The Baron of Conservatism

To Hell With The Shores Of Tripoli

2011-03-14T20:09:00.004-04:00

Looks like it's groundhog day all over again for American foreign policy. Get ready, our latest taste for military adventurism turns back to the history-worn headache of North Africa and the Mediterranean. The sexy jingoism of "No Fly Zones" has already been cued up by the networks and molded into a moment of moral clarity for president Obama to stand with the Libyan people.

How excited I am to wave the flag for America's next foray into a military contingency that involves none of our national interests. As trade goes, the United States buys more girl scout cookies than it does Libyan goods, petroleum included. And as far as retribution for Lockerbie goes, I'm sure Qaddafi can be drawn and quartered without an American carrier battle group doing the heavy lifting for handicapped Europe.

A Humanitarian crisis? The whole middle east and its insipid leadership is a humanitarian crisis. Apparently the UN didn't understand this truism when it voted Libya onto its human rights commission, painfully illustrating what passes for collective common sense amongst the 'international' community.

Now the one-world-nation crowd, which turns its nose up on everything America stands for, is crowing for intervention by Uncle Sam. Nuts! This is the sentinel moment when the American eagle needs to push its European chicks out of their post-WWII comfort nest.

In case the Europeans haven't noticed, the U.S. has other commitments. Surely there is some version of an Italian aircraft carrier-- complete with a working espresso machine to assuage the horrors of war-- which can be recalled from the Riviera and ordered to shoot up some Fiats in the Sahara. C'mon, guys...it's time to relive the glory days of Ethiopia and Eritrea!

NATO, which today is nothing more than a European affirmative action program administered by the pentagon, has no business becoming involved in Libya, either. Since 9/11, NATO has hopelessly attempted to expand its mission to include combating terrorism. Yeah, right. These European misfits view asymmetrical warfare as something resembling a recreational chase of a UFO. NATO serves one purpose: preventing eastern hordes from sacking Berlin and Vienna. Qaddafi is no Hannibal. Militarily, Libya has no plans to invade the "soft underbelly" of Europe. Instead, armies of refugees will begin their occupation of southern Italy, complete with demands for welfare entitlements and Sharia compliance. If Italy wants to keep speaking Italian, she will stand up and own her responsibilities. I won't hold my breath.

The European Union could help its own cause for relevance by establishing their own "no-fly zone" independent of American involvement. Cameron and Sarkozy both seem to own a pair. The countries that produced T.E. Lawrence and the Foreign Legion respectively, should be more than capable of flying sorties over Libya.

President Obama has fully revealed himself as a weak-kneed interloper with regards to foreign policy. His world view is convoluted gobbledygook, honed in the syllabuses of Occidental college and Columbia University Political Science departments. America should be terrified. Fortunately, a sober Bill Gates still runs the DOD. He should continue to ride roughshod over the Chicago machine that's chasing its own tail and barking at noises which are of little concern to the United States.

The devastation in Japan is of concern to America--and the world. Perhaps the president could put gender equality video addresses and gun control op-ed pieces on hiatus and get to the business of finding a voice on what America's priorities are.

Mr. President, they're not in Libya... and they're not on a golf course!

Plenty of Whine For Wisconsin's Cheese.

2011-03-02T04:46:00.007-05:00

Having gone to a Catholic school ruled by large Polish nuns during my turbulent youth, trying to understand the state of public education in America today is akin to living in a foreign country. I just don't speak the same language.

Indeed, the selfishness surrounding the Wisconsin demonstrations by state employees surpasses the normal vocabulary of the debate: unions, collective-bargaining, vouchers, tenure, pensions--they are all lost on me when I see an eight-year-old child toting a sign on a union picket line during a school day. These "public" employees responsible for shoving these kids onto a political stage are a national disgrace. For this obscenity alone, Governor Walker should terminate these malcontents with extreme prejudice.

Think Wisconsin's school children would suffer if Governor Walker fired all of the AWOL teachers? Hardly. Test scores haven't budged in ten years despite the nearly doubling of state expenditures in real dollar terms on primary education. Fire them. Fire them now. Replace them with retired military. Maybe America's warrior class can do the job the National Federation of Teaching Trotskyites seem incapable of: producing a child who can compete in a global economy.

But we know no firings are going to take place. Teacher unions are considered governmental demigods by the Democratic party. The message this marriage of mediocrity sends to the youth of America is when things don't go your way ... drive to Illinois. And how about the fraudulent doctor's excuses? If a child brings a pair of nail clippers to school he is suspended and put on the government's no-fly list. But if the teacher of that child obtains a phony doctor's excuse in order not to show up for work, she is lauded as a champion of the labor movement? Just know these Emma Goldman radicals will stand up for the union label before they stand up (and go to work) for your child every day of the week. So parents, look for...the union label when your child dons that fast-food restaurant uniform which public education and collective bargaining have made possible. Way to go, Norma Rae!

American doesn't need to "wait for Superman," before realizing the largest piece of kryptonite facing educational reform is the teacher unions. Public education today resembles General Motors of yesteryear. The unions have grown fat. Managers (politicians) have gone dumb. And the consumers (taxpayers/parents) have gone fickle. What suffers? The American automobile (student). And as goes GM ...so goes the country. The result is a foreign ass-kicking of our markets by the likes of Asia and Europe. Public education doesn't produce many engineers anymore, it produces paper-pushing-pansies, gushing for their next cost-of-living adjustment tucked into a bed of cradle-to-grave entitlements. McMurphy has gotten his lobotomy ... he's just waiting on Chief and the pillow!

Wisconsin taxpayers should commit to memory the seventy thousand demonstrators squatting at the state capitol the next time they open their property-tax assessment notices. Take a good look at what your getting for your money. Do you still entertain the fantasy that Laura Ingalls Wilder is insuring your child's proficiently literate? Or are you starting to smell the pungency of civil servant malingering which will guarantee your child's kowtowing to his Chinese master? So valuable will be the art of community organizing while he is standing on a government cheese line.

I thank God for the nuns of St.Mary's of Gostyn every day. Whatever hardship or dissent they might have been feeling was absorbed in the dedication to their vocation. I didn't get everything I wanted in the classroom while growing up, but I certainly got what I needed--usually a swift kick to the pants.

The teachers unions should be so lucky.

The Hypocrisy Behind Arianna's Golden Goose.

2011-02-11T06:10:00.003-05:00

I have to admit... the voice grates on my nerves. After spending four decades living in English speaking countries, Arianna Huffington's accent should have gone through the same transformation as her gadfly politics. Perhaps spraying Windex on her tonsils would mellow the nasally, whiny syntax that pushes me to the point of wanting to pick arms up with the Turks should they decide to re-establish Ottoman dominance on Hellenistic soil.

Still, business is business, and I congratulate Ms. Huffington on the merger between AOL/ Time Warner and the Huffington Post. As a conservative, I read HuffPost everyday for the standard cliche' of: I want to know what the enemy is thinking. But I also admire the site itself. The layout, quite frankly, is the best I've seen among any news site occupying broadband. Though my Irish disposition may get drunk on Matt Drudge, my eye for aesthetics wants to eat baklava. Arianna deserves every dime.

The problem is Arianna doesn't think we deserve every dime. While granting herself dispensation from the evil capitalistic trappings of landing a $315 million buyout package on an initial investment of $1 million in 2005, us mere mortals (small business owners) are put through her Greek inquisition when we raise the specter of possibly receiving some relief on our sub-chapter-s tax returns. The narrative of the "haves and have-nots" always becomes muted whenever a liberal has a large payday. She may pay lip service to the chimera of our politics moving beyond "left and right," but her ethos suggests another Elmer Gantry patrician of progressivism. If she were to run for office again, think of Charlie Christ in drag...with an annoying accent.

Had this had been Andrew Breitbart or Erick Erickson looking at a $20 million windfall from the likes of a Rupert Murdoch and News Corp., the blogging troupe at Huffpost would be in histrionics over the certain demise of the fourth estate. Congress would investigate. Tears would be shed.

Meg Whitman is also taking a beating at the hands of the Huffpost over the perceived immorality of spending $117 million (of her own money) on her failed bid for a California senate seat. Hmm...I wonder who is more nervous these days: the voters of California who now have "Moonbeam" back in their day-to-day lives, or AOL shareholders who just shelled out a third of a billion dollars for a website that just turned a profit for the first time this year. I call it a tie, with the caveat being that Huffpost can't stop talking about the former, yet does a scrub job on the latter. Journalism begins at home, guys.

Liberal politics and American entrepreneurship just don't mix. I think I prefer the old-fashioned ways of progressives deriving their fortunes on the backs of the American taxpayer. I'm sure progressives prefer this as well. But once in a while a workhorse like Huffington comes along and disturbs the apple cart of a 25 hour Democratic work week. She should be applauded...and encouraged to speak the Queen's English.

Why Bubba Should Buy Reagan's Birthday Cake.

2011-02-07T06:19:00.002-05:00

Lest the country wax too nostalgic over the Gipper's birthday centennial, MSNBC and Chris Mathews will launch their own Bill Clinton retrospective, complete with biting commentary by such lauded presidential historians as Kevin Spacey and Mary Steenburgen. The title is subtle: President Of The World: The Bill Clinton Phenomenon. I'm not sure what the "phenomenon" is, unless we're discussing how Democratic ex-presidents can't stop looking at themselves in the mirror. Then again, that just about sums up our narcissistic baby boomer generation perfectly, with Bubba as it's titular head. (No pun intended.) At least NBC recognizes it's demographics.

But if Clinton is president of the world, who, pray tell, made that world safe for his iconic rise? Gandhi? Howard Zinn? It was Ronald Reagan who cleared the debris field left by the plane crashes of the Nixon and Carter administrations, and launched America into a quarter-century of peace and prosperity. Nancy Reagan's astrologer probably had a no-brainer when looking at Clinton's political star trajectory. Ross Perot may have delivered it, but Reagan's policies secured it.

From 1980 to 1990, household wealth increased by 17 trillion dollars. The Federal deficit reached 1 trillion. ( By comparison, if Obama was to serve two terms he would have to increase household wealth by about 260 trillion dollars to correlate with his deficit spending.) While there is much ballyhooing over who was responsible for balancing the budget in the 90's, the Clinton administration or the Republican led "Contract With America," it was really the supply-side policies of Reagan, Milton Friedman, and Jack Kemp that put that 17 trillion dollars of increased household wealth to work, assuring that even the 92' recession wouldn't stop federal tax receipts from overtaking the deficit through increased economic activity and soaring capital gains. In reality, Clinton and Gingrich were just spectators.

By 1992, while Clinton was getting his first view of fresh skirt in D.C., the Soviet Union was no more. In fact, so defeated were the Communists that when Boris Yeltsin visited America for the first time he broke down and wept openly when he saw the inside of an American grocery store. This didn't happen by accident. Reagan increased defense spending and bankrupted the Russian bear. I think its fair to say that any president entering office in 1992 without a Soviet menace, is a Commander-n-Chief with the wind at his back. Does anyone remember the "Peace Dividend?" Thank you, president Reagan.

The phrase "emerging markets," didn't carry much water until the 1990's. And while NAFTA is vilified these days by Democrats who never held a real job in their lives, it was the first piece of legislation signed by Clinton upon entering office, thus solidifying Reagan's vision of a "North American Accord." Back in 1980, during the campaign, Reagan was laughed at for proposing a tariff-free continent and accused of "gimmickry" for making it part of his stump speeches. Union backed imbeciles insisted NAFTA was going to cost jobs, yet between 1994 and 2000, unemployment fell from 6.1 % to 4%, while manufacturing and real wages both increased. Thankfully for America, Clinton was always a good student.

Although president Clinton was brought kicking and screaming to the welfare reform table, it was actually Reagan's policies as governor of California, and adopted by congressional Republicans, which made the bill palatable for centrist Democrats. Reagan had this novel idea that any welfare reform bill should aim to lower the number of people receiving welfare. Between 1990 and 1998, the number of people on the federal dole was lowered by 50%.

I hope that in between the Chris Mathews gushing of baby boomer pablum and the scoping of college chicks in the audience by the former president, a moment is remembered for the Gipper. Because without the man from Dixon, Illinois, there would have been no little boy from Hope, Arkansas.

You Just Can't Get Good Chinese In Cairo.

2011-02-03T18:02:00.005-05:00

Sometimes a revolutionary mob and an autocratic dictator deserve each other. Egypt is a perfect example. And while the New York Times is running the didactic of why this is America's fault, the "democracy" movement in Cairo is busy plundering the national museums and destroying mummies. Not exactly the behavior one would associate with Jacobin intellectuals. The Gdansk shipyard and Tahrir square would hardly recognize each other.

I'm also curious as to where our western, freedom loving journalists were when some of these same protesters--who are railing against the injustices of the Mubarak regime-- lit matches and began burning Christian coptics out of their churches and businesses for the last ten years. I guess Christian persecution doesn't make good copy, but the Muslim Brotherhood getting slapped around by Mubarak's thugs is an international war crime and requires moral introspection by the gray lady's editorial staff.

In fairness, there are surely democrats among the rabble. They are literate. They are high-minded. They are humanitarians. They are also a minority, republican rockets that will fire their boosters for the sake of "the cause," only to find the gravity of insipid elements pulling their nascent liberalism back to a Sharia landing pad. The freedom marchers of today may very well find themselves the political asylum seekers of tomorrow, desperately trying to remember the name of that second cousin living in Detroit or London.

Mohamed El Baradei doesn't exactly strike me as a blood-n-guts patriot, either. Mandela, who spent decades in prison, or Lech Walesa, who installed electrical wiring on merchant vessels, strike more a pose of human liberty symbols than does El Baradei--a U.N., bureaucratic bourgeois dandy, more accustomed to manicures in the parlors of Vienna or Geneva than to bloody knuckles in the Arab street. He and Obama should get along famously.

I shouldn't expect the president, or Ben Bernanke for that matter, to take ownership of their responsibility for the turmoil spreading throughout the middle east. In fact, the Fed chairman was just quoted as saying that current monetary policies have had no part in the now record rise of global food prices. Really? So when so many commodities are priced on the world's reserve currency, i.e., the dollar, and then the currency loses purchasing power because too many dollars are chasing to few corn cobs, prices don't rise? Wow! I guess the decade of the 70's was just a figment of my parent's supply-side imagination. Who knew?

As usual, our intelligence services need to answer a few questions as well. Even under the limp-wrist Obama administration, I'm going to assume we have a C.I.A. station chief positioned at the embassy in Cairo. ( In my fantasies, I can only dream we have agents burrowed as teachers at American University.) I can understand missing the boat concerning the riots in Tunisia because, after all, that would have took some foresight. But after Tunisia, is it too much to expect some pimple-faced wonk, in between surfing porn sites and playing 'Dungeons and Dragons,' to check out the Muslim Brotherhood's Facebook fan page. Maybe do a friend request? Was there no room for these Valarie Plume type Twinkies in the Peace Corps? And what are they going to miss next, an atomic bomb sailing down the Tiber toward the Seven Hills?

As long as the American 101st airborne and British SAS are ready to jump into Suez, my immediate concerns regarding oh, I don't know, the commerce of the free world will be satisfied. How Egyptians want to raise their camels and gouge American tourists at Giza is their business. If they are so insane as to invalidate their peace treaty with Israel, then they deserve their fate.

State of The Union or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Debt Bomb.

2011-01-27T18:46:00.004-05:00

Oprah crying on one hand, a commodities bubble building on the other. It's bread and circus time in America, with the politically correct cult of personality delivering the constitutionally mandated speech that is supposed to assuage my fear over the direction this country is headed. I shouldn't be scared though, because in the name of civility, elephants and jack-asses are going to adopt the buddy system and hold hands.

Sorry, fiscal apocalypse doesn't recognize a meet-and-greet.

For a bit of perspective, total assets in America equate to about 100 trillion dollars. The national debt has just surpassed 14 trillion. That's just the federal balance sheet; Begin to add state and local deficits, pension funds, corporate debt, and, God help us, mortgage debt, you begin to wonder if it's not better to just suck a gas pipe and dream good thoughts. Looking at the future prospects of Social Security's solvency makes Europe's euthanasia programs start to look fairly reasonable. Sorry, God...I didn't mean that.

Alas, my cynicism should be conquered by the oratory adroitness of the leader of neo-Camelot. Arthur will tell us to build more solar panels, and with her eyes, Guinevere will tell us to eat less pork. Oh, goody! Can Soylent Green be far behind?

Our problems are not rooted in competitiveness or innovation. References to "Sputnik" and the race to the moon are poorly reasoned analogies. The Chinese bogeyman is not waiting for us under the bed. Our problem is the federal government, and by proxy, state houses and governor's mansions across the country. Government spending is sucking the oxygen out of private capital formation in America. The capital will travel elsewhere in the world and take the job creation with it. Technological progress demands working capital, not higher government revenues.

So too, enough of the idiocy of investment in infrastructure in this country as it relates to the building going on in China. Theirs' is a problem of delivering basic services to a billion-three population. Ours is a problem of corrupt government contractors wrapping themselves in the Bacon-Davis act. If we're looking to repair infrastructure, let's begin with our energy infrastructure in the Gulf of Mexico. So far as I know, there is no I-phone app that can extract oil or natural gas out of the earth. Ironically, most infrastructure inroads are traversed by the issuance of municipal bonds, and we all know where those babies are headed.

Although it was a pleasure not to see Nancy Pelosi throned behind the president, I do feel there was someone who needed to be sitting between the Speaker and the Vice-president: Ben Bernanke. Isn't it about time we acknowledged the Federal Reserve as the defacto fourth branch of government? Is QE II any less of a government program than fiscal stimulus? Monetizing a sovereign debt doesn't fall under the dual mandate of the fed, but that is exactly what is happening. Gone are the days of Paul Volcker raising interest rates and sending farm combines down Pennsylvania ave. into Reagan's oval office. A real banker. A real president.

I also didn't notice Jeffery Immelt, former CEO of General Electric and the president's new ducky choice to head another ad nauseam council on jobs, in the chamber. Perhaps he was huffing some smelling salts after seeing the, dare I say, windfall profits the venerable GE CAPITAL division recorded. Aren't negative interest rates and dollar carry trades awesome, Jeff? Sure beats those scary days in the fall of 2008, huh? Now your the straight guy in the ongoing comedy of Keynesian economics in this administration. Makes sense...makes perfect sense.

The biggest erection our wizened corporate media could get over the speech was actually the Tea Party response given by Rep. Michelle Bachmann. Republican women are disliked in general by NBC, but the long knives really come out when this woman speaks. Perhaps it's because she knows what she's talking about, but really I think it's because she disagrees with laws that allow babies to have their heads compacted or spines severed as long as their still in the womb. But I digress. Bachmann, a former attorney who prosecuted tax cheats for the U.S. Treasury Department, ( Timothy Geithner notwithstanding) apparently was quoted as saying she wanted a population "armed and dangerous." The Giffords shooting has Liberals retroactively declaring this hate speech. Consequently, her response was judged by where her eyes were focused during her monologue, not by the words themselves. This is what passes for punditry at NBC...where Jeffery Immelt use to run things.

Bachmann's response was fine. She stated the obvious: government is bankrupting the country. I like the armed and dangerous part, though. I'm armed and dangerous, but only to myself. I'm always going to leave one round in the chamber just for me, just in case these demented fiscal dragoons ride down America for a second term.

Sorry, God...I didn't mean that, either.

Bernanke The Buddhist.

2010-11-04T19:45:00.000-04:00

So the story goes that a student of Buddha is walking down a path and comes upon a dog riddled with maggot infected sores. The student wants to help the dog, but doesn't want to hurt the maggots because their is no supposed hierarchy among life on earth according to Buddhism. Therefore, the student removes the maggots with his tongue, thus not hurting the maggots and also illustrating another false religion on planet earth. A Scientologist would have probably snorted the maggots.

As a capitalist, this little diddy doesn't thrill me either. Not only do I love dogs, but I also recognize their intrinsic value to human society with the instinct to hunt, herd and protect. Dogs have value. Maggots destroy value, therefore, I will destroy the maggots. My enlightenment can go to hell.

Mr. Bernanke can't seem to understand this process of discernment while formulating monetary policy. Buying back additional bad mortgage debt is akin to adding more maggots to our ailing best friend...the U.S. dollar. We need a healthy, happy dollar, with a shiny coat and a wagging tail if we expect America to achieve long term sustainable growth.

To devalue our currency in hopes of increasing exports and thus creating jobs is a fools errand. The multi-nationals will benefit as a result of quantitative easing to be sure, but those gains along with the other trillion dollars sitting off shore will never see the light of day in this country because of the archaic 38% corporate tax rate--the second highest in the developed world. Capital will travel to destinations where it is treated best, just as a dog will love the person best who feeds it.

Domestically, a slumping dollar will raise input costs to companies already being squeezed by lower margins. They can only absorb so much before they have to pass the costs on to consumers. Then Bernanke will receive his beloved inflation. Gas, metals, grains and timber are all approaching price levels that resemble a commodities bubble. When that bubble bursts, you know what we will have to show for it?

A dead dog.

Dying With Our Boots On.

2010-10-31T19:41:00.000-04:00

My emotions are of extremes. One day, St. Francis of Assisi, the next, Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver. Lately I've been channeling the Roman scouts examining the hordes of Huns massing across the Danube. I get that same sinking feeling looking at the unclean across the Potomac. Viewing ballots printed in Spanish remind me that being a Roman citizen has gone to hell.

We are not going to make it. The United States will default on her obligations. All my anger, anxiety and dreams of this country's future has morphed into resignation. My conservative friends are of a giddy mind over the upcoming midterms. I am not. Sure, I will experience some schadenfreude over the Keynesian's taking a shot in the kisser. I'm sure the Indians had a good time at Little Big Horn, short lived as they knew it was.

Ben Bernake has pierced my heart with QE II. Even if Republicans had obtained veto-proof majorities in both chambers of congress, an audit of the Fed is unlikely. Just as well. Do we really want to see what Citibank really looks like? We need another Black Swan like we need another mortgage modification program. The average homeowner in foreclosure hasn't made a payment in 18 months. If MacArthur was alive we could roust this modern day Hooverville with extreme prejudice. Instead, we hear calls for a foreclosure moratorium. America can't drill for it's own oil, and can't evict squatters from private property. Welcome to San Francisco!

Municipal bonds will likely be the first to blow up. This is a no brainer for the White House because there primarily owned by evil rich people. As sure as Chrysler debt holders got bent over prison style during the auto bailout, so too will muni-investors feel Obama's billy club without even the slightest bit of Vaseline.

Think gold will save you? Think again. The I.R.S. is chopping down whole forests to provide patriotic 1066's so it can keep an eye on all gold coin transactions over $600. Don't worry, when the dollar reaches banana republic levels we will begin to hear the calls for...a gold moratorium. 2012 will become 1933. Rome will fall.

My only hope for the coming chaos is the possibility of the unions going to the streets. I will relish the opportunity to "express" my displeasure with public sector employees. Shouldn't be too hard to channel the energy. After all, my ancestors were Huns.

The Keynesians Who Couldn't Shoot Straight.

2010-07-19T20:04:00.000-04:00

When president Obama was elected, the Democratic controlled congress combined with the struggling economy dictated the dusting off of Keynesian policies, presented anew in the form of the stimulus package.

The only problem is, John Maynard Keynes would have never signed off on this plane crash. In his epic tome, "Theory of Employment, Interest and Money," Keynes argued that government intervention in the economy should induce two powerful human emotions which are vital to a recovering economy; "Animal Spirits," and "Spontaneous Optimism."

Today, our animal spirits are reflected in our consumer confidence numbers. Keynes would contend that no mathematical economic equation can be relied on to produce positive animal spirits, aka, consumer confidence. This accounts for the dichotomy between rising corporate profits and falling consumer confidence numbers. The American consumer does not feel better about their own, or the country's economic future. They feel no mojo. When only 13% of Americans feel the stimulus plan has helped them personally, animal spirits have now become road kill.

Keynes' description of spontaneous optimism is aimed at the entrepreneur. In theory, he (or even more the case today, she) should be able to recognize when the government is about to stimulate or "pump prime" the economy, and thus throw caution to the wind and launch his start up company. His fear of failure is tempered by the belief, and TRUST, that the government from a fiscal policy perspective is at least temporarily on his side.

Does anyone believe that today?

The presidents stimulus package is a boondoggle. Can anyone honestly say that there is spontaneous optimism going on in the small business community in the United States of America? Understandably, there's a lot of optimism in DC., where Obama's approval rating is 85%. This is because the stimulus package was produced by government for the benefit of government. One third of all stimulus money has gone to state and local governments in an effort to save public union jobs and keep the apparatchiks happy.

This is unsustainable. Just like one-quarter of all mortgages in the U.S, the country's balance sheet is beginning to go underwater. Keynes tolerated short-term deficits with the belief that animal spirits and spontaneous optimism would produce revenues that would balance the budget over the near to medium term.

He obviously never met this president.

The Baron Of Conservatism discusses the BP oil leak.

2010-06-07T21:11:00.000-04:00

The Sun Will Set In The East.

2010-06-07T20:28:00.000-04:00

As generals are constantly prosecuting the last war rather than exercising modernity for the next, so too do American economists when admiring their own position papers on the current global financial crisis.

China is the perfect example. While the esoterics of Austrian bank exposure to Hungarian mortgages is explained by academics on the financial networks, the Chinese real estate bubble continues to grow like a bloodthirsty tick, it's western democracy hosts unaware of the true nature of the parasite.

The EU, not the U.S., is China's largest trading partner. Central planners in Beijing have tightened their monetary policy in recent months with the belief that their European export market, with its wafer-thin margins, would continue on the path to recovery. With the Yuan pegged to the new-found strength of the dollar due to the collapsing Euro, China now finds itself in the position of trying to reign in runaway domestic inflation with the prospect of self-deconstructing world demand for its own products. Moreover, the Shanghai composite index is now officially in a bear market, and Timmy Geithner wants Beijing to further appreciate the Yuan against the dollar in order to further America's export market in China. Good luck with that fortune cookie.

Meanwhile, American economists continue to yawn at the prospect of a Chinese real estate market about to pop. The herd mentality is that a country of a billion-plus people will keep aggregate demand growing, albeit at a slower rate, for years to come. I believe some of these same economists made similar predictions about the American real estate market when the Federal Reserve tightened monetary policy in the winter of 2007.

China's biggest problems are internal. Chinese workers are committing suicide because their savings are being eaten up by inflation. Political unrest lies just beneath those workers graves. Beijing will not let that happen. They will slow domestic consumption at all costs. When the dam bursts, American hedge fund and government pension fund managers will be self-inflicting their own dirt naps.

Welcome to globalization.

Save The Polar Bears...Kill The Socialists.

2009-10-27T14:27:00.004-04:00

If you want to catch a socialist at work, sometimes you have to wake up early in the morning. On the weekends especially the indoctrination of America's youth into the one world order is fully on display.

Last Sunday morning I watched Noah Wylie, the cream puff of "ER" fame, give a "Sally Struthers" tear-jerker performance on the perils of the Polar Bears. The Polar bear is now the de-facto symbol of the Democratic party, replacing the jack-ass. However, just like the jack-ass, the Democrats stubbornly insist the Polar bear is drowning.

They are liars. Just like Marx. Just like Mao.( My favorite political philosopher?)

Unlike vegan Hollywood liberals like Wylie, Polar bears are tough as nails. One reason there so resilient is because they eat meat, and a lot of it...seal blubber in particular. Wylie should take this cue and maybe he would be casted as something other than an emaciated geek.

Polar bears can also out-swim Michael Phelps, not only because they don't take bong hits, but also because nature designed them to swim long distances--up to a hundred nautical miles without stopping. Polar bears do not drown unless under extreme duress...like when their being hunted by Inuit Eskimos under provisions granted by the Maritime Marine Mammal act of 1972. Liberals like to protect animals except when indigenous primitives insist they must offer up the spirits of the Polar bear to their gods.

Their gods are about as believable as global warming itself.

Wylie conveniently omits the deaths of hundreds of Polar bears a year due to pagan convictions, and instead focuses on a poor female polar bear and her cubs up against selfish Americans trying to heat their homes in the winter.

Wouldn't it be nice if we showed the children what female Polar bears do with their cubs for 90% of the day? That is, hunting seals.

These scenes are not for the faint of heart. But, if socialists insist on terrifying the youth with their lies, we must, as parents, show our children the brutal reality of nature. Just imagine a nature show that combines "Finding Nemo" with the "Texas Chainsaw Massacre," and you get an idea of what a day in the life of a Polar bear looks like. Maybe Wylie can convert them to veganism.

I hope he tries it in person.