Lying Has Become an Art Form!

Human Rights get 'left' out! (See 1 below.)

Response to my previous memo from a friend and fellow memo reader. I responded that hell is paved with good intentions and when you are normal size among a room of midgets you look like a giant. (See 2 below.)

Yesterday, Obama attacked the insurance industry - this week's pinata - and in doing so accused them of everything he is doing, ie lying, false claims and the list is endless. Obama is clever and uses the tools of propagandists.

Yes, we need health care reform, yes the insurance industry's image is tarnished and yes, government restrictions and policies force them to do things that are questionable and yes making money off sick people puts them in a bad light but if anyone thinks government bureaucrats have a better solution they will pay a very high price. When did the government ever deliver anything on time, at a reasonable cost and without mountains of red tape? It's all another Obama shell game.(See 3 and 3a below.)

Obama cannot even make his mind up about Afghanistan and protecting our military but he has all the time in the world to attack Fox News, the insurance industry and any other group that disagrees with him and gets in his way. He runs the government with non-elected czars and czarinas and the nation sits on its thumbs allowing it to happen while being called racists.

Saddest period in our nation's history since Nixon but then we had Carter followed by Clinton. Getting to be a regular habit of electing presidents who bring shame upon the office.(See 3b and 3c below.)

The U.N. dumps on Israel employing the same strategy and methods Obama uses in his attack on health care and insurers,ie projection of lies and deceit. (See 4 below.)

One of the best ways to destroy a nation is to debase its currency. The Obama Administration is well along in doing so. (See 5 below.)


From a friend and fellow memo reader who pointed out no one ever replaced Michelle in her critical position that paid so well. (See 6 below.)

Dick

1)Does Obama Believe in Human Rights? Human rights "interfere" with President Obama's campaign against climate change.
By BRET STEPHENS

Nobody should get too hung up over President Obama's decision, reported by Der Spiegel over the weekend, to cancel plans to attend next month's 20th anniversary celebration of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Germany's reunited capital has already served his purposes; why should he serve its?

To this day, the fall of the Berlin Wall on the night of Nov. 9, 1989, remains a high-water mark in the march of human freedom. It's a march to which candidate Obama paid rich (if solipsistic) tribute in last year's big Berlin speech. "At the height of the Cold War, my father decided, like so many others in the forgotten corners of the world, that his yearning—his dream—required the freedom and opportunity promised by the West," waxed Mr. Obama to the assembled thousands. "This city, of all cities, knows the dream of freedom."

Those were the words. What's been the record?

China: In February, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton landed in Beijing with a conciliating message about the country's human-rights record. "Our pressing on those [human-rights] issues can't interfere on the global economic crisis, the global climate change crisis and the security crisis," she said.

In fact, there has been no pressing whatsoever on human rights. President Obama refused to meet with the Dalai Lama last month, presumably so as not to ruffle feathers with the people who will now be financing his debts. In June, Liu Xiaobo, a leading signatory of the pro-democracy Charter 08 movement, was charged with "inciting subversion of state power." But as a U.S. Embassy spokesman in Beijing admitted to the Journal, "neither the White House nor Secretary Clinton have made any public comments on Liu Xiaobo."

Sudan: In 2008, candidate Obama issued a statement insisting that "there must be real pressure placed on the Sudanese government. We know from past experience that it will take a great deal to get them to do the right thing. . . . The U.N. Security Council should impose tough sanctions on the Khartoum government immediately."

Exactly right. So what should Mr. Obama do as president? Yesterday, the State Department rolled out its new policy toward Sudan, based on "a menu of incentives and disincentives" for the genocidal Sudanese government of Omar Bashir. It's the kind of menu Mr. Bashir will languidly pick his way through till he dies comfortably in his bed.
Iran: Mr. Obama's week-long silence on Iran's "internal affairs" following June's fraudulent re-election was widely noted. Not so widely noted are the administration's attempts to put maximum distance between itself and human-rights groups working the Iran beat.

Earlier this year, the State Department denied a grant request for New Haven, Conn.-based Iran Human Rights Documentation Center. The Center maintains perhaps the most extensive record anywhere of Iran's 30-year history of brutality. The grant denial was part of a pattern: The administration also abruptly ended funding for Freedom House's Gozaar project, an online Farsi- and English-language forum for discussing political issues.

It's easy to see why Tehran would want these groups de-funded and shut down. But why should the administration, except as a form of pre-emptive appeasement?

Burma: In July, Mr. Obama renewed sanctions on Burma. In August, he called the conviction of opposition leader (and fellow Nobel Peace Prize winner) Aung San Suu Kyi a violation of "the universal principle of human rights."

Yet as with Sudan, the administration's new policy is "engagement," on the theory that sanctions haven't worked. Maybe so. But what evidence is there that engagement will fare any better? In May 2008, the Burmese junta prevented delivery of humanitarian aid to the victims of Cyclone Nargis. Some 150,000 people died in plain view of "world opinion," in what amounted to a policy of forced starvation.

Leave aside the nausea factor of dealing with the authors of that policy. The real question is what good purpose can possibly be served in negotiations that the junta will pursue only (and exactly) to the extent it believes will strengthen its grip on power. It takes a remarkable presumption of good faith, or perhaps stupidity, to imagine that the Burmas or Sudans of the world would reciprocate Mr. Obama's engagement except to seek their own advantage.

It also takes a remarkable degree of cynicism—or perhaps cowardice—to treat human rights as something that "interferes" with America's purposes in the world, rather than as the very thing that ought to define them. Yet that is exactly the record of Mr. Obama's time thus far in office.
In Massachusetts not long ago, I found myself driving behind a car with "Free Tibet," "Save Darfur," and "Obama 08" bumper stickers. I wonder if it will ever dawn on the owner of that car that at least one of those stickers doesn't belong.

2)I had lunch with a friend of mine yesterday who is the Chair of Trustees at Bowdoin. He has a friend whose wife is the current head of the SBA under Obama. The husband gave my friend some interesting first hand observations about Obama and his administration.

1. Obama is very smart and charming. Probably the "smartest in the room" and he asks good penetrating questions.

2. Neither Obama nor any of his close advisors have any business experience. They are career politicians and/or bureaucrats. Obama is honest enough to recognize this and often calls in this head of the SBA for counsel because she does have business experience.

What I had guessed and I continue to feel is that:

1. Obama is not an evil force, just an inexperienced manager and career politician and

2. That we are seeing what happens after an administration that did have business experience but allowed a full scale economic panic to develop on their watch is succeeded by a bunch of pro labor liberals who are inexperienced managers. Maybe next time the Republicans will do a better job.


By the way, this bunch has no military experience at all either so you get all this dithering about Afghanistan thrown in as a bonus.

3)The Obamacare Shell Game?
Jonathan Chait

The latest, hottest attack on health care reform is that it's based on an accounting scam. National Review calls it "taking Obamacare off the books." The Heritage Foundation warns of the "Obamacare Shell game." What's going on here? What's going on is a perfect metaphor for how Obama and the republicans are treating fiscal policy.

More than a decade ago, Congress tried to control Medicare costs by restricting payments to doctors. But the reimbursement cut has proven unpopular. So every year, Congress appropriates more money to fill the hole and keep the doctors happy. Yet the pay cut remains on the books. So, admitting the obvious fact that the reimbursement cuts will never happen would, officially speaking, cost $247 billion over ten years.

Everybody agrees that it's a sham. Since the Democrats are trying to reform, and trim, how much Medicare spends, they planned to wipe the slate clean and just admit the obvious reality that the $247 billion is going to get spent.

Conservatives are attacking this as proof that health care reform is based on fraudulent accounting. See -- they're spending money they don't pay for! National Review calls this "offloading $247 billion in Obamacare costs onto a separate, standalone, unfinanced piece of legislation." But it's not "Obamacare costs." It's money that would get spent whether or not health reform happens. It would be fair to make this charge if Obama were using these illusury savings to cover the cost of the new spending in his health care reform, but he isn't.

So why is Obama getting attacked so bitterly over this? Because he's acknowledging it. It's the same thing that's happened to fiscal policy since he took office. The Bush administration hid the true iscal picture with a plethora of accounting gimmicks -- keeping all war costs out of the budget, pretending the middle-class tax cuts would expire, and on and on. Obama has tried to make the budget reflect reality. Alas, reality is a bummer. (And yes, the long-term deficit is entirely the fault of policies Obama inherited.) So Obama gets attacked for a "shell game" when all he's really doing is admitting the shell game that's been going on for years.

People have made this point before, but the conservative attacks on health care reform's fiscal responsibility are beyond hypocritical. George W. Bush and the Republicans created a new health care entitlement in 2003 that was completely unfinanced. Not a dime was paid for. The Democrats have decided to completely finance every cent of health care reform, and they're taking a hundred times more flack for fiscal irresponsibility than the Republicans ever did. There's a lesson here, and "fiscal responsibility pays" isn't it.

3a)Lies, Damned Lies, and Health Care Polls
By James Joyner

Ezra Klein points to a new ABC/WaPo poll showing a solid majority support “a law that requires all Americans to have health insurance, either getting it from work, buying it on their own, or through eligibility for Medicare or Medicaid.” Further, the same poll finds a third of those who oppose would switch sides “if the government gave financial assistance in getting health insurance to people with incomes below about 40-thousand dollars for an individual, and below 88-thousand dollars for a family of four.”

Kevin Drum is intrigued and guesses the phenomenon likely pretty common.

I’m pretty sure you could quote a couple of lines from Jabberwocky, ask an “in that case” followup question, and get a fair number of people to change their minds. So what I’d like to know is: what’s the average flip rate?

He thinks figuring this out would be a useful project for political scientists, adding yet another data point to Dan Drezner’s suspicion that those of our ilk are becoming more policy-relevant.

I’m sure Kevin’s right that there’s a flip factor. Partly, people just want to seem agreeable and reasonable. Mostly, though, adding a lot of caveats just makes poll questions more confusing.

And the ones Ezra cites above are, frankly, pretty damned confusing. The initial question is beyond double barreled, throwing so many things into the pot that I’m surprised they found 41% to oppose. A “law that requires all Americans to have health insurance” sounds pretty good on the surface and talk about the employer or Medicare paying for it obscures the actual policy choice. If, on the other hand, the question were phrased, “Would you support or oppose a law forcing Americans who do not have health insurance through their employer or the government to pay for it out of their own pocket or go to jail?” support would go down tremendously!

Similarly, if the follow-up were phrased, “Would you be willing to pay more in taxes so individuals making under $40,000 a year — or $88,000 for families– could get free health insurance from the government?” I’m guessing it wouldn’t do so well.

3b)Carroll: Making matters worse
By Vincent Carroll

Repeat after me: Health care reform is going to save us money. Health care reform is going to save us money. Pay no attention, please, to the fact that the Senate Finance Committee's bill imposes fees on insurance providers, as well as producers of drugs and medical devices, that it caps deductions for flexible spending accounts and slaps a 40 percent excise tax on so-called Cadillac health plans. Oh, yes: and that it raises the bar for itemizing medical expenses on your taxes.

None of this, we are assured, will raise the price of health-care premiums or boost out-of-pocket medical costs. And if you doubt it, Gov. Bill Ritter will take time from his busy day to denounce you, as he did with insurance companies recently.

Perhaps Ritter should read Michael Riley's report in The Sunday Denver Post, which explained how congressional health-care bills lack key cost-containment measures despite the insistence by everyone on their importance. Or he could review analysis in The Wall Street Journal by Douglas Holtz-Eakin, former director of the Congressional Budget Office, lamenting the dearth of "any competition-based reforms that would actually bend the curve of health-care costs."

Under the Senate Finance bill, healthy workers could actually refuse to buy insurance, pay the modest penalty and still come out ahead if they got seriously ill — because no insurer could turn them away. And yet when some executives had the temerity to point out how this could lead to higher premiums, Ritter told them, in effect, to just shut up.

"It's a self-serving, untrue, desperate effort by the insurance industry to protect its excessive profits — and one that cannot be taken seriously," Ritter thundered in his best imitation of a populist demagogue.

So it's a desperate tactic to point out that people respond to incentives? John Martie, president and general manager of Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield of Colorado, hardly sounded like a hysteric Tuesday when he told me that people will opt out of coverage if the penalty for doing so is much less than the cost of premiums.

Martie said that in Massachusetts, which has a universal mandate with weak penalties, "The average person who chooses to buy coverage through the 'connector' keeps the coverage for five months. They're coming in, paying premiums, getting their services and then dropping the coverage ... The way group insurance works is that you spread the risk. If you're only collecting premiums from people who are getting services, you can't make it work."

Politicians are reluctant to impose stiffer penalties, of course, because it would burden some consumers. So rather than admit they don't have a painless way to ensure universal coverage, elected leaders denounce anyone who points out the truth.

Over at Sen. Michael Bennet's website, meanwhile, we learn that the insurance industry not only is the perfidious puppet master of "patients, physicians, and nurses," but that it also is responsible for the "high costs for your prescription drugs and doctor's visits," too. Isn't the senator confusing his talking points? Shouldn't he be demonizing Big Pharma for the cost of drugs?

Like many in Congress, Bennet talks about the "public option" as the key to cost control, as if an existing public option — Medicare — isn't already a budgetary horror story.

It's easy to understand why most Americans yearn for health-care reform: Premiums are expected to rise again next year by 10 percent or more, once again devouring wage hikes. But since Congress doesn't have the courage to enact the sort of far-reaching reform that would actually realign incentives and constrain costs, it is poised to do what in the political world is considered the next best thing: make matters worse.

3c)Media Matters & President Obama in Lockstep
By Kyle-Anne Shiver

Revival of right-wing conspiracy charges are all the rage in the age of Obama, but liberals are just playing the same old shell game. The real action is on the left, with lockstep collusion by the President with Soros-funded Media Matters.


While the President sends his surrogates onto national network programs to decry Fox News, Media Matters is behind the scenes working its Fight Fox campaign.


Media Matters' president, Eric Burns, sent out the Fight Fox campaign announcement to supporters on September 17 and explained why Fox had to be driven out of the national political conversation


Translation: Fox is a thorn in the side of the Chavez-minded leftists.


"Since President Obama's inauguration, Fox News has officially abandoned its already dubious standing as a news organization and is now engaging in outright political activism, completing its transition into the 24/7 media wing of the far-right conservative movement."


Translation: Fox doesn't' kiss the hand of Obama.


This Media Matters Fight Fox campaign shines new light on the President's malicious joking at the White House Correspondents dinner, in which he acknowledged that all of those in the room had voted for him (a line which drew raucous, pitifully biased applause and catcalls), adding this tacky jab, "Apologies to the Fox table."


Now, if you happened to see Anita Dunn, White House Communications director, on CNN's October 9 appearance in which she called Fox News "a wing of the Republican Party," you might have surmised that substantial coordination was occurring between the White House and Media Matters. Dunn's salvo at Fox was indeed no unintended statement of her personal opinion but is now the policy of the White House Communications office.


A week later, both Rahm Emmanuel and David Axelrod continued the President's attacks on Fox News in their guest appearances on network news shows. Emmanuel said, regarding Fox News, "It is not a news organization so much as it has a perspective." Appearing on ABC, David Axelrod had this to say: "Fox shouldn't be treated as a news organization. And the bigger thing is that other news organizations, like yours, ought not to treat them that way, and we're not going to treat them that way."


Perhaps the President and his minions at Media Matters need a refresher on Journalism 101.


Of course, anyone who has graduated from high school ought to know that there is straight news reporting journalism and then there's opinion/perspective journalism. All news channels -- including Fox -- produce both kinds of journalism and even a ninth grader ought to be able to distinguish between the two.


How much are those Ivy League degrees in poppycock going for these days?


Now, one would indeed need to be living in a Siberian outpost not to understand what's behind this sudden, concerted attack on conservative journalism (targeted for now at Rush Limbaugh and Fox News). It's a simple all-American peculiarity. It's called competitive SUCCESS.


Fox and conservative talk radio are the balance in the media sphere. As the only outlets where a conservative opinion can be given a fair hearing, they serve as the balance required by a robust democracy. By serving as the only alternative to all-Obama-all-the-time-great-and-wonderful coverage, Fox is delivering a real service that is being supported by millions of astute American viewers. It's a very successful competitive enterprise.


The President has a whole slew of empty-headed mouthpieces in all the other media outlets. They stoke his flames 24/7. They cover for him on stories that are unflattering. Why, one network even did a fact-check segment on a barely bothersome Saturday Night Live comedy sketch that poked some fun at the President's utter failure to actually accomplish a single thing since taking office. So, in three corners of the ring, President Obama has a lapdog "press" willing to lick his hand and curl up at his feet for the simple pleasure of his beneficent companionship.


This president resembles his south-of-the-border ideological counterpart, Chavez, every single day.


In the single outlying corner of the ring, the President actually has to earn his accolades and explain his policies and answer a few tough questions. In our coddled President's imagination, this is quite beneath him. So, when Rush Limbaugh and other conservative radio commentators bring unpleasant-for-the-president matters to the fore and umpteen million Americans are listening, it's a problem. When Fox News reports the stories ignored by other outlets, out of misplaced fidelity to the President they all sponsored, then Fox is tarnished with the label "not a real news organization."


Media Matters is doing the behind-the-scenes work too dirty for the President's own hands. A small group of far-left 527s are working in concert, ginning up the propaganda machines against Fox and disseminating boycott information on Fox News sponsors. Media Matters pays scores of interns to listen and "report" on all major conservative media personalities. These interns then manipulate the spoken words to fit their own leftist message and spit it back out to subscribers in a propagandized version, which smears and slanders the speakers.


What's particularly interesting in all this is the fact that Eric Burns, Media Matters' president, was once a Fox News show host. For ten years, Eric Burns was the host of Fox News Watch, a roundtable discussion about the national news media that aired weekly. He was fired, according to a network spokesman because the ratings had slipped badly and the network wanted to take the show in a new direction, covering the internet. Fox didn't think Eric Burns could do that well, so they canned him.


Now, it would take a pair of common-sense blinders not to see that Eric Burns has a sour-grapes grievance against Fox News. By going over to Media Matters, he certainly has found a happy hunting ground gunning for his old employer, Fox.


Here's my big question: If a Republican President were acting in lockstep with a billionaire-financed 527 group in the rhetorical assassination of independent media organizations and individuals, wouldn't this be really hard-news news?


You betcha, it would.


So what we have here just might be bigger even than a vast left-wing conspiracy. It might actually be a President's bullhorn announcement that the end of free speech and a fully state-operated fourth estate (i.e., Pravda) is in the offing.


Now, who is shredding the Constitution for real?


Honestly, our founders are not merely turning in their graves over this. They're huddled in heaven screaming like banshees at the top of their lungs: "Americans, take back your Country now! Before it's too late."


Kyle-Anne Shiver is a frequent contributor to American Thinker and a syndicated columnist for Creators Syndicate.

4)The Latest Anti-Israel Stunt
By David Warren

The significance of Israel to the west is out of all proportion to her size and in direct relation to her place, on the front line. The country is unambiguously western, and not only her institutions but the way they operate leave no doubt of this. When, for instance, there are allegations that Israeli troops have committed crimes, in the course of military operations, there is an investigation. The contents and conclusions of that investigation are invariably made known. There will most certainly be open public discussion, and Israel's press is remarkably free.

The country is full of what we can easily recognize as "liberal" people, indeed more than to my taste, and I am frequently amazed that people who live within a mile of an enemy who obviously wants them dead, can blather on so glibly. I find it a source of discouragement: for at one level I had always assumed that "the prospect of a hanging concentrates the mind" -- that people whose minds have been scrambled by moral relativism must necessarily wake up, when their own extinction is in view. But no, they only turn in their sleep.

The significance of Israel is that she stands as a proxy for America and the West in the minds of our most lethal enemies.

In Islamist propaganda she is the "Little Satan," as the U.S. is the "Big Satan." And while there is plenty of blood-curdling anti-Semitism in Islamist pronouncements, there is also clarity about the long-term goal.

First destroy "the Jewish entity" of Israel, because she is exposed. Then destroy "the Christian entity."

The U.S. is held constantly in view as the ultimate target, to accomplish this; and the destruction of Israel is constantly presented as a means to it.

I've never noticed any subtlety in this propaganda. Whether it is rejected by the whole Arab and Muslim world -- whether that world secretly longs for peace and normal relations with Israel, as with America and the West -- is moot. The frontline states, around Israel, and all of the Arab regional powers, speak of the country only as a pariah.

Against this hard and seemingly inalterable background, western policies are made. The Camp David accords, more than a generation ago, promised real change in this background condition, falsely. Thirty years later, the Egyptian government has reverted to type and, quite frankly, they fear their own people too much to show the slightest public generosity towards Israel or Israelis (even if there is much co-operation behind the scenes).

It is against this background that we watched the latest anti-Israel stunt unfold in the United Nations, whose corrupt Human Rights Council -- loaded with some of the worst violators of real human rights on the planet -- commissioned the Goldstone report to advance the international battle against Israel.

This investigation of "war crimes," during the Israeli military campaign against Hamas in Gaza, was explicitly anti-Israel, for it began from the premise that a legitimate sovereign state, governing an open society, could be put on a level with a terrorist organization ruling a closed society.

The conclusion was cheaply, "both sides committed war crimes," but the open celebration of the report by Hamas, and outrage even from liberal elements in Israeli society, tells us what we need to know about it.

Richard Goldstone, the South African lawyer and judge, long a darling of the politically correct, was an inspired choice for the task: a man who is technically a Jew. He is a man who did well out of the old apartheid regime; who switched sides to do even better under the African National Congress.

He had, and retains, an appalling record for casually announcing very serious and consequential allegations, and then not bothering to follow up with evidence. His outrageous behaviour as prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia -- repeatedly announcing "grounds for prosecution" with sublime indifference to correct procedure, earned him condemnation from judges in the Hague.

His suggestion that Israel knowingly invaded Gaza not in order to attack the terrorist infrastructure of Hamas, but to inflict maximum harm on its defenceless people, by way of some scheme of "collective punishment" -- was of a type with his earlier performances.

The information in his report was overwhelmingly hearsay supplied from Hamas-controlled sources. But what was mostly insinuated in his report has now been formally declared by the sponsoring Human Rights Council, which tabled a resolution Friday to make Israel answerable to the International Criminal Court, for Goldstone's amorphous charges.

The U.S., which under the Obama administration has reversed Bush policy by actually joining and funding this HRC, of course voted against the resolution, but made no serious effort to defeat it. By refusing to withdraw from the council now, the U.S. government is again signalling its willingness to seek favour from its own worst enemies, by throwing Israel to the wolves.

5)Down with the dollar: Why the dollar is falling
From The Economist



ON MARCH 5th an index of the value of the American dollar against six other big currencies touched 89.11, its highest point this year. Since then, however, it has been a steady downward drift for the greenback. On Tuesday October 20th, for example, the dollar index had slipped to 75.24, its lowest point in more than a year.

This hardly constitutes an outright collapse, nor is it necessarily cause for concern. American exporters, whose goods have become more competitive abroad, are happy with their weaker currency. Similarly domestic producers may be cheered that rival, imported goods are more expensive. And European tourists, who can buy more for their euros during weekend shopping excursions to America, may cheer too. However, the continued decline of the dollar does come against a backdrop of ominous murmurs from the likes of China and Russia, who hold much of their reserves in dollars, about the need to shift their reserves out of the greenback. Brazil's imposition of a 2% levy on portfolio inflows is also a sign that other countries are getting nervous about seeing their currencies rise against the dollar.

Worries about the dollar are hardly new. Well before the credit crunch some fretted that a collapse in the currency and a jump in Treasury-bond yields, as foreigners balked at funding America’s current-account deficit, would precipitate an economic crisis. Instead sub-prime mortgages and over-leveraged financial institutions plunged the world into its worst recession since the Great Depresssion.

The recession, which reduced America’s imports as consumers tightened their belts, has improved its trade imbalance, shrinking its current-account deficit. But ironically this has been accompanied by renewed weakness for the dollar.

The simplest explanation for the currency’s decline is based on risk aversion. On the days when risky assets fall, the dollar tends to go up. When risky assets rise, the dollar falls. The dollar has fallen fairly steadily since March, a period which has seen stockmarkets enjoy a phenomenal rally. Domestic American investors may be driving the relationship, repatriating funds in 2008 when they were nervous about the state of financial markets and sending the money abroad again this summer because of a perception that the global economy is reviving.

But although risk aversion may be a factor, describing the dollar as a “safe haven” seems dubious. Indeed, the weakness of American fundamentals has revived the longstanding bearish case against the currency. Some cite the American budget deficit, expected to be 13.5% of GDP this year. There is little sign that the Obama administration has a plan to reduce it, and health-care reform may add to it.

But if foreign investors are so concerned, why is the dollar’s decline not accompanied by a sharp rise in bond yields? One reason may be that the Federal Reserve has been buying so much of the year’s debt issuance, as part of its quantitative easing programme. That has helped to keep yields down.

A simple dynamic may be at work: supply and demand. Last year the market was short of dollars because investors needed the American currency to meet their liquidity needs. This year QE is creating a surplus of dollars (and pounds) and is thus driving both currencies down.

The use of QE also creates a problem for central banks as they contemplate their exit strategies. An early abandonment of the approach could cause bond yields to rise sharply, unless there is an unexpectedly dramatic improvement in the fiscal position. But continuing QE could cause further currency weakness.

It is hard to see what the American authorities could do to bolster their currency even if they wanted to. Low yields offer little support to the dollar. The Fed seems highly unlikely to raise interest rates from their near-zero levels over the next 12 months or so.

But it is hard, also, to think of a parallel in history. A country heavily in debt to foreigners, with a government deficit it is making little headway at controlling, is creating vast amounts of additional currency. Yet it is allowed to get away with very low interest rates. Eventually such an arrangement must surely break down, bringing a new currency system into being, just as Bretton Woods emerged in the 1940s.

The absence of a credible alternative to the dollar means that, despite its declining value, its status as the world’s reserve currency is not seriously under threat. But the system could change in other ways. A world where currencies traded within bands, or where foreign creditors insist on America issuing some debt in other currencies, are all real possibilities as the world adjusts to a declining dollar.

5)At the top right hand corner of Page 17 of the New York Post of January 24th, 2009 was a short column entitled "Replacing Michelle," in the National Review "The Week" column. I found this interesting, so here it is, word for word, as it appeared:

Some employees are simply irreplaceable. Take Michelle Obama: The University of Chicago Medical center hired her in 2002 to run "programs for community relations, neighborhood outreach, volunteer recruitment, staff diversity and minority contracting.

In 2005 the hospital raised her salary from $120,000 to $317,000 - nearly twice what her husband made as a Senator.

Oh did we mention that her husband had just become a US Senator? He sure had. Requested a $1 million earmark for the UC Medical Center, in fact. Way to network Michelle!

But now that Mrs. Obama has resigned, the hospital says her position will remain unfilled. How can that be, if the work she did was vital enough to be worth $317,000?

Let me add that Michelle's position was a part time, 20 hour a week job. And to think they were critical of Blagoyovich' s wife for taking $100,000 in fuzzy real estate commission.

My thoughts: How did this bit of quid pro quo corruption escape the sharp reporters that dug through Sarah Palin's garbage and kindergarten files?
Unbelievable!