Obama's anti-Colonialism - Omnipotence at Home Impotence Abroad!

Click on the link below and read about Sweet Tammy's - our kid's bakery in Pittsburgh!




http://www.pageturnpro.com/Pittsburgh-Magazine/36386-Pittsburgh-Magazine-March-2012/34.html
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George Friedman update. (See 1 below.)

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Israeli sub update. (See 2 below.)
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One of those 'DUH' type questions that is rhetorical. (See 3 below.)
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Sowell on the fairness fraud.

Fairness is simply a code word allowing Obama's anti-Colonial dreams of his father to be used as a mechanism/conduit for transferring wealth. This transfer will make more poorer. That is the story history tells.

Buffett knows it and Soros wishes to exploit it and Obama is the puppet they manipulate for their own benefit. And so it goes!(See 4 below.)
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I would now like to finish the review, I began three nights ago, of Dinesh D'Souza's: "The Roots of Obama's Rage."

Chapter Ten is entitled: "The Last Anti-Colonial."

The author begins by stating: " Think about...the most powerful country in the world is being governed according to the dreams of a Luo tribesman of the 1950s - a polygamist who abandoned his wives, drank himself into stupors... raging against the world for denying him the realizations of his ant-Colonial ambitions."  Why is this so?  Because the president of the United States is the son of this man and this son is not living the son's dream but 'the dream of his father.'

It would be ludicrous if it were not so tragically true.

Stop and think about the fact that Obama is expanding  power at home (government control) while contracting  America's power abroad.  'The Weekly Standard" states it another way - omnipotence at home, impotence abroad.

Remember the administration's statement about our space program? It should not be a symbol of American greatness because placing our flag on the moon was deemed colonization  all over again by Muslim . This time the colonization took place in space.

Before D'Souza discusses the success, or lack thereof, of anti-Colonialism in today's world he makes three predictions (remember this was published in 2010) and they are:

1) There will be spending , no deficit reduction.

2) Iran will be allowed to develop nuclear weapons and Obama will do little, that is effective, to stop them.

3)D'Souza's third prediction he admits is a bit more risky because it involves an accommodating political environment. It is that Obama will try U.S military personnel in civilian courts for alleged war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In terms of judging the success of Obama's implementation of his father's anti-Colonial themes, D'Souza suggests they are a failure for several reasons.  First, global trade is proving a boon beyond all the various UN programs and foreign aid because poor countries have low labor costs and are learning how to export goods and services to richer countries. Second, and equally if not more important, anti-Colonial attitudes no longer sell because countries that experienced Colonialism that are now involved with Western technology, financial investments etc. are thriving and he cites his own country of India.

The countries that are poorer are the ones further removed from Western influence so ironically it turns out that even the length of Colonization has become a positive  determinant fact. The internet and globalization have exposed the  world's youth to see undreamed opportunities and anti-Colonial feelings are now deemed as backwash thinking. Anti-Colonialism is dead an historical relic of bygone days except for the man who occupies The Oval Office!

D'Souza concludes,  if history is a guide, the American era is over and will never return so it is imperative we think about what we need to do about this.  Though he understands Obama, he does not sympathize with him.  The author is scared by Obama's warped ideology and considers it ridiculous for our nation in the 21st century. Obama's dream and the change he seeks is not what D'Souza wants and, in fact, he  considers it a nightmare.  Obama's philosophy derives from his own (psychotic/neurotic - my words) experience and this places him outside the nation's mainstream.

Every voter should read this book.

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Dick
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1)The State of the World: A Framework
By George Friedman of Stratfor

This is the first installment of a new series on the national strategies of today's global power and other regional ones. This installment establishes a framework for understating the current state of the world.

The evolution of geopolitics is cyclical. Powers rise, fall and shift. Changes occur in every generation in an unending ballet. However, the period between 1989 and 1991 was unique in that a long cycle of human history spanning hundreds of years ended, and with it a shorter cycle also came to a close. The world is still reverberating from the events of that period.

On Dec. 25, 1991, an epoch ended. On that day the Soviet Union collapsed, and for the first time in almost 500 years no European power was a global power, meaning no European state integrated economic, military and political power on a global scale. What began in 1492 with Europe smashing its way into the world and creating a global imperial system had ended. For five centuries, one European power or another had dominated the world, whether Portugal, Spain, France, England or the Soviet Union. Even the lesser European powers at the time had some degree of global influence.

After 1991 the only global power left was the United States, which produced about 25 percent of the world's gross domestic product (GDP) each year and dominated the oceans. Never before had the United States been the dominant global power. Prior to World War II, American power had been growing from its place at the margins of the international system, but it was emerging on a multipolar stage. After World War II, it found itself in a bipolar world, facing off with the Soviet Union in a struggle in which American victory was hardly a foregone conclusion.

The United States has been the unchallenged global power for 20 years, but its ascendancy has left it off-balance for most of this time, and imbalance has been the fundamental characteristic of the global system in the past generation.

Unprepared institutionally or psychologically for its position, the United States has swung from an excessive optimism in the 1990s that held that significant conflict was at an end to the wars against militant Islam after 9/11, wars that the United States could not avoid but also could not integrate into a multilayered global strategy. When the only global power becomes obsessed with a single region, the entire world is unbalanced. Imbalance remains the defining characteristic of the global system today.


While the collapse of the Soviet Union ended the European epoch, it also was the end of the era that began in 1945, and it was accompanied by a cluster of events that tend to accompany generational shifts. The 1989-1991 period marked the end of the Japanese economic miracle, the first time the world had marveled at an Asian power's sustained growth rate as the same power's financial system crumbled. The end of the Japanese miracle and the economic problem of integrating East and West Germany both changed the way the global economy worked.

The 1991 Maastricht Treaty set the stage for Europe's attempt at integration and was the framework for Europe in the post-Cold War world. Tiananmen Square set the course for China in the next 20 years and was the Chinese answer to a collapsing Soviet empire. It created a structure that allowed for economic development but assured the dominance of the Communist Party. Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait was designed to change the balance of power in the Persian Gulf after the Iraq-Iran war and tested the United States' willingness to go to war after the Cold War.

In 1989-1991 the world changed the way it worked, whether measured in centuries or generations. It was an extraordinary period whose significance is only now emerging. It locked into place a long-term changing of the guard, where North America replaced Europe as the center of the international system. But generations come and go, and we are now in the middle of the first generational shift since the collapse of the European powers, a shift that began in 2008 but is only now working itself out in detail.

What happened in 2008 was one of the financial panics that the global capitalist system periodically suffers. As is frequently the case, these panics first generate political crises within nations, followed by changes in the relations among nations. Of these changes, three in particular are of importance, two of which are directly linked to the 2008 crisis. The first is the European financial crisis and its transformation into a political crisis. The second is the Chinese export crisis and its consequences. The third, indirectly linked to 2008, is the shift in the balance of power in the Middle East in favor of Iran.

THE EUROPEAN CRISIS

The European crisis represents the single most significant event that followed from the financial collapse of 2008. The vision of the European Union was that an institution that would bind France and Germany together would make the wars that had raged in Europe since 1871 impossible. The vision also assumed that economic integration would both join France and Germany together and create the foundations of a prosperous Europe. Within the context of Maastricht as it evolved, the European vision assumed that the European Union would become a way to democratize and integrate the former Communist countries of Eastern Europe into a single framework.

However, embedded in the idea of the European Union was the idea that Europe could at some point transcend nationalism and emerge as a United States of Europe, a single political federation with a constitution and a unified foreign and domestic policy. It would move from a free trade zone to a unified economic system to a single currency and then to further political integration built around the European Parliament, allowing Europe to emerge as a single country.

Long before this happened, of course, people began to speak of Europe as if it were a single entity. Regardless of the modesty of formal proposals, there was a powerful vision of an integrated European polity. There were two foundations for it. One was the apparent economic and social benefits of a united Europe. The other was that this was the only way that Europe could make its influence felt in the international system. Individually, the European states were not global players, but collectively they had the ability to become just that. In the post-Cold War world, where the United States was the sole and unfettered global power, this was an attractive opportunity.

The European vision was smashed in the aftermath of 2008, when the fundamental instability of the European experiment revealed itself. That vision was built around Germany, the world's second-largest exporter, but Europe's periphery remained too weak to weather the crisis. It was not so much this particular crisis; Europe was not built to withstand any financial crisis. Sooner or later one would come and the unity of Europe would be severely strained as each nation, driven by different economic and social realities, maneuvered in its own interest rather than in the interest of Europe.

There is no question that the Europe of 2012 operates in a very different way than it did in 2007. There is an expectation in some parts that Europe will, in due course, return to its old post-Cold War state, but that is unlikely. The underlying contradictions of the European enterprise are now revealed, and while some European entity will likely survive, it probably will not resemble the Europe envisioned by Maastricht, let alone the grander visions of a United States of Europe. Thus, the only potential counterweight to the United States will not emerge in this generation.

CHINA AND THE ASIAN MODEL

China was similarly struck by the 2008 crisis. Apart from the inevitably cyclical nature of all economies, the Asian model, as seen in Japan and then in 1997 in East and Southeast Asia, provides for prolonged growth followed by profound financial dislocation. Indeed, growth rates do not indicate economic health. Just as it was for Europe, the 2008 financial crisis was the trigger for China.

China's core problem is that more than a billion people live in households earning less than $6 a day, and the majority of those earn less than $3 a day. Social tensions aside, the economic consequence is that China's large industrial plant outstrips Chinese consumer demand. As a result, China must export. However, the recessions after 2008 cut heavily into China's exports, severely affecting GDP growth and threatening the stability of the political system. China confronted the problem with a massive surge in bank lending, driving new investment and supporting GDP growth but also fueling rampant inflation. Inflation created upward pressure on labor costs until China began to lose its main competitive advantage over other countries.

For a generation, Chinese growth has been the engine of the global economic system, just as Japan was in the previous generation. China is not collapsing any more than Japan did. However, it is changing its behavior, and with it the behavior of the international system.

LOOKING AHEAD

If we look at the international system as having three major economic engines, two of them -- Europe and China -- are changing their behavior to be less assertive and less influential in the international system. The events of 2008 did not create these changes; they merely triggered processes that revealed the underlying weaknesses of these two entities.

Somewhat outside the main processes of the international system, the Middle East is undergoing a fundamental shift in its balance of power. The driver in this is not the crisis of 2008 but the consequences of the U.S. was in the region and their termination. With the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, Iran has emerged as the major conventional power in the Persian Gulf and the major influence over Iraq. In addition, with the continued survival of the al Assad regime in Syria through the support of Iran, there is the potential for Iranian influence to stretch from western Afghanistan to the Mediterranean Sea. Even if the al Assad regime fell, Iran would still be well-positioned to assert its claims for primacy in the Persian Gulf.

Just as the processes unleashed in 1989-1991 defined the next 20 years, so, too, will the processes that are being generated now dominate the next generation. Still powerful but acutely off-balance in its domestic and foreign policies, the United States is confronting a changing world without yet having a clear understanding of how to deal with this world or, for that matter, how the shifts in the global system will affect it. For the United States strategically, the fragmentation of Europe, the transformation of global production in the wake of the Chinese economy's climax, and the dramatically increased power of Iran appear as abstract events not directly affecting the United States.

Each of these events will create dangers and opportunities for the United States that it is unprepared to manage. The fragmentation of Europe raises the question of the future of Germany and its relationship with Russia. The movement of production to low-wage countries will create booms in countries hitherto regarded as beyond help (as China was in 1980) and potential zones of instability created by rapid and uneven growth. And, of course, the idea that the Iranian issue can be managed through sanctions is a form of denial rather than a strategy.

Three major areas of the world are in flux: Europe, China and the Persian Gulf. Every country in the world will have to devise a strategy to deal with the new reality, just as 1989-1991 required new strategies. The most important country, the United States, had no strategy after 1991 and has no strategy today. This is the single most important reality of the world. Like the Spaniards, who, in the generation after Columbus' voyage, lacked a clear sense of the reality they had created, Americans have no clear sense of the world they find themselves in. This fact continues to define how the world works.

Therefore, we next turn to American strategy in the next 20 years and consider how it will reshape itself.
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2)Navy's new super-sub revealed

Foreign media say Israel's navy ready to test advanced, German-made submarine said to be virtually undetectable by radar, able to launch nuclear missiles
By Udi Etsion



Israel's "doomsday weapon" revealed? The Navy will soon begin its test-deployment of Israel's new super-submarine, Yedioth Ahronoth reported Wednesday.

The report quoted various foreign newspapers as saying that the new Dolphin-Class submarine's systems will enable it to spends prolonged periods of time at sea and fire nuclear missiles.

'Israel must expand sub fleet amid Iran threat'

The submarine, names the "INS Tannin," is also said to be equipped with special diesel and hydrogen conversion systems that will allow it to produce its own fuel; as well as with a stealth system making its acoustic signature virtually undetectable by radar.

The INS Tannin ("Alligator") is the namesake of the Israel Navy's first ever S-Class submarine, which was retired from active duty in 1972.

According to German media, the Tannin – which will be supplied by the end of 2012 – is the first of three super-submarine slated to eventually be deployed by the Navy. A second super-sub – the INS Rahav ("Splendor") will arrive in 2014 and the third, which has yet to be named, by 2015.

Germany's Kieler Nachrichten newspaper said that the super-sub is the biggest and most advanced underwater vessel to be constructed in Germany since World War II.


It has also been acquired by the German and Italian naval forces.

The boatyard where the submarine is under construction is said to be under heavy guard. A team of Israeli experts is on-site, assisting their German counterparts.

Daniel Batini contributed to this report

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3)If Economy's Improving, Why Is Dependency Growing?
By ERIC SINGER



The government is at full throttle to present the economy as improving especially in light of the upcoming election. At the same time, there has been a stunning rise in dependency as most recently presented by the Heritage Foundation.

Heritage defines dependency as significantly depending on the government for help in two of the following basic expense items: housing, food, shelter, income security or higher education.

At the end of 2007, Heritage conservatively estimates there were 59.4 million Americans significantly dependent on the government.

By the end of 2010, this number had risen to 67.3 million, an increase of nearly 8 million. It is likely that another two or three million were added in 2011, for a net increase of 10 million to 11 million over the past four years.

It is not a coincidence that the number of people participating in the labor force has comparably declined over the same period.

At the end of 2007, participation in the labor force was 66% of the available working age population, with a labor force of 146.2 million.

By the end of 2011, it was 64%, with a decrease of 5.4 million workers to 140.8 million. The official number of unemployed people rose from 7.7 million at the end of 2007 to 13.1 million at the end of 2011, without any accounting for those who were "too discouraged to look for work."

Nevertheless, as the government has included fewer and fewer people in the category of searching for work, the official unemployment rate continues to fall because both the numerator and the denominator used to make that calculation are losing equal amounts.

In fact, the January BLS report that was so joyfully received by the market showed an Unemployment Rate of 8.3% but a decrease in labor force participation to 63.7% because another 1.2 million people left the labor force.

How can we have falling unemployment and falling labor force participation at the same time? I heard a story a while ago about a woman who had been making $50,000 per year who was laid off.

After some months of casually searching for a full time job, she was offered one paying $40,000, but she refused it.

Her logic was, I am getting $20,000 per year from unemployment benefits, and I am collecting $18,000 per year from baby-sitting off-the-books three days a week, which, after accounting for my lower taxes, works out to almost the same for less work.

Why should she work harder than necessary to pursue happiness? When 67.3 million other Americans are taking easy money from the government, why should she stand on ceremony? Where is the shame? Where is the stigma? Is she "too discouraged" or just selfish? My fear is that many people will look at her experience and say, how can I work only three days a week and collect the same money?

Certainly, the government is not going out of its way to stop this waste, particularly because her example, repeated over and over again, allows the government to point to a falling unemployment as proof that we are on the road to recovery.

The government imagines that as more people become dependent on it, the official unemployment numbers will look better, and our animal spirits and therefore the economy will revive.

But the corruption of the workforce is utterly corrosive to America in the long term. We are supposed to be the "land of the free, and the home of the brave."

But we are drifting closer to the European attitude of "Sauve Qui Peut," or "Every man for himself."

We may have something that looks like a recovery between now and the election, but if it is based on people leaving the workforce to take benefits and work off the books, it will be a Potemkin recovery.

In the Soviet Union, they used to solve this issue by simply announcing that they had achieved 100% employment every year. The official numbers were fabulous, but the reality was much harsher (or in Al Gore terms, "unsustainable").

A loosely translated popular joke from that era described the Seven Wonders of Communism:

1. Everyone had a job.

2. In spite of the fact that everyone had a job, no one worked.

3. In spite of the fact that no one worked, the production plan was always 100% completed.

4. In spite of the fact that the production plan was 100% successful, the stores shelves were always empty.

5. In spite of the fact that the store shelves were always empty, everyone had everything.

6. In spite of the fact that everybody had everything, everyone stole.

7. In spite of the fact that everyone stole, there was enough for everyone.

Well here we are in America, where because dependency is rising, the total percentage of people working is going down AND unemployment is too. It bothers me a lot that jokes from the Soviet Union seem relevant these days.

• Singer manages the Congressional Effect Fund, which invests in the broad stock market only when Congress is out of session.
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4)The 'Fairness' Fraud
By Thomas Sowell

During a recent Fox News Channel debate about the Obama administration's tax policies, Democrat Bob Beckel raised the issue of "fairness."

He pointed out that a child born to a poor woman in the Bronx enters the world with far worse prospects than a child born to an affluent couple in Connecticut.

No one can deny that. The relevant question, however, is: How does allowing politicians to take more money in taxes from successful people, to squander in ways that will improve their own reelection prospects, make anything more "fair" for others?

Even if additional tax revenue all went to poor single mothers -- which it will not -- the multiple problems of children raised by poor single mothers would not be cured by throwing money at them. Indeed, the skyrocketing of unwed motherhood began when government welfare programs began throwing money at teenage girls who got pregnant.

Children born and raised without fathers are a major problem to society and to themselves. There is nothing "fair" about increasing the number of such children.

A more fundamental problem with the "fairness" issue raised by Beckel and many others is the slippery vagueness of the word "fair."

To ask whether life is fair -- either here and now, or at any time or place around the world, over the past several thousand years -- is to ask a question whose answer is obvious. Life has seldom been within shouting distance of fair, in the sense of even approximately equal prospects of success.

Countries whose politicians have been able to squander ever larger amounts of a nation's resources have not only failed to make the world more fair, the concentration of more resources and power in these politicians' hands has led to results that were often counterproductive at best, and bloodily catastrophic at worst.

More fundamentally, the question whether life is fair is very different from the question whether a given society's rules are fair. Society's rules can be fair in the sense of using the same standards of rewards and punishments for everyone. But that barely scratches the surface of making prospects or outcomes the same.

People raised in different homes, neighborhoods and cultures are going to behave differently -- and those differences have consequences. The multiculturalist dogma may say that all cultures are equal, or equally deserving of respect, but treating cultures as sacrosanct freezes people into the circumstances into which they happened to be born, much like a caste system.

While talk about "fairness" may provide a fig leaf to cover politicians' naked attempts to grab more and more of the nation's resources to spend, there is no assurance that raising tax rates on "the rich" will result in any more tax revenue for the government. High tax rates have too often simply caused wealthy people to put their money into tax-free securities or to send it overseas.

Four years ago, TV interviewer Charles Gibson pointed out to candidate Barack Obama that raising capital gains tax rates had on a number of occasions led to less capital gains tax revenue being collected -- and, conversely, lowering the capital gains tax rates had on other occasions increased the amount of capital gains revenue collected by the government.

Obama readily admitted that. But he said that "fairness" justified a higher tax rate on "the rich." Yet how does a higher tax rate on paper, without a real increase in the amount of taxes actually collected, promote fairness?

However, raising tax rates on "the rich" pays off politically, even if the government loses revenues when the rich put their money into tax shelters.

High tax rates in the upper income brackets allow politicians to win votes with class warfare rhetoric, painting their opponents as defenders of the rich. Meanwhile, the same politicians can win donations from the rich by creating tax loopholes that can keep the rich from actually paying those higher tax rates -- or perhaps any taxes at all.

What is worse than class warfare is phony class warfare. Slippery talk about "fairness" is at the heart of this fraud by politicians seeking to squander more of the nation's resources.

Copyright 2012, Creators Syndicate Inc.
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