I am uninterested is going further into the ditch. What about you?---
Have posted the below before but always worth being reminded.
"Socialism is a philosophy of failure,
the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy,
its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.."
-- Winston Churchill
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Pissy fanny Sarkozy explains his pique over Netanyahu's slight and perhaps Bibi's own narrow mindedness? And these two men run entire nations? (See 1 below.)
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More intrigue and this time over Pakistan? (See 2 below.)
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Caroline Glick's recent op ed, which I posted, stating America was no longer Israel's ally is a bit over board and overstated. America remains Israel's ally because most Americans are Israel's ally. What Glick would have been more accurate in asking is whether Panetta and Clinton remain Israel's ally and whether Obama ever was? Based on Obama's policies and actions it is evident one can legitimately pose those two questions.
Based on Obama's past associations and personality he seems to always need a pinata to do battle with and Israel seems to have been his choice from the git go. The problem is that Obama made a crucial mistake in believing his bullying a trusted friend finds acceptance with Americans who remain basically fair minded and understand Israel is not to blame for much of the lack of co-operation with the Palestinians.
When Obama made settlements an issue out of naivety, since it had never been an issue before, he trapped himself into a corner of his own making and Obama being who he is lacks the intellectual and moral integrity to acknowledge his own culpability and stupidity. (See 3 and 3a below.)
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Prechter is a long time bear but I tend to agree with him this time. Too many headwinds down the road. (See 4 below.)
There is a price to that free lunch and that is no baloney! (See 4a below.)
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Dick
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1)Sarkozy says anger with Netanyahu caused by France's exclusion from Shalit release
French President explains events leading up to his 'Netanyahu is a liar' remark, says he was frustrated by Israel's refusal to use French helicopter to transport Shalit from Egypt to Israel.
By Barak Ravid
French President Nicolas Sarkozy was angry with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after Israel refused to include France in the release of abducted Israel Defense Forces soldier Gilad Shalit, the French leader recently explained to Jewish leaders, after he was overheard calling Netanyahu a 'liar' last month.
Sarkozy offered the explanation after he told U.S. President Barack Obama last month that he was fed up with dealing with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and considered him a liar.
He made the comment during a private conversation with Obama during a G20 summit in the French Riviera town of Cannes and the remarks were overheard by a small number of journalists.
According to an Israeli official, Sarkozy told Jewish leaders two weeks ago that his anger with Netanyahu was caused by events surrounding the deal to secure Gilad Shalit's release.
Sarkozy offered Netanyahu that a French helicopter will fly Shalit from Egypt to the Israeli air base of Tel Nof upon his release from Hamas custody - a helicopter carrier from the French navy that was in the area was already on-call - but Netanyahu rejected the offer.
Moreover, Élysée Palace requested that the French ambassador to Israel, Christophe Bigot, participate in the welcoming ceremony for Gilad Shalit at Tel Nof, but Israel also refused that offer.
Sarkozy was very frustrated by Israel's refusal, the official said, as well as by the fact that France did not get any credit for Shalit's release. He explained that France deserved to be part of the celebrations of Shalit's release since the abducted IDF soldier also holds French citizenship, as well as due to his personal efforts to secure Shalit's release.
According to the Israeli official, Sarkozy's frustration intensified when Israel did give credit not only to the Egyptian mediators but also to the German negotiators, who were involved in the early stages of the negotiations on the prisoner swap deal.
In recent weeks, French officials turned to the Israeli embassy in Paris and asked that Israel make a symbolic gesture toward France in the second phase of the Shalit deal. They asked that Israel consider releasing the Palestinian-French prisoner Salah Hamouri, a PFLP member who was arrested in 2005 for planning to shoot Shas spiritual leader Ovadia Yosef in Jerusalem.
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2)Rumors of 'silent coup' as Pakistan President Zardari heads to hospital
Aides to President Zardari rubbish the rumors, which have quickly gained credibility among the Pakistani public because of the perception that this government is on its last legs.
By Issam Ahmed
Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari has travelled to Dubai for medical treatment, according to top government officials who rubbished reports in the Pakistani media he is about to resign.
Spokesperson Farahnaz Ispahani, who travelled with the president by helicopter yesterday evening, told the Monitor that rumors of Mr. Zardari’s impending resignation were “absolute nonsense,” adding he had gone for a “routine procedure.” Sherry Rehman, ambassador-designate to the United States, who saw the president off in Islamabad on Tuesday evening, says “he needs a check-up and some rest.”
Still, Zardari’s sudden departure has sparked frenzied speculation inside Pakistan about the possibility of a “silent coup.” The theory holds that the unpopular president – who was due to address parliament about a controversial memo allegedly sent by one of his close aides that sought US help in reining in Pakistan’s powerful Army – would step aside citing “ill health,” paving the way for new leadership more acceptable to the military.
RECOMMENDED US aid in Pakistan: Where's the money going?
According to Badar Alam, editor of Pakistan’s Herald magazine, the rumors have quickly gained credibility among the public because of the perception that this government is on its last legs.
“Look at what has happened in the last two months. The memo scandal, last month’s NATO border attack, corruption cases against the government in the Supreme Court, the opposition rallies in the streets, and reports of pressure within the ruling party. All these create an atmosphere of uncertainty,” he says.
“I don’t know who is behind the rumors. But they definitely weaken the government further. It creates an image of instability in the country and gives the impression that anything can happen at any time,” he adds.
President Zardari was voted in to power in 2008 following Pakistan’s return to democracy after almost nine years of military-led rule. His late wife, Benazir Bhutto, had led the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) until her assassination in 2007.
Since then, he has ruled in an uneasy relationship with Pakistan’s military brass, who retain defacto control over national security and foreign policy issues, yet allow the civilian government to provide a democratic “veneer” to the outside world.
While the Army’s popularity remains steady, Zardari’s has plummeted owing partly to a series of corruption related scandals. And if the Army generals believe he was actively working against their interests, their patience may run out, says Mr. Alam.
“As long as the military thinks the PPP are of use, the relationship works. The moment they realize they are becoming a part of the problem they will just ditch them,” he says.
A large part of the fears of a coup are derived from a story published in Foreign Policy’s "The Cable" blog yesterday, which cited a former US official as saying there is a growing expectation within the US government that Zardari is on the way out.
He also described Zardari as “incoherent” in a phone call between US President Obama and Zardari that he claimed to have access to over the weekend. Analysts within Pakistan question whether a former official would be privy to a conversation held between the US president and another head of state.
Alam expects Zardari will not address his resignation rumors directly, but will continue to have aides dismiss the claims. “If he’s astute he won’t say a word and his aides will continue doing the job. Maybe you’ll see an image of him meeting an official, being presidential.”
While Zardari is away in Dubai, his 23-year-old son Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari, the PPP’s co-chairman, who is being groomed for future leadership, and Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani remain in Islamabad.
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3)Obama's Brinksmanship on Iran
By James Lewis
Caroline Glick just wrote in the Jerusalem Post that "Under Obama, the US is no longer Israel's ally."
That is the most important headline to come out of the Middle East in my lifetime. We are no longer Israel's ally. It's obviously true. Just read the news with an open mind. You'll see it.
At the same time, two Iranian military bases have just mysteriously exploded, destroying nearly 400 ballistic missiles and vaporizing the chief of Iran's missile program, one Hassan Moghadam. Nobody knows whether it was computer malware, internal sabotage, or a stealth missile. Chances are, however, that historians will date the start of a major military conflict with Iran from this time in history.
Nobody declares official war any more. When U.S. forces went into combat in Libya, Republicans demanded that Obama notify the U.S. Congress. He just laughed at them. The media said nothing. The U.S. Constitution means nothing to his crowd.
When military malware like Stuxnet can explode missile bases, the line between covert and open war has disappeared. Any Iranian technician who touches a missile these days had better say his prayers, because he cannot know if the electronics are infected to kill him.
Every time the Iranians think they've cleaned out the Stuxnet or Duqu virus, something else goes kaboom! Like a biological virus, these things are mutating and hiding, ready to come out on command to sabotage something big.
My question is: why did Obama and the Israelis wait until this moment? If we had these capabilities last year or five years ago, why not stop the Iranian maniacs from getting close to keeping the world at gunpoint? Why wait until five minutes to midnight?
In Cold War lingo we are seeing "brinksmanship," the idea of walking a tightrope at the very brink of nuclear war to scare the daylights out of an enemy. Obama is letting Iran get so close to the brink that he must have a purpose. I believe that purpose is to intimidate Israel into making otherwise unacceptable concessions. Leon Panetta and Hillary just twisted the rope again.
I'm not surprised that there's sabotage at those missile sites. Since the Khomeinist regime has threatened a Second Holocaust for thirty years, I just wonder what they've been waiting for. It's not just Israel that's threatened. Any nuclear exchange will involve the United States within minutes or seconds -- to defend the Saudis and Gulf oil, for one thing. To protect U.S. troops in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Gulf, and naval fleets on constant patrol near Iran. In the daily chant taught to millions of Iranian schoolchildren, the phrase "Death to America!" comes right after "Death to Israel!" The young people of Iran's Green Revolution turned that into satire by chanting back "Death to China!" "Death to Russia!" But the mullahs and their robotic followers are fanatics, and they say what they mean.
In a world of space-orbiting missiles, the same ICBMs can hit Tel Aviv, Riyadh, London, or Washington. Iran is launching satellites with the same missiles they can use to launch nukes. When another one goes into orbit, who is to say what's inside? You can disguise nukes as satellites until the moment when they come down.
It's just 15 or 20 minutes' difference between Tel Aviv and New York City. Human beings can't make life-or-death decisions in twenty minutes.
That is why six decades of the Cold War were waged to avoid direct nuclear confrontation. We fought proxy wars in Korea, Vietnam, and the Middle East, but the U.S. and the Soviet Union carefully avoided any direct conflict with other nuclear powers in the entire Cold War.
And yet -- in the case of Iran, we are risking a direct nuclear exchange as soon as they get their bomb. They've got the missiles. They've got miniaturized warheads. They are within months of an actual weapon, and nobody knows how close they are. The CIA has always been wrong in predicting nuclear weapons, starting with Stalin. They are batting a perfect zero.
We are therefore taking a strategic risk we never took in six decades of the Cold War.
Why?
Glick is obviously right that under Obama, the United States is no longer an ally of Israel. But that doesn't mean the Arabs can rely on us either. If you think the Saudis trust us today, after Obama overthrew their biggest Arab protector, Egypt, think again. If you think the Saudis trust the rising Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, why is there massive capital flight from Arab countries to safe havens like Switzerland?
The bloodiest war in the last half-century was fought between two Muslim powers, Khomeini's Iran and Saddam Hussein's Iraq. It killed a million people. The Sunnis have fought the Shiites for a thousand years; they consider each other enemies of God. The Turks, Arabs, and Persians have fought endless wars for ethnic, cultural, religious, ideological, and nationalist reasons.
Once Obama ran a wild bull through the china shop of the Middle East, nobody could know what would happen. No Arab leader has trusted us since Obama demanded that the president of Egypt resign. Nor do the revolutionaries trust us. To the radicals we are infidels, and that includes Obama, because he does not practice Islam. Obama may even be considered a traitor to Islam, and therefore worse than an infidel.
The Arab Spring is a fraud and a fiasco, leading to an estimated 25,000 Arab dead, with more dying every day in places like Syria.
Well, an American president has now elevated the extreme radicals of the Muslim Brotherhood to power over Egypt, just as Jimmy Carter raised extreme radicals to power in Iran thirty years ago. How did that work out for ya?
In Turkey, a "neo-Ottoman" regime is in control, threatening war against Israel and the Greek half of Cyprus.
America and the West have actually colluded in the radicalization of the Muslim Middle East, a clearly suicidal policy. Overthrowing stable regimes in a chaotic region of the world is a Leninist policy predicated on the idea that things must get worse to get better. Such a belief has no basis in fact or reason. It is a malignant fantasy.
The United States has therefore flipped against the only democracy in the Middle East, precisely as Obama and his radical allies have long said they wanted. This is not an accident.
Obama's nuclear brinksmanship has to be political. This administration wants to twist Israel's arms to the breaking point. Obama has publicly demanded that Israel retreat to the 1949 ceasefire lines, left over from the War of Independence. This is like telling the United States to retreat to the Thirteen Colonies. It's a cover story for national suicide.
Leon Panetta just repeated that demand, in case somebody didn't get it.
That is why Caroline Glick is telling the plain truth:"Under Obama, the US is no longer Israel's ally." But then, we are nobody's ally anymore. No sane person in the Middle East wants a radical martyrdom regime in Tehran with nukes. Nobody.
Obama's gamble is enormous; not since Yalta has an American president sold out so many allies.
But then, Obama has a Napoleon complex. He has a deep emotional need to be worshiped by millions of people. Napoleon was willing to invade all of Europe to satisfy his lust for glory. French politicians like Dominique de Villepin still celebrate Napoleon's imperialism.
But no American president has ever acted this way, because they all believed in this country. They didn't need to conquer the world.
Obama is an internationalist, like his professors, political allies, and friends. Like the other Democrats today, who are now a radical leftist party. Obama doesn't think like other American presidents ever have.
Like Islam, the radical left wants total control. When they gabble about love and peace it's always with a mental reservation: love and peace after we take over.
This is a common teenage fantasy, of course, which is why the left is always renewing itself with ignorant teenagers who are easy to indoctrinate.
The left is a very ancient ideology, going back long before Karl Marx to the earliest imperial cults in history: China, Sumer, Egypt. It's an adolescent fantasy that comes back in every generation. Those adolescent fantasies explain the Occupy mobsters, made up of mental kids who can't say what they want out loud, because they knew it will sound ridiculous. But those fantasies are driving them to poop all over our cities.
That's what you get when you fail to civilize a whole generation. That's why Ronald Reagan said that the same battle has to be fought every twenty years.
The Bamster is a child who's never grown up, and his immature fantasies have been supported by all his professors and friends. Bill Ayers' last book cover photo showed him stomping on an American flag with his dirty hippie boots. He's never grown up, either, and nobody can make him. The left is full of perpetual adolescents.
Which bring us back to the Iran War. There is something terribly wrong, morally, about the nuclear brinkmanship emanating from this White House. We are gambling with the lives of millions to realize the Napoleonic fantasies of an accidental president. The phony "Arab Spring" has already killed tens of thousands, and the White House shows no sign of remorse. The Muslim Brotherhood is winning in Egypt, and the White House shows no remorse. Iran is within months of a nuclear explosion, but the United States is blaming the victim.
What's wrong with this picture?
I still have to believe that sanity will prevail in the end. The Russians can't want radical Muslims with nuclear missiles next to their southern border. Neither do the Saudis (who belong to a different Sunni sect), or even the Muslim Brotherhood rulers of the new Egypt -- which will look amazingly like that old, tyrannized Egypt of 1900. The neo-Ottoman Turks don't really want a nuclear Persia next door.
No sane person wants it, and it's quite possible for a U.S.-Russian alliance to arise against the danger. Jozef Stalin hated the capitalist West, but he hated Hitler more. The prospect of hanging concentrates the mind wonderfully.
But the real question is why Barack Hussein Obama is gambling with the fate of millions of people to drive us this close to nuclear breakout.
What will he do with four more years?
I shudder to think
3a)Alexander's Essay:
Obama Has Found Jesus!
God was AWOL until December's job approval polls
"He who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and a third time, till at length it becomes habitual; he tells lies without attending to it, and truths without the world's believing him. This falsehood of the tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all its good disposition." --Thomas Jefferson (1785)
Just in time for the "holiday season," Barack Hussein Obama has apparently found Jesus. More likely, he read the most recent presidential approval poll, which indicated that his weakest demographic is composed of those who attend church regularly and, conversely, that his strongest is composed of those who don't.
At the lighting of the National Christmas Tree (no, it's not the National Holiday Tree, yet), Obama sermonized: "More than 2,000 years ago, a child was born to two faithful travelers who could find rest only in a stable, among the cattle and the sheep. But this was not just any child. Christ's birth made the angels rejoice and attracted shepherds and kings from afar. He was a manifestation of God's love for us. And He grew up to become a leader with a servant's heart who taught us a message as simple as it is powerful: that we should love God, and love our neighbor as ourselves."
Obama then claimed, "That teaching ... lies at the heart of my Christian faith."
Now, that assertion will cause a few folks some heartburn -- those folks who are convinced he is a Muslim at heart. They would be wrong, however. Obama doesn't worship Allah.
Others might read his words as a genuine profession of Christian devotion to Jesus Christ. But they also would be wrong. Obama doesn't worship Jesus, either.
Post your opinion: What defines Obama's faith?
So, whom does he worship?
Obama idolizes the altar of his own reflection. He is a consummate textbook pathological narcissist, whose circle of key advisers, according an administration insider, consists of a small group of "those who are his own reflection." He manifests a messianic complex, as do many narcissists who believe they are destined to become a savior of the masses.
As for what "lies at the heart of [his] Christian faith," the key word is "lies." Obama's claim of Christian roots is as disingenuous as his bogus White House bio, which asserts, "His story is the American story -- values from the heartland, a middle-class upbringing in a strong family..."
Obama was raised by atheists and his only tie to a "church" was as a disciple of hate. Up until the day he announced his presidential aspirations, his "spiritual mentor" was Jeremiah Wright, whose Afrocentric Liberation Theology focused on black supremacist doctrine and "social gospel" Marxism, the motto of which was "G-d Damn America." Wright officiated at Obama's wedding, baptized his two daughters and provided the inspiration for the title of Obama's book, "The Audacity of Hope."
Obama is Wright's protégé, but Wright knew Obama would "have to publicly distance himself from me. I said it to Barack personally, and he said 'Yeah, that might have to happen.'"
Post your opinion: What drives Obama's hatred for America?
Obama concluded his remarks by instructing his subjects, "So long as the gifts and the parties are happening, it's important for us to keep in mind the central message of this season, and keep Christ's words not only in our thoughts, but also in our deeds."
Lovely sentiments, whoever wrote them, but they are certainly not a reflection of Obama's faith as evidenced through his deeds.
I suggest that Obama "found Jesus" for this National Christmas Tree photo op, not only because of the implications of his weak support among those who are faithful, but because just two weeks ago when he delivered his Thanksgiving message, he failed to mention "God" at all.
That omission was particularly odd, because the institution of our National Thanksgiving Day by our Founders was expressly for the purpose of giving due thanks to God.
George Washington's first Thanksgiving proclamation read, in part, "I do recommend and assign Thursday ... next to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be." (October 3, 1789)
The covenant established by the Pilgrims that is most often associated with Thanksgiving, the Mayflower Compact, includes these words in its opening sentences: "In the name of God, Amen. We ... by the Grace of God ... Having undertaken for the Glory of God, and Advancement of the Christian Faith..."
To be fair, Obama did note "how truly lucky we truly are."
Perhaps Obama could best define his interest in Christianity by devoting his next national sermon to the topics of false prophets and hypocrites?
He could begin with an Old Testament reading from Jeremiah: "The prophets are prophesying lies in my name. I have not sent them or appointed them or spoken to them. They are prophesying to you false visions, divinations, idolatries and the delusions of their own minds. They fill you with false hopes."
Then he could focus on a New Testament reading from the Sermon on the Mount as recorded in Matthew: "Thus, when you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by others. ... And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others."
Unfortunately, like most cult adherents of charismatic charlatans, Obama's sycophantic disciples are not capable of discerning the underlying implication of such a sermon.
Clearly, Obama is concerned about retaining the throne to his kingdom.
In one speech last week, he said, "I've got to win in 2012. ... In order to finish the job, I'm going to have to have a second term. ... I need a couple more years to finish the job. ... I'm going to need another term to finish the job. ... I'm going to need a few more years to finish the job."
Apparently, in pursuit of that goal, his hypocrisy knows no limits.
Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus et Fidelis!
Libertas aut Mortis!
Mark Alexander
Publisher, The Patriot Post
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4)Robert Prechter: Bear Market for Stocks Isn’t Over
By Dan Weil
The stock-market drop that began in 2007 hasn’t yet run its course, despite the fact that the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index has rebounded 88 percent from its March 2009 low, says stock guru Robert Prechter.
The founder of Elliott Wave International compares the current environment to the 1929-33 period. Back then, the nation’s biggest commercial banks sought to stop the stock market’s drop.
“They failed, and it ultimately went down very hard," Prechter tells Yahoo. Similarly in 2007-09, central banks sought to stem the stock plunge. “That didn’t stop the market from going down 50 percent-plus,” he says.
From its October 2007 peak to its March 2009 trough, the S&P 500 dropped 58 percent.
“As we’ve seen in the last five years, they [central banks] have failed to keep things afloat, because all they have to offer is credit,” he says.
So the outlook now is negative for stocks, Prechter maintains.
“All the technical indicators agree, whether I’m looking at patterns, sentiment indicators, or momentum indicators,” he says. “This is a bear-market rally, and the bear market isn’t over. There’s another wave coming, so you want to be cautious.”
With the S&P 500 up 17 percent since Oct. 4, many investors don’t share Prechter’s bearishness.
Billionaire Ken Fisher is one of them. "I've been net neutral on the market this year, and I believe 2012 will be a very much nicer year," he says, according to Reuters.
4a)Democrat Economic Illiteracy Has Consequences
By DAVID CATRON on 12.8.11 @ 6:09AM
Obamaworld's breathtaking ignorance about "the dismal science" is dangerous.
The Secretary of Labor, Hilda Solis, visited Capitol Hill last week and claimed that the unemployment rate will increase if Congress fails to extend the eligibility period for federal unemployment benefits. My first reaction to this Orwellian assertion was a quiet chuckle. Then it dawned on me that most Democrats will believe this nonsense. These are, after all, people who believed that health care would be made cheaper by a law that increases demand for medical services while reducing the supply of health care providers. Most would agree with the claim, made by journalist-cum-cheerleader Jonathan Alter, that Obama's economic stimulus package "prevented another Great Depression." I realized, in other words, that ignorance about economics is so pervasive among Democrats that it is less funny than dangerous.
That Democrats are generally illiterate about basic economics is not a matter of mere conjecture. In 2010, Daniel B. Klein and Zeljka Buturovic analyzed answers provided by a random sample of 4,835 Americans to a list of eight questions about economics. The results, which noted the party affiliation of the respondents, were not flattering to our friends on the left. "Those responding Democratic averaged 4.59 incorrect answers. Republicans averaged 1.61 incorrect, and Libertarians 1.26 incorrect." And these were not arcane questions. They involved elementary concepts, like the effect of price controls, covered in any Econ 101 course taught at the lowliest community college and even some of the better high schools. Yet the average Democrat respondent got nearly 60 percent of the answers wrong.
It is precisely this kind of ignorance that led so many Democrats to believe Obamacare would somehow render health care less expensive. One of the first items covered in any introductory economics course is that the price of any good or service will rise if the quantity demanded increases without an accompanying increase in the available supply of that commodity. Nonetheless, it held no message for the average Democrat that the supply side of the equation was ignored by "reform," though it increased the number of patients in the health system as well as the range of services to which they are entitled. The issue of supply and demand was utterly lost on Obamacare's Democrat supporters. Thus, at the time of its passage, fully 78 percent of them favored the law. Even now, 52 percent still support it.
Democrat cluelessness notwithstanding, the laws of supply and demand continue to operate. In fact, even the Obama administration has produced a report showing that "reform" will increase health care costs faster than would have been the case in its absence. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) recently forecast that "Total spending is projected to grow annually by 5.8 percent under Mr. Obama's Affordable Care Act…. Without the ACA, spending would grow at a slightly slower rate of 5.7 percent annually." Survey after survey has shown that one of the primary benefits Americans wanted from health reform was lower costs. Due to Democrat illiteracy in economics, however, Congress has produced a "reform" law that actually makes medical care more expensive.
Even if Obamacare didn't ignore the laws of supply and demand, a rudimentary understanding of economics should have alerted any educated observer that it was going to be disastrous for the country because it creates perverse incentives that discourage job growth. The law arbitrarily increases the cost of hiring and keeping employees. George Will recently provided an example of how this works, citing a California-based business called CKE Restaurants. Obamacare will add about $18 million to its costs: "Obamacare must mean fewer restaurants. And therefore fewer jobs. Each restaurant creates, on average, 25 jobs -- and as much as 3.5 times that number of jobs in the community (CKE spends about $1 billion a year on food and paper products, $175 million on advertising, $33 million on maintenance, etc.)."
In other words, the job losses at CKE are accompanied by collateral losses in the communities they serve. This phenomenon is being replicated all across the country. And yet most Democrats seem to be as blissfully unaware of this tragedy as they are of the impotence of the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act of 2009 (ARRA). Like Obamacare, this legislation is actually producing the opposite of its intended effect. The "stimulus" package is rendering the economy more flaccid than it would be if the law had never been passed. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has now admitted that the additional debt added by ARRA "will reduce output slightly in the long run." Yet, last week, we witnessed the grotesque spectacle of the President dancing in the end zone because unemployment has at long last dropped below 9 percent.
According to Secretary Solis, this long-overdue decrease in the unemployment number means that "The policies this administration has pursued are adding jobs back into the economy." Not everyone concurs. NPR reports: "[E]conomists say one reason [the rate] fell isn't good news -- the size of the labor force shrank by 315,000 as more people stopped looking for work because they're discouraged about the chances of finding a job." And if you doubt the veracity of those notorious wingnuts at NPR, Gallup also suggests that the "improvement" was illusory : "Job market conditions in the United States were flat in November, as Gallup's Job Creation Index remained at +14, similar to the range seen since May. This is another indication that Friday's sharp drop to 8.6% in the government's U.S. unemployment rate may be overstated."
Nonetheless, the President, congressional Democrats and most of the "news" media celebrated the modest drop in the official jobless percentage with a level of glee reminiscent of V-E Day. The New York Times, for example, breathlessly announced, "Somehow the American economy appears to be getting better, even as the rest of the world is looking worse." Predictably, the Times went on to promote the White House party line on the extension of unemployment payments: "Unemployment benefits are believed to have one of the most stimulative effects on the economy, because recipients are likely to spend all of the money they receive quickly and pump more spending through the economy." The only people who "believe" this are, of course, Democrat supporters of the President and his accomplices in Congress.
In reality, consumer spending doesn't stimulate the economy. This is a Keynesian canard that was long ago debunked in theory and by actual experience. It is production that stimulates the U.S. or any other economy. This is the inconvenient fact that doomed ARRA and it is what makes the Labor Secretary's assertion so laughable. Extending the eligibility period for federal unemployment benefits will do nothing for what Democrats and the Media hilariously refer to as the economy. But it will have an effect. Like Obamacare and the "stimulus" package, it will produce the opposite of its intended effect. Another lesson one learns in Econ 101 is that, when you subsidize something, you get more of it. So, if unemployment benefits are extended, it will produce more rather than less unemployment.
And yet our Labor Secretary is by no means the first of Obama's minions to tell us that unemployment payments somehow create jobs. Last summer White House Press Secretary Jay Carney claimed it would create a million jobs. Solis, Carney, and the Democrats on Capitol Hill who are now singing the same refrain are -- one prays -- not dumb enough to believe this stuff. But their supporters do, and that's what makes them dangerous. If their ignorance about economics causes them to give President Obama another four years in the White House, the irresponsible policies of his administration may well convert a severe recession into a worldwide depression that will dwarf the disaster of the 1930s and perhaps even reproduce the horrific consequences that followed thereon.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
David Catron is a health care revenue cycle expert who has spent more than twenty years working for and consulting with hospitals and medical practices. He has an MBA from the University of Georgia and blogs at Health Care BS.
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Have posted the below before but always worth being reminded.
"Socialism is a philosophy of failure,
the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy,
its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.."
-- Winston Churchill
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Pissy fanny Sarkozy explains his pique over Netanyahu's slight and perhaps Bibi's own narrow mindedness? And these two men run entire nations? (See 1 below.)
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More intrigue and this time over Pakistan? (See 2 below.)
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Caroline Glick's recent op ed, which I posted, stating America was no longer Israel's ally is a bit over board and overstated. America remains Israel's ally because most Americans are Israel's ally. What Glick would have been more accurate in asking is whether Panetta and Clinton remain Israel's ally and whether Obama ever was? Based on Obama's policies and actions it is evident one can legitimately pose those two questions.
Based on Obama's past associations and personality he seems to always need a pinata to do battle with and Israel seems to have been his choice from the git go. The problem is that Obama made a crucial mistake in believing his bullying a trusted friend finds acceptance with Americans who remain basically fair minded and understand Israel is not to blame for much of the lack of co-operation with the Palestinians.
When Obama made settlements an issue out of naivety, since it had never been an issue before, he trapped himself into a corner of his own making and Obama being who he is lacks the intellectual and moral integrity to acknowledge his own culpability and stupidity. (See 3 and 3a below.)
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Prechter is a long time bear but I tend to agree with him this time. Too many headwinds down the road. (See 4 below.)
There is a price to that free lunch and that is no baloney! (See 4a below.)
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Dick
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1)Sarkozy says anger with Netanyahu caused by France's exclusion from Shalit release
French President explains events leading up to his 'Netanyahu is a liar' remark, says he was frustrated by Israel's refusal to use French helicopter to transport Shalit from Egypt to Israel.
By Barak Ravid
French President Nicolas Sarkozy was angry with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after Israel refused to include France in the release of abducted Israel Defense Forces soldier Gilad Shalit, the French leader recently explained to Jewish leaders, after he was overheard calling Netanyahu a 'liar' last month.
Sarkozy offered the explanation after he told U.S. President Barack Obama last month that he was fed up with dealing with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and considered him a liar.
He made the comment during a private conversation with Obama during a G20 summit in the French Riviera town of Cannes and the remarks were overheard by a small number of journalists.
According to an Israeli official, Sarkozy told Jewish leaders two weeks ago that his anger with Netanyahu was caused by events surrounding the deal to secure Gilad Shalit's release.
Sarkozy offered Netanyahu that a French helicopter will fly Shalit from Egypt to the Israeli air base of Tel Nof upon his release from Hamas custody - a helicopter carrier from the French navy that was in the area was already on-call - but Netanyahu rejected the offer.
Moreover, Élysée Palace requested that the French ambassador to Israel, Christophe Bigot, participate in the welcoming ceremony for Gilad Shalit at Tel Nof, but Israel also refused that offer.
Sarkozy was very frustrated by Israel's refusal, the official said, as well as by the fact that France did not get any credit for Shalit's release. He explained that France deserved to be part of the celebrations of Shalit's release since the abducted IDF soldier also holds French citizenship, as well as due to his personal efforts to secure Shalit's release.
According to the Israeli official, Sarkozy's frustration intensified when Israel did give credit not only to the Egyptian mediators but also to the German negotiators, who were involved in the early stages of the negotiations on the prisoner swap deal.
In recent weeks, French officials turned to the Israeli embassy in Paris and asked that Israel make a symbolic gesture toward France in the second phase of the Shalit deal. They asked that Israel consider releasing the Palestinian-French prisoner Salah Hamouri, a PFLP member who was arrested in 2005 for planning to shoot Shas spiritual leader Ovadia Yosef in Jerusalem.
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2)Rumors of 'silent coup' as Pakistan President Zardari heads to hospital
Aides to President Zardari rubbish the rumors, which have quickly gained credibility among the Pakistani public because of the perception that this government is on its last legs.
By Issam Ahmed
Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari has travelled to Dubai for medical treatment, according to top government officials who rubbished reports in the Pakistani media he is about to resign.
Spokesperson Farahnaz Ispahani, who travelled with the president by helicopter yesterday evening, told the Monitor that rumors of Mr. Zardari’s impending resignation were “absolute nonsense,” adding he had gone for a “routine procedure.” Sherry Rehman, ambassador-designate to the United States, who saw the president off in Islamabad on Tuesday evening, says “he needs a check-up and some rest.”
Still, Zardari’s sudden departure has sparked frenzied speculation inside Pakistan about the possibility of a “silent coup.” The theory holds that the unpopular president – who was due to address parliament about a controversial memo allegedly sent by one of his close aides that sought US help in reining in Pakistan’s powerful Army – would step aside citing “ill health,” paving the way for new leadership more acceptable to the military.
RECOMMENDED US aid in Pakistan: Where's the money going?
According to Badar Alam, editor of Pakistan’s Herald magazine, the rumors have quickly gained credibility among the public because of the perception that this government is on its last legs.
“Look at what has happened in the last two months. The memo scandal, last month’s NATO border attack, corruption cases against the government in the Supreme Court, the opposition rallies in the streets, and reports of pressure within the ruling party. All these create an atmosphere of uncertainty,” he says.
“I don’t know who is behind the rumors. But they definitely weaken the government further. It creates an image of instability in the country and gives the impression that anything can happen at any time,” he adds.
President Zardari was voted in to power in 2008 following Pakistan’s return to democracy after almost nine years of military-led rule. His late wife, Benazir Bhutto, had led the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) until her assassination in 2007.
Since then, he has ruled in an uneasy relationship with Pakistan’s military brass, who retain defacto control over national security and foreign policy issues, yet allow the civilian government to provide a democratic “veneer” to the outside world.
While the Army’s popularity remains steady, Zardari’s has plummeted owing partly to a series of corruption related scandals. And if the Army generals believe he was actively working against their interests, their patience may run out, says Mr. Alam.
“As long as the military thinks the PPP are of use, the relationship works. The moment they realize they are becoming a part of the problem they will just ditch them,” he says.
A large part of the fears of a coup are derived from a story published in Foreign Policy’s "The Cable" blog yesterday, which cited a former US official as saying there is a growing expectation within the US government that Zardari is on the way out.
He also described Zardari as “incoherent” in a phone call between US President Obama and Zardari that he claimed to have access to over the weekend. Analysts within Pakistan question whether a former official would be privy to a conversation held between the US president and another head of state.
Alam expects Zardari will not address his resignation rumors directly, but will continue to have aides dismiss the claims. “If he’s astute he won’t say a word and his aides will continue doing the job. Maybe you’ll see an image of him meeting an official, being presidential.”
While Zardari is away in Dubai, his 23-year-old son Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari, the PPP’s co-chairman, who is being groomed for future leadership, and Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani remain in Islamabad.
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3)Obama's Brinksmanship on Iran
By James Lewis
Caroline Glick just wrote in the Jerusalem Post that "Under Obama, the US is no longer Israel's ally."
That is the most important headline to come out of the Middle East in my lifetime. We are no longer Israel's ally. It's obviously true. Just read the news with an open mind. You'll see it.
At the same time, two Iranian military bases have just mysteriously exploded, destroying nearly 400 ballistic missiles and vaporizing the chief of Iran's missile program, one Hassan Moghadam. Nobody knows whether it was computer malware, internal sabotage, or a stealth missile. Chances are, however, that historians will date the start of a major military conflict with Iran from this time in history.
Nobody declares official war any more. When U.S. forces went into combat in Libya, Republicans demanded that Obama notify the U.S. Congress. He just laughed at them. The media said nothing. The U.S. Constitution means nothing to his crowd.
When military malware like Stuxnet can explode missile bases, the line between covert and open war has disappeared. Any Iranian technician who touches a missile these days had better say his prayers, because he cannot know if the electronics are infected to kill him.
Every time the Iranians think they've cleaned out the Stuxnet or Duqu virus, something else goes kaboom! Like a biological virus, these things are mutating and hiding, ready to come out on command to sabotage something big.
My question is: why did Obama and the Israelis wait until this moment? If we had these capabilities last year or five years ago, why not stop the Iranian maniacs from getting close to keeping the world at gunpoint? Why wait until five minutes to midnight?
In Cold War lingo we are seeing "brinksmanship," the idea of walking a tightrope at the very brink of nuclear war to scare the daylights out of an enemy. Obama is letting Iran get so close to the brink that he must have a purpose. I believe that purpose is to intimidate Israel into making otherwise unacceptable concessions. Leon Panetta and Hillary just twisted the rope again.
I'm not surprised that there's sabotage at those missile sites. Since the Khomeinist regime has threatened a Second Holocaust for thirty years, I just wonder what they've been waiting for. It's not just Israel that's threatened. Any nuclear exchange will involve the United States within minutes or seconds -- to defend the Saudis and Gulf oil, for one thing. To protect U.S. troops in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Gulf, and naval fleets on constant patrol near Iran. In the daily chant taught to millions of Iranian schoolchildren, the phrase "Death to America!" comes right after "Death to Israel!" The young people of Iran's Green Revolution turned that into satire by chanting back "Death to China!" "Death to Russia!" But the mullahs and their robotic followers are fanatics, and they say what they mean.
In a world of space-orbiting missiles, the same ICBMs can hit Tel Aviv, Riyadh, London, or Washington. Iran is launching satellites with the same missiles they can use to launch nukes. When another one goes into orbit, who is to say what's inside? You can disguise nukes as satellites until the moment when they come down.
It's just 15 or 20 minutes' difference between Tel Aviv and New York City. Human beings can't make life-or-death decisions in twenty minutes.
That is why six decades of the Cold War were waged to avoid direct nuclear confrontation. We fought proxy wars in Korea, Vietnam, and the Middle East, but the U.S. and the Soviet Union carefully avoided any direct conflict with other nuclear powers in the entire Cold War.
And yet -- in the case of Iran, we are risking a direct nuclear exchange as soon as they get their bomb. They've got the missiles. They've got miniaturized warheads. They are within months of an actual weapon, and nobody knows how close they are. The CIA has always been wrong in predicting nuclear weapons, starting with Stalin. They are batting a perfect zero.
We are therefore taking a strategic risk we never took in six decades of the Cold War.
Why?
Glick is obviously right that under Obama, the United States is no longer an ally of Israel. But that doesn't mean the Arabs can rely on us either. If you think the Saudis trust us today, after Obama overthrew their biggest Arab protector, Egypt, think again. If you think the Saudis trust the rising Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, why is there massive capital flight from Arab countries to safe havens like Switzerland?
The bloodiest war in the last half-century was fought between two Muslim powers, Khomeini's Iran and Saddam Hussein's Iraq. It killed a million people. The Sunnis have fought the Shiites for a thousand years; they consider each other enemies of God. The Turks, Arabs, and Persians have fought endless wars for ethnic, cultural, religious, ideological, and nationalist reasons.
Once Obama ran a wild bull through the china shop of the Middle East, nobody could know what would happen. No Arab leader has trusted us since Obama demanded that the president of Egypt resign. Nor do the revolutionaries trust us. To the radicals we are infidels, and that includes Obama, because he does not practice Islam. Obama may even be considered a traitor to Islam, and therefore worse than an infidel.
The Arab Spring is a fraud and a fiasco, leading to an estimated 25,000 Arab dead, with more dying every day in places like Syria.
Well, an American president has now elevated the extreme radicals of the Muslim Brotherhood to power over Egypt, just as Jimmy Carter raised extreme radicals to power in Iran thirty years ago. How did that work out for ya?
In Turkey, a "neo-Ottoman" regime is in control, threatening war against Israel and the Greek half of Cyprus.
America and the West have actually colluded in the radicalization of the Muslim Middle East, a clearly suicidal policy. Overthrowing stable regimes in a chaotic region of the world is a Leninist policy predicated on the idea that things must get worse to get better. Such a belief has no basis in fact or reason. It is a malignant fantasy.
The United States has therefore flipped against the only democracy in the Middle East, precisely as Obama and his radical allies have long said they wanted. This is not an accident.
Obama's nuclear brinksmanship has to be political. This administration wants to twist Israel's arms to the breaking point. Obama has publicly demanded that Israel retreat to the 1949 ceasefire lines, left over from the War of Independence. This is like telling the United States to retreat to the Thirteen Colonies. It's a cover story for national suicide.
Leon Panetta just repeated that demand, in case somebody didn't get it.
That is why Caroline Glick is telling the plain truth:"Under Obama, the US is no longer Israel's ally." But then, we are nobody's ally anymore. No sane person in the Middle East wants a radical martyrdom regime in Tehran with nukes. Nobody.
Obama's gamble is enormous; not since Yalta has an American president sold out so many allies.
But then, Obama has a Napoleon complex. He has a deep emotional need to be worshiped by millions of people. Napoleon was willing to invade all of Europe to satisfy his lust for glory. French politicians like Dominique de Villepin still celebrate Napoleon's imperialism.
But no American president has ever acted this way, because they all believed in this country. They didn't need to conquer the world.
Obama is an internationalist, like his professors, political allies, and friends. Like the other Democrats today, who are now a radical leftist party. Obama doesn't think like other American presidents ever have.
Like Islam, the radical left wants total control. When they gabble about love and peace it's always with a mental reservation: love and peace after we take over.
This is a common teenage fantasy, of course, which is why the left is always renewing itself with ignorant teenagers who are easy to indoctrinate.
The left is a very ancient ideology, going back long before Karl Marx to the earliest imperial cults in history: China, Sumer, Egypt. It's an adolescent fantasy that comes back in every generation. Those adolescent fantasies explain the Occupy mobsters, made up of mental kids who can't say what they want out loud, because they knew it will sound ridiculous. But those fantasies are driving them to poop all over our cities.
That's what you get when you fail to civilize a whole generation. That's why Ronald Reagan said that the same battle has to be fought every twenty years.
The Bamster is a child who's never grown up, and his immature fantasies have been supported by all his professors and friends. Bill Ayers' last book cover photo showed him stomping on an American flag with his dirty hippie boots. He's never grown up, either, and nobody can make him. The left is full of perpetual adolescents.
Which bring us back to the Iran War. There is something terribly wrong, morally, about the nuclear brinkmanship emanating from this White House. We are gambling with the lives of millions to realize the Napoleonic fantasies of an accidental president. The phony "Arab Spring" has already killed tens of thousands, and the White House shows no sign of remorse. The Muslim Brotherhood is winning in Egypt, and the White House shows no remorse. Iran is within months of a nuclear explosion, but the United States is blaming the victim.
What's wrong with this picture?
I still have to believe that sanity will prevail in the end. The Russians can't want radical Muslims with nuclear missiles next to their southern border. Neither do the Saudis (who belong to a different Sunni sect), or even the Muslim Brotherhood rulers of the new Egypt -- which will look amazingly like that old, tyrannized Egypt of 1900. The neo-Ottoman Turks don't really want a nuclear Persia next door.
No sane person wants it, and it's quite possible for a U.S.-Russian alliance to arise against the danger. Jozef Stalin hated the capitalist West, but he hated Hitler more. The prospect of hanging concentrates the mind wonderfully.
But the real question is why Barack Hussein Obama is gambling with the fate of millions of people to drive us this close to nuclear breakout.
What will he do with four more years?
I shudder to think
3a)Alexander's Essay:
Obama Has Found Jesus!
God was AWOL until December's job approval polls
"He who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and a third time, till at length it becomes habitual; he tells lies without attending to it, and truths without the world's believing him. This falsehood of the tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all its good disposition." --Thomas Jefferson (1785)
Just in time for the "holiday season," Barack Hussein Obama has apparently found Jesus. More likely, he read the most recent presidential approval poll, which indicated that his weakest demographic is composed of those who attend church regularly and, conversely, that his strongest is composed of those who don't.
At the lighting of the National Christmas Tree (no, it's not the National Holiday Tree, yet), Obama sermonized: "More than 2,000 years ago, a child was born to two faithful travelers who could find rest only in a stable, among the cattle and the sheep. But this was not just any child. Christ's birth made the angels rejoice and attracted shepherds and kings from afar. He was a manifestation of God's love for us. And He grew up to become a leader with a servant's heart who taught us a message as simple as it is powerful: that we should love God, and love our neighbor as ourselves."
Obama then claimed, "That teaching ... lies at the heart of my Christian faith."
Now, that assertion will cause a few folks some heartburn -- those folks who are convinced he is a Muslim at heart. They would be wrong, however. Obama doesn't worship Allah.
Others might read his words as a genuine profession of Christian devotion to Jesus Christ. But they also would be wrong. Obama doesn't worship Jesus, either.
Post your opinion: What defines Obama's faith?
So, whom does he worship?
Obama idolizes the altar of his own reflection. He is a consummate textbook pathological narcissist, whose circle of key advisers, according an administration insider, consists of a small group of "those who are his own reflection." He manifests a messianic complex, as do many narcissists who believe they are destined to become a savior of the masses.
As for what "lies at the heart of [his] Christian faith," the key word is "lies." Obama's claim of Christian roots is as disingenuous as his bogus White House bio, which asserts, "His story is the American story -- values from the heartland, a middle-class upbringing in a strong family..."
Obama was raised by atheists and his only tie to a "church" was as a disciple of hate. Up until the day he announced his presidential aspirations, his "spiritual mentor" was Jeremiah Wright, whose Afrocentric Liberation Theology focused on black supremacist doctrine and "social gospel" Marxism, the motto of which was "G-d Damn America." Wright officiated at Obama's wedding, baptized his two daughters and provided the inspiration for the title of Obama's book, "The Audacity of Hope."
Obama is Wright's protégé, but Wright knew Obama would "have to publicly distance himself from me. I said it to Barack personally, and he said 'Yeah, that might have to happen.'"
Post your opinion: What drives Obama's hatred for America?
Obama concluded his remarks by instructing his subjects, "So long as the gifts and the parties are happening, it's important for us to keep in mind the central message of this season, and keep Christ's words not only in our thoughts, but also in our deeds."
Lovely sentiments, whoever wrote them, but they are certainly not a reflection of Obama's faith as evidenced through his deeds.
I suggest that Obama "found Jesus" for this National Christmas Tree photo op, not only because of the implications of his weak support among those who are faithful, but because just two weeks ago when he delivered his Thanksgiving message, he failed to mention "God" at all.
That omission was particularly odd, because the institution of our National Thanksgiving Day by our Founders was expressly for the purpose of giving due thanks to God.
George Washington's first Thanksgiving proclamation read, in part, "I do recommend and assign Thursday ... next to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be." (October 3, 1789)
The covenant established by the Pilgrims that is most often associated with Thanksgiving, the Mayflower Compact, includes these words in its opening sentences: "In the name of God, Amen. We ... by the Grace of God ... Having undertaken for the Glory of God, and Advancement of the Christian Faith..."
To be fair, Obama did note "how truly lucky we truly are."
Perhaps Obama could best define his interest in Christianity by devoting his next national sermon to the topics of false prophets and hypocrites?
He could begin with an Old Testament reading from Jeremiah: "The prophets are prophesying lies in my name. I have not sent them or appointed them or spoken to them. They are prophesying to you false visions, divinations, idolatries and the delusions of their own minds. They fill you with false hopes."
Then he could focus on a New Testament reading from the Sermon on the Mount as recorded in Matthew: "Thus, when you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by others. ... And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others."
Unfortunately, like most cult adherents of charismatic charlatans, Obama's sycophantic disciples are not capable of discerning the underlying implication of such a sermon.
Clearly, Obama is concerned about retaining the throne to his kingdom.
In one speech last week, he said, "I've got to win in 2012. ... In order to finish the job, I'm going to have to have a second term. ... I need a couple more years to finish the job. ... I'm going to need another term to finish the job. ... I'm going to need a few more years to finish the job."
Apparently, in pursuit of that goal, his hypocrisy knows no limits.
Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus et Fidelis!
Libertas aut Mortis!
Mark Alexander
Publisher, The Patriot Post
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4)Robert Prechter: Bear Market for Stocks Isn’t Over
By Dan Weil
The stock-market drop that began in 2007 hasn’t yet run its course, despite the fact that the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index has rebounded 88 percent from its March 2009 low, says stock guru Robert Prechter.
The founder of Elliott Wave International compares the current environment to the 1929-33 period. Back then, the nation’s biggest commercial banks sought to stop the stock market’s drop.
“They failed, and it ultimately went down very hard," Prechter tells Yahoo. Similarly in 2007-09, central banks sought to stem the stock plunge. “That didn’t stop the market from going down 50 percent-plus,” he says.
From its October 2007 peak to its March 2009 trough, the S&P 500 dropped 58 percent.
“As we’ve seen in the last five years, they [central banks] have failed to keep things afloat, because all they have to offer is credit,” he says.
So the outlook now is negative for stocks, Prechter maintains.
“All the technical indicators agree, whether I’m looking at patterns, sentiment indicators, or momentum indicators,” he says. “This is a bear-market rally, and the bear market isn’t over. There’s another wave coming, so you want to be cautious.”
With the S&P 500 up 17 percent since Oct. 4, many investors don’t share Prechter’s bearishness.
Billionaire Ken Fisher is one of them. "I've been net neutral on the market this year, and I believe 2012 will be a very much nicer year," he says, according to Reuters.
4a)Democrat Economic Illiteracy Has Consequences
By DAVID CATRON on 12.8.11 @ 6:09AM
Obamaworld's breathtaking ignorance about "the dismal science" is dangerous.
The Secretary of Labor, Hilda Solis, visited Capitol Hill last week and claimed that the unemployment rate will increase if Congress fails to extend the eligibility period for federal unemployment benefits. My first reaction to this Orwellian assertion was a quiet chuckle. Then it dawned on me that most Democrats will believe this nonsense. These are, after all, people who believed that health care would be made cheaper by a law that increases demand for medical services while reducing the supply of health care providers. Most would agree with the claim, made by journalist-cum-cheerleader Jonathan Alter, that Obama's economic stimulus package "prevented another Great Depression." I realized, in other words, that ignorance about economics is so pervasive among Democrats that it is less funny than dangerous.
That Democrats are generally illiterate about basic economics is not a matter of mere conjecture. In 2010, Daniel B. Klein and Zeljka Buturovic analyzed answers provided by a random sample of 4,835 Americans to a list of eight questions about economics. The results, which noted the party affiliation of the respondents, were not flattering to our friends on the left. "Those responding Democratic averaged 4.59 incorrect answers. Republicans averaged 1.61 incorrect, and Libertarians 1.26 incorrect." And these were not arcane questions. They involved elementary concepts, like the effect of price controls, covered in any Econ 101 course taught at the lowliest community college and even some of the better high schools. Yet the average Democrat respondent got nearly 60 percent of the answers wrong.
It is precisely this kind of ignorance that led so many Democrats to believe Obamacare would somehow render health care less expensive. One of the first items covered in any introductory economics course is that the price of any good or service will rise if the quantity demanded increases without an accompanying increase in the available supply of that commodity. Nonetheless, it held no message for the average Democrat that the supply side of the equation was ignored by "reform," though it increased the number of patients in the health system as well as the range of services to which they are entitled. The issue of supply and demand was utterly lost on Obamacare's Democrat supporters. Thus, at the time of its passage, fully 78 percent of them favored the law. Even now, 52 percent still support it.
Democrat cluelessness notwithstanding, the laws of supply and demand continue to operate. In fact, even the Obama administration has produced a report showing that "reform" will increase health care costs faster than would have been the case in its absence. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) recently forecast that "Total spending is projected to grow annually by 5.8 percent under Mr. Obama's Affordable Care Act…. Without the ACA, spending would grow at a slightly slower rate of 5.7 percent annually." Survey after survey has shown that one of the primary benefits Americans wanted from health reform was lower costs. Due to Democrat illiteracy in economics, however, Congress has produced a "reform" law that actually makes medical care more expensive.
Even if Obamacare didn't ignore the laws of supply and demand, a rudimentary understanding of economics should have alerted any educated observer that it was going to be disastrous for the country because it creates perverse incentives that discourage job growth. The law arbitrarily increases the cost of hiring and keeping employees. George Will recently provided an example of how this works, citing a California-based business called CKE Restaurants. Obamacare will add about $18 million to its costs: "Obamacare must mean fewer restaurants. And therefore fewer jobs. Each restaurant creates, on average, 25 jobs -- and as much as 3.5 times that number of jobs in the community (CKE spends about $1 billion a year on food and paper products, $175 million on advertising, $33 million on maintenance, etc.)."
In other words, the job losses at CKE are accompanied by collateral losses in the communities they serve. This phenomenon is being replicated all across the country. And yet most Democrats seem to be as blissfully unaware of this tragedy as they are of the impotence of the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act of 2009 (ARRA). Like Obamacare, this legislation is actually producing the opposite of its intended effect. The "stimulus" package is rendering the economy more flaccid than it would be if the law had never been passed. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has now admitted that the additional debt added by ARRA "will reduce output slightly in the long run." Yet, last week, we witnessed the grotesque spectacle of the President dancing in the end zone because unemployment has at long last dropped below 9 percent.
According to Secretary Solis, this long-overdue decrease in the unemployment number means that "The policies this administration has pursued are adding jobs back into the economy." Not everyone concurs. NPR reports: "[E]conomists say one reason [the rate] fell isn't good news -- the size of the labor force shrank by 315,000 as more people stopped looking for work because they're discouraged about the chances of finding a job." And if you doubt the veracity of those notorious wingnuts at NPR, Gallup also suggests that the "improvement" was illusory : "Job market conditions in the United States were flat in November, as Gallup's Job Creation Index remained at +14, similar to the range seen since May. This is another indication that Friday's sharp drop to 8.6% in the government's U.S. unemployment rate may be overstated."
Nonetheless, the President, congressional Democrats and most of the "news" media celebrated the modest drop in the official jobless percentage with a level of glee reminiscent of V-E Day. The New York Times, for example, breathlessly announced, "Somehow the American economy appears to be getting better, even as the rest of the world is looking worse." Predictably, the Times went on to promote the White House party line on the extension of unemployment payments: "Unemployment benefits are believed to have one of the most stimulative effects on the economy, because recipients are likely to spend all of the money they receive quickly and pump more spending through the economy." The only people who "believe" this are, of course, Democrat supporters of the President and his accomplices in Congress.
In reality, consumer spending doesn't stimulate the economy. This is a Keynesian canard that was long ago debunked in theory and by actual experience. It is production that stimulates the U.S. or any other economy. This is the inconvenient fact that doomed ARRA and it is what makes the Labor Secretary's assertion so laughable. Extending the eligibility period for federal unemployment benefits will do nothing for what Democrats and the Media hilariously refer to as the economy. But it will have an effect. Like Obamacare and the "stimulus" package, it will produce the opposite of its intended effect. Another lesson one learns in Econ 101 is that, when you subsidize something, you get more of it. So, if unemployment benefits are extended, it will produce more rather than less unemployment.
And yet our Labor Secretary is by no means the first of Obama's minions to tell us that unemployment payments somehow create jobs. Last summer White House Press Secretary Jay Carney claimed it would create a million jobs. Solis, Carney, and the Democrats on Capitol Hill who are now singing the same refrain are -- one prays -- not dumb enough to believe this stuff. But their supporters do, and that's what makes them dangerous. If their ignorance about economics causes them to give President Obama another four years in the White House, the irresponsible policies of his administration may well convert a severe recession into a worldwide depression that will dwarf the disaster of the 1930s and perhaps even reproduce the horrific consequences that followed thereon.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
David Catron is a health care revenue cycle expert who has spent more than twenty years working for and consulting with hospitals and medical practices. He has an MBA from the University of Georgia and blogs at Health Care BS.
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