Democrats.
American democracy and the prosperity needed to sustain it are both diminished when Wall Street, the great engineer of the 2008 crash, is all but assured of victory in November.
* LIKE I SAY, FOLKS... ULTIMATELY... SADLY... VIOLENCE IS THE ONLY ANSWER.
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