HERE IS ALL I WANT
Obama: Gone!
Borders: Closed!
Congress: To obey its own laws
Language: English only
Culture: Follow the Constitution and the Bill of Rights!
Drug Free: Mandatory drug screening before receiving welfare
No freebies to non-citizens!
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And this scenario from an informed fellow memo reader: Dick this will come from a private group first with justice dept get " stalled" Called to testify more stalling They will File a law suit in federal court for an independent prosecutor to be appointed Everything fast tracked Obama ordered To Have his footprint compared to Birth certificate if the same he will not be qualified to run for reelection may have to step down Biden finishes term Maybe some riots Dems scramble Hillary resurrected Romney Rubio win house and maybe Senate. (See 1 below.)
My feeling is: ' wish begets the thought!'
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Faber does not favor the market either. Is today's tumble the beginning of more trouble? (See 2 below.)
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Faber does not favor the market either. Is today's tumble the beginning of more trouble? (See 2 below.)
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David Kotok is also worried. (See 2a below.)
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Today Santorum did what he had to do - he left the race, and did so as admirably as he is capable of doing.Meanwhile, Obama continued to demagogue and divide.
Now it is time for Romney to target Obama's abysmal record, draw attention to his radical appointments and their destructive policies and drown the nation in a constant torrent of Obama's own words.
If the American people are unwilling to look at the facts and the reality of the nation's dire position and burdensome, in fact back breaking, debt and destructive regulations then they deserve the disaster they will surely get. Today's market is just the tip of the iceberg.
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More buffeting from our campaign clever president. By focusing on fairness he will wind up screwing the country.
After all we did not become the richest country in the world by taking advantage of the poor among us whose standard of living, even if poor, happens to be the highest in the world. Is there disparity between rich and poor? Yes, and there always will be. Government has poured untold trillions at the problem only to make it worse.One big divider is education. Another relates too genes and finally the last involves personal characteristics and traits, ie . initiative, drive, integrity, grit and a host of other adjectives that define the differences between people who are lazy, dishonest and expect a handout.
Capitalism, free markets, American initiative and willingness to take risks is what built this nation. Government assisted mainly by standing aside and not interfering, passing and enforcing rational laws pertaining to safe work environment, health standards and anti-competitiveness and their like. The minute the government began dipping their hands into the honey pot with cumbersome rules and regulations, restrictions on wealth creation and their like our nation's growth slowed and disparities began to widen.
I am not arguing that all capitalists are honest, play by the rules and are respectful of their own work force but we have adequate laws to address abuses if we would enforce them without bias.
Obama understands if he tells the truth he will not win votes so he stirs passions by lying and and demagoguery. He divides and pits American against fellow American and Obama's press and media slaves call that leadership! I call it deceitfulness.
By any measure he is the worst president this nation ever had to endure.(See 3, 3a and 3b below.)
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IS AN EMBARRASSED AND INEPT PRESIDENT FINALLY ABOUT TO ACT? (SEE 4 BELOW.)
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Cleverly written advice for Romney. (See 5 below.)
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Dick
After all we did not become the richest country in the world by taking advantage of the poor among us whose standard of living, even if poor, happens to be the highest in the world. Is there disparity between rich and poor? Yes, and there always will be. Government has poured untold trillions at the problem only to make it worse.One big divider is education. Another relates too genes and finally the last involves personal characteristics and traits, ie . initiative, drive, integrity, grit and a host of other adjectives that define the differences between people who are lazy, dishonest and expect a handout.
Capitalism, free markets, American initiative and willingness to take risks is what built this nation. Government assisted mainly by standing aside and not interfering, passing and enforcing rational laws pertaining to safe work environment, health standards and anti-competitiveness and their like. The minute the government began dipping their hands into the honey pot with cumbersome rules and regulations, restrictions on wealth creation and their like our nation's growth slowed and disparities began to widen.
I am not arguing that all capitalists are honest, play by the rules and are respectful of their own work force but we have adequate laws to address abuses if we would enforce them without bias.
Obama understands if he tells the truth he will not win votes so he stirs passions by lying and and demagoguery. He divides and pits American against fellow American and Obama's press and media slaves call that leadership! I call it deceitfulness.
By any measure he is the worst president this nation ever had to endure.(See 3, 3a and 3b below.)
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IS AN EMBARRASSED AND INEPT PRESIDENT FINALLY ABOUT TO ACT? (SEE 4 BELOW.)
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Cleverly written advice for Romney. (See 5 below.)
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Dick
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1)Oblivious to the Obvious
By Nick ChaseIs Barack Obama's long-form birth certificate a forgery? Definitely yes, for those of us who have spent a lifetime writing and producing technical documents, and who remember how they were produced in pre-computer days, and who have the technical expertise today to produce them using computers. For us, it's been an "open secret" that the document image released by the White House on April 27, 2011 is a complete fake.
Last year, as document experts researched the digital PDF posted at whitehouse.gov and published their findings on the internet, it quickly became clear that the "birth certificate" fails authenticity on at least three levels:
First, in the digital composition of the PDF, where even cursory analysis with Adobe Illustrator will reveal how it was constructed from digital snippets. (My personal favorite is where Illustrator reveals that the supposed rubber-stamp imprint of the registrar, Alvin T. Onaka, was shrunk 24% and rotated 90 degrees counterclockwise before it was added to the forgery.)
Second, without fancy (expensive!) software but just by magnifying the PDF about 4x, visible to the naked eye is the mixture of bitmap and grayscale elements which would not have been possible with an ordinary computer scan of a paper document. This is most obvious in the Bates-stamped certificate number, "61 10641" in the upper-right corner of the certificate; the "61 1064" digits are stark black, and the trailing "1" digit is shades of gray, and blurred. Certainly, somebody tampered with this number. Bitmap and grayscale mixtures can also be clearly seen in Line 18a, the parent's signature.
Third, in the typefaces, with at least two different typewriter fonts (maybe more) being used in the single document.
But the problem with most of this research is that it's "geeky," requiring at least some computer knowledge ("layers," "fonts," "anti-aliased," "chromatic aberration," and the like) to understand that the technical arguments for the "birth certificate" being fake are valid. Thus, it's very difficult to prove to the general public, which typically doesn't know much about documents except how to read them, that the Obama "birth certificate" really is a forgery.
So last summer, I wondered if there would be some way to demonstrate that this "birth certificate" is indeed a fake, just by looking at the document itself and without resorting to computer software or to any knowledge about how computers produce documents. And, after studying it for a while, I realized that the forgery fails the "pitch test."
This is a check you can perform yourself, without fancy software of any kind -- or even a computer -- once you have printed out the forgery onto a piece of paper. Even a six-year-old with scissors and the paper image can perform, and understand, this test. (In other words, the test is simple enough that even a dumbass journalist can understand it.)
What do I mean by the "pitch test"? Simple. Manual typewriters (and monospace electric-motor-powered typewriters) have a "pitch" -- so many typed letters per inch. There were many different manual typewriter type styles in the 1960s, but by far the most common were "Courier 10" -- ten characters per inch, including the space bar -- and "Elite 12" -- twelve characters per inch -- with "Courier 10" predominant.
Thus, all of the typed characters in a row of text would, if placed over another typed row of text, be in perfect vertical alignment (including typed spaces), because each typed character occupies exactly the same horizontal space in its row. That's what "monospace" means.
(People over the age of 55 who spent their student years slaving over a typewriter to produce homework papers will know exactly what I'm talking about. People under the age of 30 who have been brought up in the world of tweets and Microsoft Word may not have a clue.)
So, if I took a line of typewritten text from the Obama document and positioned it just above another typewritten line from that same document, if the "birth certificate" were authentic, then the individual letters in the two rows should be in perfect vertical alignment -- one letter directly above another -- right?
For my test I did not use the digital version released by the White House; instead, I used a picture of the actual paper document that Obama claims is a certified copy of his birth certificate. This photo was taken by NBC News reporter Savannah Guthrie, the only reporter from the pool of White House reporters allowed to touch and photograph the paper document, and which she later released to the public.
Using computer software, I copied the text "6085 Kalanianaole Highway" in line 7d of the picture and pasted it above (and touching) the text "Maternity & Gynecological Hospital" in line 6c, in the process placing the "a" of "Highway" directly above the "a" of "Hospital -- the next to last letter in each line. The result is shown in Figure F (F is for forgery) below:
Figure F. In a real typewritten document, the letters line up vertically. In the Obama "birth certificate" forgery, they do not.
(Don't worry that the pasted-in line chops off the tops of the letters of the line of text below it. The purpose here is not readability, but to show that the letters do not line up vertically.)
As you scan your eyes to the left, you can see that by the time you reach the "6" of "6085," the vertical alignment is half a character off with the "y" of "Maternity." This is not possible on a manual typewriter. It would appear that the alignment problems originate with the word "Highway," whose letters are slightly narrower and in a different typeface from the text in line 6c. The difference in typefaces is most noticeable in the letter "H" of "Highway" compared to the "H" of "Hospital"tt.
If you still don't quite understand -- look at Figure M (M is for monospace) below, which shows how the two lines of text would line up vertically (with the "6" above the "y," using two spaces following "6085") if the "birth certificate" really had been typed on a typewriter instead of being digitally created. (I have added the bleeding-heart background to make the copy-and-paste more visible.)
Figure M. In a true monospace (typewritten) document, the letters are in vertical alignment. (Courier typeface used here.)
I carry a copy of Figure F in my iPhone so I can show people why the "birth certificate" is a forgery whenever the subject comes up. Or, occasionally, even if the subject doesn't come up but I'm in the mood to annoy a liberal.
This pitch test works even with the Obama T-shirt! You know, the white T-shirt that has Barry's picture and "Made in the USA" on the front, and a living-color print of the "birth certificate" digital PDF at shoulder-blade height on the back, just above the legend "BARACKOBAMA.COM"?
If you happen to be in the vicinity of a copier when an Obama supporter wearing the T-shirt passes by, strip off the shirt (male supporters only!), place its backside on the copier glass -- being careful not to wrinkle or stretch the fabric -- and make two photocopies enlarged 200% or more. With scissors, cut out the words "6085 Kalanianaole Highway" on line 7d from one copy and position them above the words "Maternity & Gynecological Hospital" on line 6c on the uncut copy, doing the best you can given the limitations of T-shirt fabric to line them up as was done in Figure F. You should see something similar to Figure T, below:
Figure T. The letters do not line up vertically in the digital version of the "birth certificate" printed on the Obama campaign T-shirt.
This alignment was much more difficult for me to achieve than the one shown in Figure F because the T-shirt fabric twists downward at the word "Hospital" in line 6c. I lined up the two "a"s along the vertical threads they touch (which corrects for the twisting of the fabric). When properly aligned, you can see the typewriter letters don't line up vertically, just as they did not in Figure F. This works even if the T-shirt has been worn and put through the wash several times, as was the T-shirt used for Figure T. Some stains just can't be laundered away.
The Republicans must be delighted that the Obama campaign is merchandising on its mugs and T-shirts the fraud that the president has perpetrated on the public.
Armed with this proof, you can now approach any of your liberal friends who are interested and very easily demonstrate why the Obama "birth certificate" is a forgery.
Then you will probably see your friends progress through the classic stages of denial.
You are first likely to hear, "I don't believe you." What your friends really mean is that they are confused because you have disturbed their belief system. Most anybody who has spatial perception and knows even a little bit about typewriters will understand what you have shown them -- even liberals. They can choose -- which are they going to believe, the president, whom they worship, or their own lying eyes? You can almost see the smoke curling out their ears as their brains begin to fry.
This is not an issue of belief -- your liberal friends are entitled to believe whatever they wish. It is an issue of evidence -- concrete proof that the document is a forgery. And it is only one of many (more technical) concrete proofs offered up by respected professionals who have debunked the "birth certificate."
You can challenge your friends to go on the internet and search for any reliable evidence that anybody has posted that disproves Figure F or any of the proofs offered by others dissecting the digital PDF "birth certificate" which was released at whitehouse.gov.
They won't find any, because there isn't any.
Next in line -- get ready for it -- may be the r-word. Now, your friends aren't going to call you a racist, because they know you and they know you're not a racist. So you're likely to hear something more generic like "People wouldn't be looking into this if the president were white. They're only doing it because they don't like having a black man in the White House."
This is still a personal attack on you, because at the very least it implies you share the same views of the president that racists do. So make your reply personal -- something like "You mean, it would be OK for me to look at the president's credentials if he were white -- as was done for candidate John McCain -- but because the president's skin color is black, he gets a pass?" Then envision those curls of smoke erupting into flames as the real racists are exposed.
At some point you will get a very sensible reply from your friends -- that there is no motive for the president to release a fake (therefore it must be genuine).
That we do not know the motive -- this is true.
Researchers have been able to construct a timeline for the birth of Barack Obama. It shows that although legally married, the president's mother, Stanley Ann (Dunham) Obama, and his father never lived together. Ann dropped out of college in the spring of 1961 and lived in a cottage behind her parents' house in Hawaii until giving birth. Then, within a month, she moved to Seattle as a single mom, with Barry in tow, to resume her studies. She did not return to Hawaii until the president's father had left for Cambridge, Mass. to attend Harvard. There is nothing in this timeline to even remotely suggest that Barack Obama was born anywhere except in Hawaii.
You might point out to your friends, though, that if police departments across the country waited until they knew the motive behind every criminal act before they took suspects into custody, the country would be awash in crime. Fortunately for the public safety, the police apprehend suspects when appropriate and sort out the motives for the crimes later.
So it should be in this case. We start with the known facts: that (1) the "birth certificate" is fake, and (2) the president has said it's his birth certificate. It is up to researchers to work backward from the known facts to establish why the president was unable or unwilling to release a genuine one.
Your liberal friends may also claim that no one can be sure that the "birth certificate" is a forgery because the paper certificate has never been examined by an expert. This is also true -- the president has not submitted the paper document to independent forensic analysis to establish its authenticity. You might also remind your friends that the proof shown in Figure F is based on the paper document, not on the digital PDF -- and are they implying that there is a difference between the paper and digital versions? If so, that would be fraud right there.
Finally, you may from your friends see some degree of acceptance -- OK, maybe the document really is a forgery. But it's really no big thing. Like, who cares? It's unimportant in relation to the president's accomplishments (if you're a progressive) or destructiveness (if you're a conservative).
This, too, is true. It really isn't a big deal when you place it in context with the very serious issues facing this country and the world. Politicians lie to get elected and stay in office; we the public have come to understand that. It's why Congresscritters rank lower than used-car salesmen in public esteem. So now that one more lie has been exposed, what do we know now that we didn't before?
But that misses the point. The point is, the legitimacy of Obama's "birth certificate" is a taboo subject. People who dare to suggest it might be a forgery are immediately branded as extreme right-wing kooks or racists. The partisans are trying to shut them down so that others will be afraid to look at the obvious -- move along, people; no need to look, there's nothing to see here. (You can understand why, now that you have seen how embarrassingly easy it is to prove the "birth certificate" is phony.)
This is totalitarian; it is antithetical to who we are as free Americans. It attacks the very foundations of the progress of civilization -- inquiry and research -- and it is dangerous.
How ridiculous it is to tell anybody to remain ignorant and oblivious? I invite everybody reading these words to really look. Never mind what the totalitarians say -- look, and think, for yourself.
About the author: Nick Chase is a retired but still very active technical writer, technical editor, computer programmer, and stock market newsletter writer. During his career he has produced documentation on computers, typewriters, typesetters, headline-makers, and other pieces of equipment most people never heard of, and he has programmed typesetting equipment. You can read more of his work at contrariansview.org.
Footnote tt: If you think that the reason why there are two different typewriter typefaces in the document is because two typewriters were used in its preparation, the second typewriter being used because the first broke down -- forget it.
First, remember that the proof of forgery in Figure F is not a unique proof (that is, it's not the case that there is no evidence of forgery except for Figure F). Researchers have conclusively demonstrated that the "birth certificate" is fake in many different ways, and that it was digitally constructed. Figure F is simply an additional proof of forgery that more people are able to understand because it requires very little technical expertise to comprehend it.
Second, three different typewriter typefaces (and likely more) appear in the document, as you can clearly see in Figure Q below:
Figure Q. The Obama "birth certificate" forgery has (at least) three different typewriter typefaces in three slightly different sizes.
Figure Q is similar to Figure F, except I have moved the text "6085 Kalanianaole Highway" slightly higher so you can read the word "Hospital" below, and I have vertically lined up the H in "Highway" with the "H" in "Hospital" so you can easily see how different-looking they are.
Then I took the word "Student" in Line 12a of the document and vertically lined up its first "t" with the "t" in "Hospital." As you can see, the two "t"s are also noticeably different, and the word "Student" is distinctly larger than the word "Highway." How many typewriters are we supposed to believe were used to produce this "birth certificate?"
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By Forrest Jones
Stocks are due for a major correction, possibly headed for a more prolonged bear market, says Marc Faber, publisher of the Gloom, Boom and Doom report.
The global economy remains weak and cannot support strong gains posted in recent months.
"The technical underpinnings of the market have been a disaster in the last couple of weeks," Faber tells CNBC.
"The number of new highs have declined, the volume has been poor, insider sales just hit a record."
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported recently that the U.S. economy added a net 120,000 jobs in March, well below expectations.
The weak jobs report could prompt the Federal Reserve to intervene and stimulate the economy by injecting liquidity into the financial sector, which Faber says could keep stocks up for a while.
But Fed support won't last forever.
"I still feel we are in a correction period and again like in equities, it’s a correction that is somewhat more serious."
Corporate earnings have been strong in recent months although that trend should taper off.
Faber said the weakness in economically sensitive stocks such as mining and industrial goods was particularly “disturbing.”
A Standard Poor’s Capital IQ survey is predicting profits to rise 0.93 percent in the first quarter of 2012 from a year earlier, according to the New York Times reports, well below a 19.68 percent growth rate seen in the first quarter of 2011.
"It is the lowest quarter of growth we have seen since the third quarter of 2009," Christine Short, senior manager for S&P Global Markets Intelligence, tells The Times.
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Stocks are due for a major correction, possibly headed for a more prolonged bear market, says Marc Faber, publisher of the Gloom, Boom and Doom report.
The global economy remains weak and cannot support strong gains posted in recent months.
"The technical underpinnings of the market have been a disaster in the last couple of weeks," Faber tells CNBC.
"The number of new highs have declined, the volume has been poor, insider sales just hit a record."
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported recently that the U.S. economy added a net 120,000 jobs in March, well below expectations.
The weak jobs report could prompt the Federal Reserve to intervene and stimulate the economy by injecting liquidity into the financial sector, which Faber says could keep stocks up for a while.
But Fed support won't last forever.
"I still feel we are in a correction period and again like in equities, it’s a correction that is somewhat more serious."
Corporate earnings have been strong in recent months although that trend should taper off.
Faber said the weakness in economically sensitive stocks such as mining and industrial goods was particularly “disturbing.”
A Standard Poor’s Capital IQ survey is predicting profits to rise 0.93 percent in the first quarter of 2012 from a year earlier, according to the New York Times reports, well below a 19.68 percent growth rate seen in the first quarter of 2011.
"It is the lowest quarter of growth we have seen since the third quarter of 2009," Christine Short, senior manager for S&P Global Markets Intelligence, tells The Times.
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2a)I’m Worried
David Kotok
A note to readers. This 2000-word commentary is a longer-term view; think in terms of years, not months or days. The essay is not in conflict with the fully invested position currently held at Cumberland. The words reflect my personal thinking only. Some of my colleagues disagree. In my personal view, the future is uncertain (of course) and may be unattractive for the longer-term outlook. In my view, our American political system is failing us. In my view, we are joining the list of declining world powers. The framework to support that argument follows.
"The external menace 'You'll end up like Greece, if you do not do this and that' and the internal opprobrium heaped on some categories of taxpayers are very powerful and dangerous instruments to deprive people of their own personal freedoms." –Vincenzo Sciarretta
My friend Vincenzo is a journalist from Italy. He is a serious writer and researcher. He has covered the financial markets and economy of Italy for years. He and I co-authored a book on Europe during the optimistic period. If he and I were to write such a book now, it would probably be quite pessimistic.
Vince responded to my recent email series about the downward spiral underway in the euro zone. Readers may find those essays at www.cumber.com. Vince noted my reports from the meetings in Paris and my reference to the upcoming French elections, where the promise of the Socialist candidate is to raise the tax rate on the highest income level to 75%. I will end this commentary with a longer email from Vince, in which he quotes historian Will Durant and discusses the fall of the Roman Empire.
Now to write some thoughts that gnaw at me in the late of the night, when sleep is elusive.
Simply put: I'm worried.
When I get worried, I read and re-read in my library. I can honestly say that I have had my nose in a thousand of those books. The library holds many texts by giants. They wrote about history, economics, and finance. They took the strategic view. George Akerlof, Jared Diamond, Niall Ferguson, Carmen Reinhart & Ken Rogoff, Robert Shiller, and Nassim Taleb are among the modern writers. Milton Friedman, Martin Gilbert, Friedrich Hayek and his polar opposite John Maynard Keynes, Ludwig von Mises, R.R. Palmer, and Adam Smith are among the classics.
A favorite of mine is Paul Kennedy. Twenty-five years ago, this Yale historian concluded his monumental work The Rise and Fall of Great Powers with a profound observation:
"In the largest sense of all, therefore, the only answer to the question increasingly debated by the public of whether the United States can preserve its existing position is 'no – for it simply has not been given to any one society to remain permanently ahead of all the others, because that would imply a freezing of the differential pattern of growth rates, technological advance, and military developments which has existed since time immemorial."
Kennedy then argued that the United States has the ability to moderate or accelerate the pace of decline. Such is also the case for other great powers, many of which are in a state of decline from their centuries-old power peak. Among others in his treatise, Kennedy's history lessons examine Spain, France, Rome, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
I think I just covered a lot of the euro-zone geography.
In 1987, Kennedy warned us, "The task facing American statesmen over the decades, therefore, is to recognize that broad trends are under way, and that there is a need to 'manage' affairs so that the relative erosion of the United States' position takes place slowly and smoothly." He added the additional warning that it not be "accelerated by policies which bring merely short-term advantage but longer-term disadvantage."
Unfortunately, America's leadership has not heeded such warnings.
For decades futurists have complained about the rising use of government debt financing by the United States. They predicted calamitous outcomes, which did not arrive as expected. Paul Volcker and Alan Greenspan applied monetary policy in ways that allowed inflation and, hence, interest rates to spend a quarter century in decline. The Volcker-Greenspan era opened with the highest interest rates since the Civil War. Building on this downward momentum, Ben Bernanke has taken the target short-term interest rate to near zero and held it there.
During the same three decades, the US altered its fiscal policy, first under Ronald Reagan and almost continuously since. (The Clinton administration was the exception.) Rising deficit financing has been facilitated by falling nominal interest rates. That combination leads to level, or even falling, aggregate debt service. You can owe more and more and have smaller and smaller monthly payments. That is the magic of falling interest rates. Until they hit the zero boundary.
What happens when the music stops and the chairs are full? Are we reaching that point in the United States? It appears we have done so in Europe, certainly in Greece, the eldest of the declining great powers. We are also getting there in Japan and the UK. All four confront similar financial straits: zero-bound interest rates coupled with expanding national government debt.
About 85% of the capital markets of the world trade by means of the dollar, yen, pound, and euro. The G-4 central banks have collectively expanded their holdings of government securities and loans from $3.5 trillion to $9 trillion in just four years. At the prevailing very low interest rates, the functioning of monetary policy and the role of fiscal policy merge. Is there any difference between a million-dollar suitcase of one hundred dollar bills and a million-dollar, zero-interest treasury bill? You need an armed guard to protect the first one. With the second one, you need to clear an electronic trade in a safe financial institution, not an unsupervised (no more Fed surveillance) Federal Reserve primary dealer like MF Global. Your earnings on either the cash or the T-bill are the same: you earn zero. You can use the treasury bill to secure a repo transaction at a near-zero interest rate. You can use the cash to conduct many types of black-market or gray-market trades. Is it any wonder that the hundred-dollar bill is so popular? Isn't it understandable that roughly two-thirds of US currency circulates outside the United States?
Is this a healthy situation? How long can it persist? What happens next? When interest rates eventually rise, what will be the result of this blend of monetary/fiscal policy as its unwinding turns malignant?
Moreover, who then will be the politicians that inherit this mess? Who will occupy the central banker's chair?
I worry because there is no rationally explained strategic-exit plan in the G4. Not in the US. Not in Japan. Not in the euro zone. Not in the United Kingdom.
I also worry because the direction of taxation is up, if certain politicians continue to have their way. I worry because US business tax rates are now the highest in the entire world. In addition, I worry because of the increasing power that national governments wield in the mature economies of the world.
Applied power eventually leads to serfdom.
Increasing taxation is a characteristic of a declining great power.
Governments are failing to heed Paul Kennedy's warnings. They are worsening the longer-term outlook. The Western world's leaders ignored Kennedy when he wrote "… accelerated by policies which bring merely short-term advantage but longer-term disadvantage."
Zero-bound interest rates are a short-term advantage. We enjoy them. We profit from them. We expect them to continue for a while. They are like the oxygen administered to a very ill patient. If the patient dies, the oxygen has eased the pain in the terminal phase. If the patient lives, the lungs have been scarred and need many years of healing and repair. Today, the patient is receiving oxygen in the G4. Death is being delayed (Greece) or, perhaps, thwarted (elsewhere in the euro zone, Japan, US, and UK).
We do not know how this will play out. History only warns us that many of the likely outcomes may be unpleasant. The authors I cited have articulated their differing and diverse views. Their conclusions have tended to be in the form of warnings.
Paul Kennedy favors candor. In his second, exquisite work, Preparing for the Twenty-First Century, he wrote: "Many earlier attempts to peer into the future concluded either in a tone of unrestrained optimism, or in gloomy forebodings, or (as in Toynbee's case) in appeals for spiritual revival. Perhaps this work should also finish on such a note. Yet the fact remains that simply because we do not know the future, it is impossible to say with certainty whether global trends will lead to terrible disasters or be diverted by astonishing advances in human adaption."
Of course, we hope for the latter and worry about the former. History gives us little comfort.
For the time being we shall remain on the sanguine side with regard to this global experiment with increasing debt, zero-bound interest rates, and a monetary/fiscal policy compromise that obfuscates the difference between them.
As long as this persists, it means financial markets do well, stocks rise, risk assets regain favor, bonds with hedges yield results, and cash continues to earn zero return.
That is now. It may change tomorrow, next week, next month, next year or not for quite some time. There is no way to know.
For the downside from history we return to Vincenzo's email to me:
"Dear David,
"I invite you to read the last few sentences of the below article from The Lessons of History, by Will and Ariel Durant. It is about how the destruction of the Roman Empire through the taxation channel made people 'slaves,' in other words how serfdom emerged. This is my number one fear for Italy, but I guess France is making the same mistakes, just starting from a lower debt level. You can also find an online version of the book, thanks to Google.
"Rome had its socialist interlude under Diocletian. Faced with increasing poverty and restlessness among the masses, and with the imminent danger of barbarian invasion, he issued in A.D. 3 an edictum de pretiis, which denounced monopolists for keeping goods from the market to raise prices, and set maximum prices and wages for all important articles and services. Extensive public works were undertaken to put the unemployed to work, and food was distributed gratis, or at reduced prices, to the poor. The government – which already owned most mines, quarries, and salt deposits – brought nearly all major industries and guilds under detailed control. 'In every large town,' we are told, 'the state became a powerful employer, standing head and shoulders above the private industrialists, who were in any case crushed by taxation.' When businessmen predicted ruin, Diocletian explained that the barbarians were at the gate, and that individual liberty had to be shelved until collective liberty could be made secure. The socialism of Diocletian was a war economy, made possible by fear of foreign attack. Other factors equal, internal liberty varies inversely with external danger.
"The task of controlling men in economic detail proved too much for Diocletian's expanding, expensive, and corrupt bureaucracy. To support this officialdom – the army, the courts, public works, and the dole – taxation rose to such heights that people lost the incentive to work or earn, and an erosive contest began between lawyers finding devices to evade taxes and lawyers formulating laws to prevent evasion. Thousands of Romans, to escape the tax gatherer, fled over the frontiers to seek refuge among the barbarians. Seeking to check this elusive mobility and to facilitate regulation and taxation, the government issued decrees binding the peasant to his field and the worker to his shop until all their debts and taxes had been paid. In this and other ways medieval serfdom began."
Thank you, Vincenzo, for this serious response. Thank you Paul Kennedy for superbly articulating history and issuing clear warnings. Thank you, dear reader, if you are still with me. I hope I have provoked some thought.
Now we will seek another night's sleep and hope it is not elusive.
David R. Kotok, Chairman and Chief Investment Officer
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3) The Obama Rule
He says taxation is about fairness, not growth or revenue.
Forget Warren Buffett, or whatever other political prop the White House wants to use for its tax agenda. This week the Administration officially endorsed what in essence is the Obama Rule: Taxes must be high simply to spread the wealth, never mind the impact on the economy or government revenue. It's all about "fairness," baby.
This was long apparent to those fated to closely watch the 2008 campaign, but some voters might have missed the point amid the gauzy rhetoric about hope and change. Now we know without any doubt. White House aides made it official Tuesday in their on-the-record briefing on the new federal minimum tax that travels under the political alias known as the "Buffett rule."
The policy goal is to impose an effective minimum tax of 30% on the income of anyone who makes more than $1 million a year. When President Obama first proposed this new minimum tax he declared that the rule "could raise enough money" so that we "stabilize our debt and deficits for the next decade."
Then he added: "This is not politics; this is math." Well, remedial math maybe.
The Obama Treasury's own numbers confirm that the tax would raise at most $5 billion a year—or less than 0.5% of the $1.2 trillion fiscal 2012 budget deficit and over the next decade a mere 0.1% of the $45.43 trillion the federal government will spend. When asked about those revenue projections, White House aide Jason Furman backpedaled from Mr. Obama's rationale by explaining that the tax was never intended "to bring the deficit down and the debt under control."
Okay. So what is the point?
Getty Images
President Obama speaking on the economy at Florida Atlantic University on Tuesday in Boca Raton, Fla.
The goal, Mr. Furman explained, is to establish a "a basic issue of tax fairness." Millionaires should pay an effective tax rate no lower than a middle-class secretary or a plumber. But wait: IRS data show that middle-class workers on average pay just under 15% of their income in federal taxes, while the richest 0.1% pay almost twice as high a rate on average, or 26%.
The U.S. already has a Buffett rule. The Alternative Minimum Tax that first became law in 1969 was also supposed to make sure that millionaires pay their "fair share." The top AMT rate is now 28%. But the AMT has become a public nuisance, adding new complexity to the tax code and ensnaring more and more middle-class families because it isn't indexed for inflation. The surest prediction in politics is that any tax that starts by hitting the rich ends up hitting the middle class because that is where the real money is.
An even greater absurdity is the White House claim that this is a first step to tax reform because it will ensure that the "rich don't take advantage of tax breaks or structure their affairs to pay less taxes." Huh?
A basic principle of any tax reform worth the name is to broaden the tax base in order to lower rates for everyone, not to raise them. The point is to make the tax code more efficient by reducing the incentive for avoidance—legal or illegal.
The Buffett tax would only make loopholes more valuable. The White House has already carved out one exception to its own Buffett rule: charitable donations. So a billionaire could avoid the 30% effective tax rate by giving away millions of dollars—say, the way Mitt Romney so generously does.
Want to guess how long it will take for the suits on K Street to get busy trying to reinsert tax breaks for "investments" in the likes of municipal bonds, mortgages, energy-efficient toasters, windmills or by Chuck Schumer's hedge-fund buddies?
The century-long history of the federal income tax teaches us one lesson over and over: The higher the tax rates, the more loopholes Congress inserts as a way around those rates. This is why the government collected roughly as much tax revenue as a share of GDP when the top tax rate was 70% in the 1970s as it did when the rate fell to 28% in 1986.
The Buffett rule is really nothing more than a sneaky way for Mr. Obama to justify doubling the capital gains and dividend tax rate to 30% from 15% today. That's the real spread-the-wealth target. The problem is that this is a tax on capital that is needed for firms to grow and hire more workers. Mr. Obama says he wants an investment-led recovery, not one led by consumption, but how will investment be spurred by doubling the tax on it?
The only investment and hiring the Buffett rule is likely to spur will be outside the United States—in China, Germany, India, and other competitors with much more investment-friendly tax regimes. The Buffett rule would give the U.S. the fourth highest capital gains rate among OECD nations, according to a new study by Ernst & Young, to go along with what is now the highest corporate tax rate (a little under 40% for the combined federal and average state rate). That's what happens when politicians pursue fairness over growth.
3a)1a)Can Government Do Anything Well?
By John Stossel
I'm suspicious of superstitions, like astrology or the belief that "green jobs will fix the environment and the economy." I understand the appeal of such beliefs. People crave simple answers and want to believe that some higher power determines our fates.
The most socially destructive superstition of all is the intuitively appealing belief that problems are best solved by government.
Opinion polls suggest that Americans are dissatisfied with government. Yet whenever another crisis hits, the natural human instinct is to say, "Why doesn't the government do something?"
And politicians appear to be problem-solvers. We believe them when they say, "Yes, we can!"
In 2008, when Barack Obama's supporters shouted, "Yes, we can!" they expressed faith in the power of government to solve problems. Some acted as if Obama were a magical politician whose election would end poverty and inequality and bring us to "the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal."
At least now people have come to understand that presidents -- including this president -- can't perform miracles.
In other words: No, they can't! -- which happens to be the title of my new book.
Free people, however, do perform miracles, which is why "No's" subtitle is: "Why Government Fails -- But Individuals Succeed."
Those who believe an elite group of central planners can accomplish more than free people need some economics. I hope my book helps.
People vastly overestimate the ability of central planners to improve on the independent action of diverse individuals. What I've learned watching regulators is that they almost always make things worse. If regulators did nothing, the self-correcting mechanisms of the market would mitigate most problems with more finesse. And less cost.
But people don't get that. People instinctively say, "There ought to be a law."
If Americans keep voting for politicians who want to spend more money and pass more laws, the result will not be a country with fewer problems but a country that is governed by piecemeal socialism. We can debate the meaning of the word "socialism," but there's no doubt that we'd be less prosperous and less free.
Economists tend to focus on the "prosperous" part of that statement. But the "free" part, which sounds vague, is just as important. Individuals and their freedom matter. Objecting to restrictions on individual choice is not just an arbitrary cultural attitude, it's a moral objection. If control over our own lives is diminished -- if we cannot tell the mob, or even just our neighbors, to leave us alone -- something changes in our character.
Every time we call for the government to fix some problem, we accelerate the growth of government. If we do not change the way we think, we will end up socialists by default, even if no one calls us that.
Pity us poor humans. Our brains really weren't designed to do economic reasoning any more than they were designed to do particle physics. We evolved to hunt, seek mates, and keep track of our allies and enemies. Your ancestors must have been pretty good at those activities, or you would not be alive to read this.
Those evolved skills still govern human activities (modernized versions include game-playing, dating, gossiping). We're hardwired to smash foes, turn on the charisma and form political coalitions. We're not wired to reason out how impersonal market forces solve problems. But it's mostly those impersonal forces -- say, the pursuit of profit by some pharmaceutical company -- that give us better lives.
Learning to think in economic terms -- and to resist the pro-central-planning impulse -- is our only hope of rescuing America from a diminished future.
No one can be trusted to manage the economy. I began by criticizing Obama, but Republicans may be little better. Both parties share the fatal conceit of believing that their grandiose plans will solve America's problems. They won't.
But cheer up: Saying that government is not the way to solve problems is not saying that humanity cannot solve its problems. What I've finally learned is this: Despite the obstacles created by governments, voluntary networks of private individuals -- through voluntary exchange -- solve all sorts of challenges.
3b)Against the Grain
AGAINST THE GRAIN
Obama, Not Holding the Center
An us-against-them message won't work in a center-right country.
If President Obama loses reelection in November, the seeds of his defeat will have been planted in his fiery, populist campaign kickoff speech at the Associated Press luncheon last week. It was a negative, overly political address at sharp odds with his optimistic 2008 campaign message of hope and change. It seemed petty at times, mocking Mitt Romney for using the word “marvelous” and exaggerating proposed conservative entitlement reforms as “Social Darwinism.” All of this while giving a supposedly nonpolitical, non-campaign address.
Ideologically, the speech was a throwback to the Democratic rhetoric of decades past. Despite sops to Ronald Reagan, Obama laid out his ideological argument at the outset, stating his “belief that, through government, we should do together what we cannot do as well for ourselves.” That’s a far cry from “the era of big government is over” mantra that President Clinton advanced in his reelection campaign.
In one sense, the speech previewed how fiercely the president’s team will be fighting for another term and how nasty the expected contest between Obama and Romney is likely to be. As Obama’s advisers have indicated, the president’s campaign strategy is to portray the opposition as so extreme that voters will hold their noses and vote for the incumbent even if they’re dissatisfied with the country’s direction. To eke out a victory in a slow-growing economy, Obama needs to turn out his base and turn off independents to Romney.
But the president is seriously miscalculating if he believes that the key to winning the hearts and minds of independents is “us-against-them” rhetoric that hails back to a bygone Democratic era. He ably mounted a withering attack on the Republicans' austerity proposals but offered no alternative vision to deal with the growing debt. When Clinton campaigned for a second term in 1996, he likewise castigated congressional Republicans for proposing entitlement cuts and shutting down the government, but he also championed a just-passed bipartisan welfare-reform law and a balanced budget that reduced the size of government. With Obama’s speech, there was no centrist recalibrating to reassure worried independents that he’s not too ideological; no sugar to sweeten the tough talk.
That’s no trivial concern, according to the results of a poll analyzing the sentiments of the swingiest independents from battleground states, commissioned by the centrist Democratic think tank Third Way. The survey showed those voters narrowly favoring Obama (44 percent) over Romney (38 percent), and showed the president with respectable overall favorability scores. But it also revealed some red flags that if the campaign continues driving home the “people-versus-the-powerful” message, it could cost the president down the road. While these swing voters still like Obama personally, they are closer to Romney ideologically.
The polling found that a message centered on income inequality was a flop with these swing voters, who said they were much more anxious about rising debt and with regulations and taxes on businesses. A clear 57 percent majority said they thought the American economic system was “basically fair” and that the deck is not stacked against them. They didn’t primarily blame Wall Street or the wealthy for the country’s economic problems; they instead fingered congressional gridlock. More than half (51 percent) of respondents said they preferred a candidate who advocates for an economy based on opportunity where “government lives within its means and economic growth is our top priority” while just 43 percent preferred a candidate backing “an economy based on fairness – where the rich pay their fair share, corporations play by the rules, and all Americans get a fair shot.” Those arguments closely mirror the Romney and Obama campaign messages unveiled last week, with the broad outlines of the GOP argument coming out on top.
“Swing Independents are searching for leaders who will articulate a positive vision for the future – one where the American economy is back on top and the next generation can achieve the American Dream,” the Third Way memo reads. “Economic opportunity is a framework that responds to their anxieties and is associated with strengthening and growing the economy.”
Extremism is in the eye of the beholder. Democrats are confident that Romney’s embrace of House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan’s sweeping Medicare reforms is a colossal political blunder, and they marvel at the possibility that Ryan could even be his running mate. But this survey, consistent with Gallup polling illustrating a center-right electorate, suggests that voters more closely identify with the overarching Republican message of an opportunity society over the Democratic message centered on economic security.
Obama is misinterpreting the lessons of Clinton’s successful campaign in 1996, simply believing that he can cast Romney and Ryan in the roles of Bob Dole and Newt Gingrich. Then, as now, the Republican Congress lurched to the right, giving the president ample opportunity to both own the center and rebrand himself as a new Democrat, while still offering a sharp contrast with the opposition. Obama’s got his attacks against Republican down pat, but he’s forgotten about moving to the middle. Despite claiming that he’s governed as a moderate, Obama has rarely broken ranks with his party’s congressional leadership, as Clinton did with NAFTA and welfare reform. Merely mounting a reactionary defense of the way things have been done in the past isn’t enough anymore.
Making things even tougher for Obama is that the country has inched to the right over the last 15 years. Then, Clinton could hammer Republicans over opposing environmental regulations, which polled exceptionally well. It was a driving force behind the Clinton comeback in 1996. But in a down economy, Obama’s similar attacks aren’t having the same impact. The party’s cap-and-trade vote in the House, designed to regulate carbon emissions in a market-friendly fashion, was a driving force behind Democratic congressional losses in the Rust Belt during the 2010 midterms. There’s a reason why formerly environmentally minded Republicans (such as Romney and Gingrich!) have sharply tacked to the right. They’ve moved along with the public.
Much of this presidential campaign’s coverage has focused on style over substance – Romney’s Etch A Sketch moment and Obama’s hot mic, to name a few recent examples. But every indication is that this general election will be one of the most ideological in many years, with both candidates embracing the core argument of their increasingly homogeneous parties’ bases. Obama may be confident that he can persuade voters with the power of the bully pulpit, but if the message is off, the pulpit won’t do him much good.
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4) US weighs limited military action against Assad. Turkey may join
Tuesday night, April 10, after Damascus skipped the truce laid down in the UN-Arab envoy Kofi Annan’s plan and escalated its attacks on the Syrian population, a change of tone was detected in the Obama administration.
Washington sources report , although President Barack Obama is still flat against broad US military intervention in Syria, administration circles feel America could no longer stay aloof from what is happening there. They are thinking in terms of limited military action to show Bashar Assad and the heads of his regime and army the first American red lines against his brutal crackdown. One plan under discussion is for a US air strike against an Assad regime and/or military target would be enough to dent morale in Damascus and demonstrate to his loyal troops and the Syrian opposition that the Syrian ruler is far from infallible.
This lesson might corner Assad into complying with Annan’s six-point peace plan, especially the ceasefire and withdrawal of armored troops from Syrian cities, which he ducked Tuesday.
The pretext Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem offered Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov for missing the deadline, Moscow sources report, when the soldiers are pulled out of the cities, rebel forces will move into the evacuated areas; the anti-Assad uprising would flare up again at full strength across Syria.
Moallem appealed to his host to persuade the Americans to continue to abstain from military action in Syria and defend the need for Syrian units to remain in the main cities, even against a complaint by Annan to the UN Security Council accusing Damascus of flouting an agreed plan.
In consideration of this side play in Moscow, Annan was cautious in his comments to reporters on his visit to a Syrian refugee camp in southern Turkey, saying it was too soon to declare his plan a failure. He explained that the Syrian regime had not taken issue with a single one of his six proposals and the situation could improve once UN observers were on the ground. Annan offered Assad another two days up until Thursday, April 12, to implement the agreed ceasefire.
Talking to reporters In Moscow alongside Moallem, Lavrov proposed that UN observers move into Syria without delay. The team could be enlisted mainly from the UNDOF (United Nations Disengagement Observer Force) serving on the Syrian-Israeli Golan border. The Syrian minister was not in favor of the plan.
Tuesday night, the UN Security Council called on Bashar Assad to meet the Thursday deadline for a truce. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced the council would meet Thursday to hear Annan’s report.
She spoke after consulting with Lavrov.
The Lavrov proposal would redeploy the main body of the Golan UN force, which maintains a liaison office in Damascus, in positions for enforcing the truce between Syrian and rebel forces in Syria’s main embattled cities, preferably by April 12. The UN 1,000-strong force has two battalions, one Austrian and one Philippine, and a small Croatian unit.
Intelligence sources report that Assad objects to the plan because it would be tantamount to internationalizing the civil war raging in Syria and pave the way for rebels and protesters against his regime to gain UN protection.
Convinced that the Syrian ruler would never allow himself to be pushed into accepting UN intervention, the Americans continue to keep limited military intervention on the table.
They will let it simmer there until the Six-Power nuclear talks with Iran beginning Saturday, April 14, in Istanbul are well under way, so as not to give Tehran pretexts for toughening its bargaining position or pulling out of the negotiations.
Turkey too is moving closer than ever before to real military action, not just empty words. Armed Turkish assault helicopters flew Tuesday over the Syrian border. They were there to warn Damascus that if Syrian soldiers again fired across the border into Syrian refugee camps as they did Monday, April 9, they would be targeted by the Turkish gunships.
Sources in Ankara reminded local and Arab media of the existence of the mutual defense cooperation pact known as the “Adana agreement” which Turkey and Syria concluded in 1998.
Article 1 states that "Syria, on the basis of the principle of reciprocity, will not permit any activity that emanates from its territory aimed at jeopardizing the security and stability of Turkey."
Under this article, Ankara feels Turkish military intervention in Syria is legitimate. This reminder was offered the media, our military sources confirm, to provide the legal grounding for a potential Turkish military move across its border into Syria.
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5) "Oh what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
Alone and palely loitering
The sedge has withered from the lake,
And no birds sing"
John Keats, La Belle Sans Merci, 1819
"An election is a moral horror, as bad as a war except for the blood; a mud bath for every soul concerned in it."
George Bernard Shaw
Mitt Romney should be a joyful man today, a real Happy Warrior. He has just been freed at long last from the pernicious ankle-bites of Rick Santorum, a faux-candidate from the start who will hopefully now recede back into political obscurity. Newt Gingrich is just along for the ride these days, and he has already begun to tug his forelock to Romney in hope of getting a prime time speaking part at the convention and perhaps being named Ambassador to Great Britain in 2013. (Wouldn't Callista look great wearing all those jewels that Newt bought for her?) Ron Paul-well, Ron Paul is what he has always been and a bit of Romney courtesy toward him should keep him from bolting the GOP for a third-party bid. Romney has wrapped this thing up and now has seven full months to campaign against Barack Obama. Romney has seen this coming for two weeks now, and he should have been displaying the exuberance and elan of a sure winner. He has not. He has, in fact, had a rather tentative and almost melancholy air about him lately, as if he were expecting at any moment to be hauled off to the Bastille.
One need only watch the man at various recent events to see that he still appears tentative, stiff and uncomfortable in his public outings. This may be because he is still distrusted by many GOP Conservatives or, worse than that, he feels sore beset on all sides by public opinion polls indicating how unpopular he is with many women voters. He has a favorability rating at least ten points lower than Obama's.
People have been comparing him to Tom Dewey in 1948, done in by a nasty, divisive, unfair, demagogic, but wildly successful campaign by Harry Truman. Truman, like Barack Obama, never attempted to defend his record in office but instead went straight for the lowest common denominator of the American public, relentlessly peddling lies, character assassination, and absurd promises. Despite his poor record in office, Truman won the 1948 election against Dewey, a better qualified man who had chosen to run a dignified campaign and who refused to attack Truman directly. The question for many Republicans today is whether or not Mr. Romney has the necessary iron in his makeup to withstand the similar sort of campaign that is already being directed against him by Obama and his political posse. It seems that Mr. Romney may be asking himself the same question.
If the 2012 election were held today, we would likely see a repeat of 1948, and the Obama campaign will only get nastier as the year goes on. Little wonder then that Mr. Romney seems a bit adrift and defensive. He is smart enough to see what is coming toward him, but, so far at least, he has failed to directly address this reality, to "pull up his socks" as the British say. Some Romney supporters have said that he would do so all in good time, but first he had to win the GOP nomination. Fine. He should immediately take a two-week vacation, after which he needs to get his head on straight and his Game Plan prepared.
Herewith a memo containing a few modest suggestions for Mr. Romney:
Dear Governor Romney,
Congratulations on your apparent nomination as the 2012 Presdential candidate for the GOP. You have not asked for any advice on your campaign, but here is some anyway. It is probably worth what you have paid for it:
1) From Day One going forward, be ready to answer clearly and directly the Roger Mudd Question, the one that cost Teddy Kennedy his shot at the Presidency in 1980 when he could not answer it: "Governor Romney, just why do you want to be the President of the United States?" It seems so simple does it not? And it is so fundamental. Also, what specifically do you want to accomplish? What does the country need that you can supply? What is our biggest problem and how will you address it now? You need a three sentence answer to each question, yet none has been forthcoming to this point.
2) Remember that you are communicating with the American public, or at least that portion of it that is willing to give you a fair hearing and that is informed enough to actually consider what you say. You are not speaking to the board members at Bain, or the Mormon Elders or the members of your country club. You need to speak intelligently and directly in terms with which the average American is familiar. Many Americans know, for example, what an entrepreneur is but many younger citizens do not, thanks to our dumbed-down educational system. When you speak of "incentives for entrepreneurship" you speak in terms unfamiliar to many of your listeners. Never talk down to people, but make damn certain that you are communicating with them, not speaking at them.
3) Face up to the social issue problems that you have been handed by Rick Santorum, the Obama Team, and their acolytes in the Media who have somehow made contraception the issue of the hour.
Just say it straight out:
"My administration will take no action that limits women's access to contraception. Period.The legitimate 1st Amendment religious freedom issues arising from Obamacare rules that affect some religious institutions in this area will be settled by the courts."
4) Take your religion off the table by saying clearly that you, like Jack Kennedy, will take an oath of office that says that you shall uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States, and that you shall see to it that the Laws of the United States are faithfully enforced. Your religion informs your private thoughts, not your public actions. Neither Senator Harry Reid, your Democratic co-religionist, nor any other public official of the Mormon faith, nor you yourself have ever, in the conduct of your public office placed religion above civic duty. Unless and until someone can demonstrate evidence to the contrary, the subject of your religion is closed to further discussion in the campaign.
5) Say flat out that you make no apologies for being a successful business man. Being successful is what this country is supposed to be all about, is it not? Why then does the Democratic Party seem so obsessed with attacking people who have accomplished something that has led to financial security for their families? Is that attitude not un-American to the core?
6) Do not try to pander to every interest group, but develop quickly a strategy to reach out to Hispanic voters. Do whatever it takes, even if it means appearances on Telemundo. Unlike most African-Americans, most Hispanics will give Republican candidates a chance if they have something to say to them! Look again at the concept that Gingrich brought up of an amnesty without citizenship for long-residence illegals. Combine it with an expanded guest-worker program and citizenship opportunities for younger people who have been raised in the United States. Of course, vow to close the border and do it, but face the political facts on this difficult issue and do it soon.
7) Stay away, far away, from the John McCain-Lindsey Graham-NeoCon GOP Warmonger Society. Obama has accurately taken the pulse of the country by backing out of Afghanistan over the next year and also taking time to try to pressure Iran to back off on their nukes. Ultimately, the Iranians won't back off, of course, and we shall probably have a shooting war with them sometime in the future. The country is definitely not ready for one today or even next year, so stop all the cheap sabre-rattling.
8) Lose the blue jeans and the periodic country accent when you are speaking to local crowds. You are not a "common man" and when you try to pretend that you are one you look ridiculous. Wear a suit and tie, or at least a blazer.
You are a man of accomplishment and dignity-act like it and leave the hog-calling to the likes of Mike Huckabee. Do not try to become what your image consultants tell you the public wants in a President; be what you are and then make it clear to the public by your words and deeds why they should want YOU as President instead of the other guy. Fall back on Hamlet and the advice of Polonius to Laertes that we all learned back in high school (but which is rarely taught to young people these days, more's the pity):
"This above all, to thine own self be true
And it shall follow as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man."
You have a formidable task before you, Mr. Romney. Arrayed against you already are the Massive Obama Machine; the roughly 40% of the American public who are heavily invested in Mr. Obama's statist and re-distributionist visions; the Major Media whose Liberal biases and sympathies could not possibly be more blatant; all of Hollywood and academia; and finally some good and decent people who see Mr. Obama as a sort of totemic figure whose failed bid for re-elction might somehow be bad for the country.
Governor, the forces arrayed against you are powerful, but they can and must be overcome . I wish you all good fortune.
"All the great struggles of history have been won by superior will-power wresting victory in the teeth of odds or upon the narrowest of margins."
Winston Churchill
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Under this article, Ankara feels Turkish military intervention in Syria is legitimate. This reminder was offered the media, our military sources confirm, to provide the legal grounding for a potential Turkish military move across its border into Syria.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
5) "Oh what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
Alone and palely loitering
The sedge has withered from the lake,
And no birds sing"
John Keats, La Belle Sans Merci, 1819
"An election is a moral horror, as bad as a war except for the blood; a mud bath for every soul concerned in it."
George Bernard Shaw
Mitt Romney should be a joyful man today, a real Happy Warrior. He has just been freed at long last from the pernicious ankle-bites of Rick Santorum, a faux-candidate from the start who will hopefully now recede back into political obscurity. Newt Gingrich is just along for the ride these days, and he has already begun to tug his forelock to Romney in hope of getting a prime time speaking part at the convention and perhaps being named Ambassador to Great Britain in 2013. (Wouldn't Callista look great wearing all those jewels that Newt bought for her?) Ron Paul-well, Ron Paul is what he has always been and a bit of Romney courtesy toward him should keep him from bolting the GOP for a third-party bid. Romney has wrapped this thing up and now has seven full months to campaign against Barack Obama. Romney has seen this coming for two weeks now, and he should have been displaying the exuberance and elan of a sure winner. He has not. He has, in fact, had a rather tentative and almost melancholy air about him lately, as if he were expecting at any moment to be hauled off to the Bastille.
One need only watch the man at various recent events to see that he still appears tentative, stiff and uncomfortable in his public outings. This may be because he is still distrusted by many GOP Conservatives or, worse than that, he feels sore beset on all sides by public opinion polls indicating how unpopular he is with many women voters. He has a favorability rating at least ten points lower than Obama's.
People have been comparing him to Tom Dewey in 1948, done in by a nasty, divisive, unfair, demagogic, but wildly successful campaign by Harry Truman. Truman, like Barack Obama, never attempted to defend his record in office but instead went straight for the lowest common denominator of the American public, relentlessly peddling lies, character assassination, and absurd promises. Despite his poor record in office, Truman won the 1948 election against Dewey, a better qualified man who had chosen to run a dignified campaign and who refused to attack Truman directly. The question for many Republicans today is whether or not Mr. Romney has the necessary iron in his makeup to withstand the similar sort of campaign that is already being directed against him by Obama and his political posse. It seems that Mr. Romney may be asking himself the same question.
If the 2012 election were held today, we would likely see a repeat of 1948, and the Obama campaign will only get nastier as the year goes on. Little wonder then that Mr. Romney seems a bit adrift and defensive. He is smart enough to see what is coming toward him, but, so far at least, he has failed to directly address this reality, to "pull up his socks" as the British say. Some Romney supporters have said that he would do so all in good time, but first he had to win the GOP nomination. Fine. He should immediately take a two-week vacation, after which he needs to get his head on straight and his Game Plan prepared.
Herewith a memo containing a few modest suggestions for Mr. Romney:
Dear Governor Romney,
Congratulations on your apparent nomination as the 2012 Presdential candidate for the GOP. You have not asked for any advice on your campaign, but here is some anyway. It is probably worth what you have paid for it:
1) From Day One going forward, be ready to answer clearly and directly the Roger Mudd Question, the one that cost Teddy Kennedy his shot at the Presidency in 1980 when he could not answer it: "Governor Romney, just why do you want to be the President of the United States?" It seems so simple does it not? And it is so fundamental. Also, what specifically do you want to accomplish? What does the country need that you can supply? What is our biggest problem and how will you address it now? You need a three sentence answer to each question, yet none has been forthcoming to this point.
2) Remember that you are communicating with the American public, or at least that portion of it that is willing to give you a fair hearing and that is informed enough to actually consider what you say. You are not speaking to the board members at Bain, or the Mormon Elders or the members of your country club. You need to speak intelligently and directly in terms with which the average American is familiar. Many Americans know, for example, what an entrepreneur is but many younger citizens do not, thanks to our dumbed-down educational system. When you speak of "incentives for entrepreneurship" you speak in terms unfamiliar to many of your listeners. Never talk down to people, but make damn certain that you are communicating with them, not speaking at them.
3) Face up to the social issue problems that you have been handed by Rick Santorum, the Obama Team, and their acolytes in the Media who have somehow made contraception the issue of the hour.
Just say it straight out:
"My administration will take no action that limits women's access to contraception. Period.The legitimate 1st Amendment religious freedom issues arising from Obamacare rules that affect some religious institutions in this area will be settled by the courts."
4) Take your religion off the table by saying clearly that you, like Jack Kennedy, will take an oath of office that says that you shall uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States, and that you shall see to it that the Laws of the United States are faithfully enforced. Your religion informs your private thoughts, not your public actions. Neither Senator Harry Reid, your Democratic co-religionist, nor any other public official of the Mormon faith, nor you yourself have ever, in the conduct of your public office placed religion above civic duty. Unless and until someone can demonstrate evidence to the contrary, the subject of your religion is closed to further discussion in the campaign.
5) Say flat out that you make no apologies for being a successful business man. Being successful is what this country is supposed to be all about, is it not? Why then does the Democratic Party seem so obsessed with attacking people who have accomplished something that has led to financial security for their families? Is that attitude not un-American to the core?
6) Do not try to pander to every interest group, but develop quickly a strategy to reach out to Hispanic voters. Do whatever it takes, even if it means appearances on Telemundo. Unlike most African-Americans, most Hispanics will give Republican candidates a chance if they have something to say to them! Look again at the concept that Gingrich brought up of an amnesty without citizenship for long-residence illegals. Combine it with an expanded guest-worker program and citizenship opportunities for younger people who have been raised in the United States. Of course, vow to close the border and do it, but face the political facts on this difficult issue and do it soon.
7) Stay away, far away, from the John McCain-Lindsey Graham-NeoCon GOP Warmonger Society. Obama has accurately taken the pulse of the country by backing out of Afghanistan over the next year and also taking time to try to pressure Iran to back off on their nukes. Ultimately, the Iranians won't back off, of course, and we shall probably have a shooting war with them sometime in the future. The country is definitely not ready for one today or even next year, so stop all the cheap sabre-rattling.
8) Lose the blue jeans and the periodic country accent when you are speaking to local crowds. You are not a "common man" and when you try to pretend that you are one you look ridiculous. Wear a suit and tie, or at least a blazer.
You are a man of accomplishment and dignity-act like it and leave the hog-calling to the likes of Mike Huckabee. Do not try to become what your image consultants tell you the public wants in a President; be what you are and then make it clear to the public by your words and deeds why they should want YOU as President instead of the other guy. Fall back on Hamlet and the advice of Polonius to Laertes that we all learned back in high school (but which is rarely taught to young people these days, more's the pity):
"This above all, to thine own self be true
And it shall follow as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man."
You have a formidable task before you, Mr. Romney. Arrayed against you already are the Massive Obama Machine; the roughly 40% of the American public who are heavily invested in Mr. Obama's statist and re-distributionist visions; the Major Media whose Liberal biases and sympathies could not possibly be more blatant; all of Hollywood and academia; and finally some good and decent people who see Mr. Obama as a sort of totemic figure whose failed bid for re-elction might somehow be bad for the country.
Governor, the forces arrayed against you are powerful, but they can and must be overcome . I wish you all good fortune.
"All the great struggles of history have been won by superior will-power wresting victory in the teeth of odds or upon the narrowest of margins."
Winston Churchill
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