Telling America about our embassy closings, on a late night comic show, is both an insult to Americans as well as an appropriate setting for our playboy president. Obama is all about staging up front because there is nothing behind the props.
===
That damn phony scandal seems to have legs and keeps creeping towards The White House. (See 2 below.)
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From no child left behind to leave them all behind! Obama abandons his own race's kids along with a lot of others but then "What difference does it make?" (See 3 below.)
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Newt not happy with Obama's Middle East policies but then why should he be. They are an unmitigated disaster. (See 4 below.)
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Levy sees a recession in our future because of debt and other problems.
At least America's energy industry is on track to reduce our exposure to foreign sources and thus is reducing our trade deficit. Naturally, Obama's efforts continue to thwart further energy development because he is a captive of Greens and seemingly is in bed with the Saudis. (See 5 below.)
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Go figure enslavement to Liberalism when traditionally they were raised on Conservative principles! (See 6 below.)
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Will The New York Times be next? I thought they would go first. (See 7 below.)
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Dick
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1)
The Al Qaeda Obama Forgot
The short distance between the president's rhetoric on terror and its empirical disproof.
By Bret Stephens
In May, Barack Obama told an audience at the National Defense University that the core of al Qaeda was "on the path to defeat." The "future of terrorism," Mr. Obama predicted, would involve "more localized threats," on the order of "the types of attacks we faced before 9/11," such as the 1988 Lockerbie bombing or the 1983 attack on the Marine barracks in Beirut. "Dealt with smartly and proportionately," he added, "these threats need not rise to the level that we saw on the eve of 9/11." He ended by calling for repeal of the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force—Congress's declaration of war on al Qaeda.
In May, Barack Obama told an audience at the National Defense University that the core of al Qaeda was "on the path to defeat." The "future of terrorism," Mr. Obama predicted, would involve "more localized threats," on the order of "the types of attacks we faced before 9/11," such as the 1988 Lockerbie bombing or the 1983 attack on the Marine barracks in Beirut. "Dealt with smartly and proportionately," he added, "these threats need not rise to the level that we saw on the eve of 9/11." He ended by calling for repeal of the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force—Congress's declaration of war on al Qaeda.
On Monday, the front page of The Wall Street Journal ran with this headline: "Regrouped al Qaeda Poses Global Threat." The second shortest distance in Washington now runs between an Obama speech and its empirical disproof.
The news, of course, is that 19 U.S. embassies and consulates in Africa and the Middle East will be shuttered until Saturday. This is on account of electronic intercepts of terrorist communications, collected by Edward Snowden's former employers at the National Security Agency and described by Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R., Ga.) as "very reminiscent of what we saw pre-9/11." Vice President Joe Biden has delivered closed-door briefings to Congress; Rep. Peter King (R., N.Y.) has warned the attacks could come in Europe, the U.S., or as "a series of combined attacks"; Sen. Dick Durbin (D., Ill.) calls the threat "a big deal."
After 11 years of taking our shoes off at airports, seven years of being forced to throw away tubes of toothpaste and cans of hair spray, five years of assuming the surrender position at the X-ray machine, three years of don't-touch-my-junk anthems, eight seasons of TV's "24" and two seasons of "Homeland," it takes a lot to get Americans worked up about a speculative terrorist threat. If Mr. Durbin says the threat is a big deal, it is.
Then again, it's also a big deal that the executive branch of government has been operating on a contrary set of assumptions. Yes, the president's May speech contained all the required caveats about the abiding terrorist threat and the continued need for vigilance. But the gist of the address was clear, as was its purpose: to declare the war on terror won—or won well-enough—and go home. Facts and analysis were arranged to suit the policy goal. But the facts and analysis were wrong.
Specifically: Mr. Obama believed that killing Osama bin Laden was a strategic victory. In fact, it was mainly a symbolic one (further undercut by his use of it as a political prop). He thought that ending the war in Iraq would help refocus U.S. efforts on Afghanistan. In fact, it showcased America's lack of staying power and gave the Taliban additional motivation to hold out during the president's halfhearted Afghan surge. He thought that substituting the Bush administration's approach to detainees with an approach heavy on drones would earn America renewed goodwill on the Arab street. In fact, there was no goodwill to renew in the first place, and the U.S. is more unpopular in Pakistan and Egypt today than it was six years ago.
He believed that staying out—completely out—of the war in Syria would contain the war to Syria and spare American lives and efforts. In fact, the war has generated a brand new branch of al Qaeda in the Nusra Front, helped regenerate the once-moribund Iraqi branch, and attracted jihadist recruits from Europe who may one day return to put their acquired skills into practice.
Finally, Mr. Obama believed that defeating "core al Qaeda"—the group around Osama bin Laden in Pakistan and Afghanistan—effectively meant defeating al Qaeda, even if a few of its lesser offshoots in Africa or the Arabian Peninsula survived. In fact, al Qaeda was designed not as an organization with subordinate branches, but as a model with multiple franchises—as Burger King not General Motors.
In his speech, Mr. Obama insisted that "not every collection of thugs that labels themselves al Qaeda will pose a credible threat to the United States." Yet if al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, or the Arabian Peninsula, or the Maghreb, or some as-yet unknown al Qaeda affiliate succeeds in bombing a U.S. embassy, taking down an airliner, or engineering a second 9/11, will it matter that the plot was hatched in Yemen or Somalia instead of Pakistan or Afghanistan?
Which brings us to the shortest distance in Washington: the one that runs between an Obama speech and the media's memory of it. The speech at the National Defense University was billed as a major presidential address. A lengthy article in the New York Times, written days later, reported it was a "window into the presidential mind," the result of "an exercise lasting months," a matter not just of Mr. Obama's policy, but of his very legacy.
Yet here we are, not three months later, faced with a threat that makes a comprehensive and vivid mockery of everything the president said. If there's a silver lining here, it's that the administration can put an end to the end of the war on terror without much fear of embarrassment. Better to do so now than in the wake of an attack.
It is in the nature of wisdom that it is only truly learned after it's first been mostly forgotten. The lesson of 9/11 was to not go back to pre-9/11 thinking. We may learn soon enough what price we'll have to pay for the benefit of rediscovering what we knew once before.
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2)
New Links Emerge in the IRS Scandal
Emails released this week sweep the Federal Election Commission into the conservative-targeting probe.
By Kim Strassel
By PAUL E. PETERSON
"We are still in a disinflationary and balance-sheet adjusting phase in the U.S. and globally, and that is going to bring, at some point, another recession," he told Barron's.
"It could be sooner rather than later, and when that happens, we'll probably get a little bit of deflation. At some point, we'll see the 10-year Treasury yielding well under 1 percent, much as we have seen in Japan." The 10-year yield stood at 2.63 percent Wednesday morning.
The economy is showing signs of improvement. "But the big picture is that we still have way too much debt relative to income," Levy said.
The household debt-to-income ratio has dropped to 104 percent from a peak of about 128 percent, he noted. But, "we would like to see it down back around 80 percent to really feel we are in good shape."
In 2014, the economy could have "another plodding-along year," Levy predicted. "Whether we have a recession will depend on political decisions made in Washington, Europe and China."
The U.S. budget deficit will play a major role, Levy explained. "If we have a significant further deficit reduction — but we may well not — that would definitely increase the recession risk," he stated. "It would be hard for the economy to absorb a sizable deficit reduction two years in a row."
The deficit totaled $1.1 trillion in fiscal 2012, which ended last Sept. 30. The White House budget office forecasts a deficit of $759 billion for this fiscal year.
Some economists argue that the Federal Reserve can buoy the economy with its easing. "But at this point, the Fed is relatively powerless when using monetary policy," Levy argued.
"When you actually look at how monetary policy gets into the individual profit sources, quantitative easing ends up looking a lot less important."
If we enter a recession, deflation is a risk, Levy asserted. "In that case we actually could see not only some goods and services prices drop, but possibly even wage gains drop to zero or even slightly negative."
Other economists expect continued sluggish growth in the United States, at least for the short term. "The basic story of a deep recession followed by a lackluster recovery is essentially unchanged," Nariman Behravesh, chief economist at IHS, told The New York Times.
So what does Levy's view mean for investors? He is bullish on Treasurys and the dollar. "For the long-term patient investor who can ride out a little volatility, there are significant capital gains in Treasury positions and, obviously, protection from a lot of risk," he said.
Levy likes the dollar because he thinks the U.S. economy is the strongest in the world, despite its difficulties.
As for stocks, "we don't really trust the U.S. equity market, per se," Levy noted. "Still, we feel it is a lot sounder than the European and emerging markets broadly speaking. So we are actually doing a long-short play," explaining that he's long the U.S. stock market and short European and emerging markets.
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Congressional investigators this week released emails suggesting that staff at the Federal Election Commission have been engaged in their own conservative targeting, with help from the IRS's infamous Lois Lerner. This means more than just an expansion of the probe to the FEC. It's a new link to the Obama team.
In May this column noted that the targeting of conservatives started in 2008, when liberals began a coordinated campaign of siccing the federal government on political opponents. The Obama campaign helped pioneer this tactic.
In late summer of 2008, Obama lawyer Bob Bauer took issue with ads run against his boss by a 501(c)(4) conservative outfit called American Issues Project. Mr. Bauer filed a complaint with the FEC, called on the criminal division of the Justice Department to prosecute AIP, and demanded to see documents the group had filed with the IRS.
Thanks to Congress's newly released emails, we now know that FEC attorneys went to Ms. Lerner to pry out information about AIP—the organization the Obama campaign wanted targeted. An email from Feb. 3, 2009, shows an FEC attorney asking Ms. Lerner "whether the IRS had issued an exemption letter" to AIP, and requesting that she share "any information" on the group. Nine minutes after Ms. Lerner received this FEC email, she directed IRS attorneys to fulfill the request.
This matters because FEC staff didn't have permission from the Commission to conduct this inquiry. It matters because the IRS is prohibited from sharing confidential information, even with the FEC. What the IRS divulged is unclear. Congressional investigators are demanding to see all communications between the IRS and FEC since 2008, and given that Ms. Lerner came out of the FEC's office of the general counsel, that correspondence could prove illuminating.
It also matters because we now know FEC staff engaged in a multiyear effort to deliver to the Obama campaign its win against AIP. This past week, FEC Vice Chairman Don McGahn, joined by his two fellow Republican commissioners, wrote an extraordinary statement recounting the staff's behavior in the case.
When the FEC receives a complaint, it falls to the general counsel's office to first issue a report on the merits of the alleged campaign violations. The six-person commission then votes on whether there is a "reason to believe" a violation occurred. No formal investigations are to take place before that point.
The Obama team's complaint broadly claimed AIP was masquerading as a nonprofit, when it should have registered as a highly regulated political action committee. It was a ludicrous claim (see below), yet the FEC staff issued a report in April 2009 recommending the commission go after AIP, not long after its attorneys had been in touch with Ms. Lerner.
When the Supreme Court's 2010 ruling in Citizens United v. FEC made most of the Obama complaint irrelevant, the staff withdrew its first report, then took 18 months to come up with a second rationale for why the commission should pursue AIP. All this time, FEC staff—Mr. McGahn recounts—were conducting an unauthorized investigation into AIP. The staff was also improperly withholding the results of its research from AIP.
When new issues made its second attempt moot, the general counsel's office went after the group with a third report. AIP's defense all along was that it spent the majority of its money from 2007 to 2010 on its "major" organizational "purpose" of educating and informing the public of conservative principles, and only a minority (less than one-third) on direct campaign expenditures. As such, it easily meets the tests for being a 501(c)(4).
And so the FEC staff's third report presented a novel theory. The staff argued that AIP ought to be judged on what it spent per "calendar year." By shortening the timeline, and looking only at AIP's spending in 2008—an election year—the staff argued AIP had violated campaign law.
The Republican commissioners were appalled, noting that FEC staff had always taken a multiyear view of expenditures, including when it came to cases against liberal groups, like the League of Conservation Voters or the Moveon.org Voter Fund. The FEC staff also sought to impose this new standard after the fact, with no notice to election players and no input from the commissioners.
Vice Chairman McGahn's statement is scathing. "Here," he writes, FEC staff "could be seen as manipulating the timeline to reach the conclusion that AIP is a political committee. . . . Such after-the-fact determinations create the appearance of impropriety, whether or not such impropriety exists."
The broader AIP case is, in fact, beyond improper. It's fishy. The Obama campaign takes its vendetta against a political opponent to the FEC. The FEC staff, as part of an extraordinary campaign to bring down AIP and other 501(c)(4) groups, reaches out to Lois Lerner, the woman overseeing IRS targeting. Mr. McGahn has also noted that FEC staff has in recent years had an improperly tight relationship with the Justice Department—to which the Obama campaign also complained about AIP.
Democrats are increasingly desperate to suggest that the IRS scandal was the work of a few rogue agents. With the stink spreading to new parts of the federal government, that's getting harder to do.
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3)
The Obama Setback for Minority Education
Steady gains for black and Hispanic students under No Child Left Behind have come to a virtual standstill.
Should federally mandated school accountability and testing requirements be abandoned? With Congress actively considering a major revision of No Child Left Behind, that question has moved to the top of the national education agenda. The Obama administration, teachers unions and some Republicans are joining forces to gut core provisions of the education law that was one of the Bush administration's crowning achievements.
No Child Left Behind, which began in 2002, focused on the low performance of African-American and Hispanic students. It required that all students, no matter their race or ethnicity, reach proficiency by 2014. Since minority students had the longest road to travel, schools placed special emphasis on their instruction, and measured the quality of their instruction by ascertaining their performance on standardized tests.
Each school was required to report annual test-score results for every student in grades three through eight. (High-school students took only one test in four years.) Although all schools were tested, No Child requirements bore most heavily upon schools that received federal compensatory education dollars, which typically had substantial percentages of minority students.
In 2008, Democrats secured major contributions from teacher organizations by campaigning aggressively against No Child's testing and accountability provisions. "We can meet high-standards without forcing teachers and students to spend most of the year preparing for a single high-stakes test," candidate Obama insisted.
After winning the presidency, Mr. Obama halted enforcement of most of No Child's key provisions and offered waivers to states that signed up for more lenient rules devised by the Education Department. So far, waivers have been granted to 40 states. The latest bill promoted by the Senate education committee calls for testing but allows states to let students submit "portfolios" or "projects" in lieu of the standardized tests required by the original law.
Now that No Child itself is under reconsideration, it is worth asking if the law actually worked. Did minority-student performance improve during the years when its provisions were strictly enforced? And what gains have been registered since Mr. Obama allowed enforcement to wither?
With the release this month by the National Assessment of Educational Progress of the 2012 math and reading performances of students at ages 9, 13 and 17, answers to these questions are now available. NAEP's independence and credibility has been so well-established it is now known as the nation's report card. Its long-term trend data are collected only episodically, so we cannot track student progress each year, but with the release of the latest results we now have data at three key points in time: 1999, when the Clinton administration was pushing states toward accountability; 2008, at the end of Mr. Bush's eight years in office when No Child was under bitter attack; and 2012, four years after Mr. Obama won the White House.
Many expected a rapid rise in test scores after Mr. Obama's election. Two days after his inauguration, the New York Times heralded a scholarly study that seemed to show that "the inspiring role model that Mr. Obama projected helped blacks overcome anxieties about racial stereotypes that . . . lower the test-taking proficiency of African-Americans."
A 20-question test administered to 84 black students months before the election and then again just after election day, showed a narrowing of the white-black test gap to the point of statistical insignificance. While a few doubted the study's validity, media coverage of the "Obama effect" on minority children was extensive and enthusiastic.
Given such expectations, the latest NAEP report is startling—though thus far its findings have been overlooked by the mainstream media. The degree to which a previously steady closing of the test-score gap slowed to a near halt for 9-year-olds is particularly dramatic.
During the Clinton-Bush era (1999 to 2008), white 9-year-olds gained 11 points in math, African-American student performance rose by 13 points and Hispanic student performance leaped by 21 points. In reading, the gains by white 9-year-olds went up seven points, black performance jumped by 18 points and Hispanic student achievement climbed 14 points.
Those remarkable gains came to an end after the Obama administration took charge. Between 2008-12, gains by African-Americans at age 9 were just two points in each subject, while Hispanics gained one point in reading and nothing in math. Whites gained one point in reading and two points in math.
Some might argue that this comparison is unfair to the Obama administration, as the 1999-2008 data cover nine years, while Mr. Obama had only four years to bring hope and change to American schools. To put both time periods on equivalent scales, we totaled the gains in reading and math for students at age 9 and 13, the ages when students are most subject to testing and accountability provisions. We then divided that total by the number of years over which test score gains were registered—nine years for the earlier period, four for the Obama years. The result gives us the average annual gain in student performance for each period.
For the first nine years, the average gains were six points annually for African-Americans, five points for Hispanics and three points for whites. Over that stretch, the test-score gap closed by two to three points each year, on average. While minority students did not attain the proficiency No Child Left Behind expected, the record shows steady positive momentum.
After Mr. Obama dismantled No Child, that motion came to a virtual halt and the black-white gap widened slightly. Annual gains have been limited to one-and-a-half points for blacks and to three points for Hispanic students. Whites gained two points annually, slightly (though not significantly) better than those registered by African-Americans. In other words, gains under the Obama administration by all students range between minimal and nonexistent, and the black-white gap on test scores threatens to widen after having narrowed steadily over the previous nine years.
There isn't anything positive to report about student achievement at the high-school level, since neither the Bush administration nor the Obama administration placed much emphasis on student testing after eighth grade. At age 17, whites or blacks didn't gain as much as a point per year either from 1999-2008 or during the past four years.
Given these numbers, the Obama administration's current efforts to suspend accountability provisions seem entirely misguided. Instead, the White House should extend the provisions of the original No Child Left Behind law by requiring high-school students to meet similarly high standards. If we scrap student and teacher accountability, we are failing our kids.
Mr. Peterson, professor of government at Harvard University, directs its Program on Education Policy and Governance. He is also a senior fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution.
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By Newt Gingrich
In the last few months we have had at least six events that prove the American strategy in the Middle East is not working.
The evidence is so clear that it demands a serious national conversation about our national security strategy and the system which implements it.
Five of these events were prison breaks. The other was the closing of nineteen American embassies which the government had to temporarily close out of fear and ignorance.
If you connect the dots of these stories you will understand that this is what losing looks like.
Twelve years after the 9/11 attacks, the American strategies of Bush and Obama are losing. Our enemies in the Middle East (and increasingly around the world as they spread by Internet and migration) are winning. The forces of law-abiding civilization are losing.
The key question is whether we will have the courage as a people to insist on a serious investigation of this failure and to seek to understand the requirements of a strategy of success.
Countries that are winning do not have to close their embassies in nineteen countries. This is a statement of impotence and incompetence on a grand scale, an admission that the United States cannot even defend its own embassies (and this is after decades of turning our embassies into fortresses isolated from local communities).
These were not nineteen trivial countries. As Jack Copeland notes, "Approximately 25 million barrels of crude oil are produced in these thirteen countries. To put this is in perspective the total consumption was at 79 million barrels per day worldwide."
So the United States has demonstrated that it has to act out of timidity and weakness in countries which produce one third of the world's oil. This is after thousands of Americans killed, many thousands of Americans wounded, and trillions spent in the Middle East. Twelve years of the wrong strategies on a bipartisan basis have led to this failure.
Lets look at another symptom of losing.
Major prison breaks have been occurring throughout the Middle East.
Afghanistan, April 25, 2011. The London Telegraphreported: "Taliban insurgents dug a 1,050-foot (320-metre) tunnel underground and into the main jail in Kandahar city and whisked out more than 450 prisoners, most of whom were Taliban fighters, officials and insurgents have claimed."
Afghanistan, June 8, 2012. CBS News reported: “Taliban fighters blew a hole in the side of a prison in northern Afghanistan Thursday night, allowing 31 inmates to escape.”
Iraq, July 22, 2013. Reuters reported a prison break at Abu Ghraib, the notorious prison on the outskirts if Baghdad: “‘The number of escaped inmates has reached 500, most of them were convicted senior members of al Qaeda and had received death sentences,’ Hakim Al-Zamili, a senior member of the security and defense committee in parliament, told Reuters."
Libya, July 27, 2013. CNN reported that 1,200 prisoners broke out of a Benghazi jail in an attack linked to Al Qaeda: “A riot inside Al-Kuifiya prison erupted when a number of masked gunmen launched an attack from outside the prison facility. As a result, more than 1,000 prisoners escaped.”
Pakistan, July 30, 2013. Sixteen months of planning led to a successful prison break.
McClatchy reported: "The operation was completed in two hours, 40 minutes, and the militants were gone before the military arrived and surrounded the prison. The 250 prisoners they’d freed included about 40 experienced but otherwise not extraordinary militant commanders who’ve been repatriated to their parent factions in the tribal areas, as part of a quid pro quo for those factions’ logistical support of the operation, the activists said.
"Similar tactics were adopted during a July 25 assault on an office of the military’s Inter Services Intelligence directorate in the southern town of Sukkur. That attack killed nine ISI operatives in an area that had previously not seen terrorist activity."
So nearly 2,500 prisoners escape in four different countries. In case some apologists suggest this was just a coincidence consider the Associated Press report that "Interpol, the French-based international policy agency, has also issued a global security alert in connection with suspected al-Qaida involvement in several recent prison escapes including those in Iraq, Libya and Pakistan."
So after 12 years of intense effort, two overt wars, dozens of minor skirmishes in Somalia, Libya, Mali and other countries, widespread use of drones to kill people, and a massive investment in power projection and intelligence gathering, the fact is our enemies are widespread, growing and increasingly dangerous.
The House and Senate should launch hearings into the growing defeat facing the United States and we should have the courage to face the facts and think through the consequences.
Isolationism and withdrawal will not work. The very existence of the United States and the free, open culture of America is a mortal threat to radical Islamists. There is no practical act of withdrawal which will make America so unimportant that terrorists and propagandists will not want to replace our civilization with their belief system.
Massive intervention will not work. I warned for years that we could turn Iraq into a Western democracy if we were prepared to stay as long as we have in South Korea (now 63 years and still engaged) and if we were prepared to be as ruthless as we were in post-Nazi Germany and post-Imperial Japan.
It was clear we were not prepared to do either. Our limited engagement in Iraq and Afghanistan will disappear as a rock in the desert is gradually covered by the sand.
We need a fundamentally new strategy that recognizes the scale of the threat and the limitations of our military, financial, and political powers.
Such a strategy does not exist today.
In fact, neither Republicans seeking to sustain the Bush interventionism nor the Democrats seeking to defend the Obama “lead from behind” model are prepared to even have the discussion.
Hopefully the disaster of having to close nineteen embassies, the danger of having 2,500 escaped prisoners, and the daily reports of violence in Mali, Syria, Libya, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan, etc. will convince our elected leaders that they need to open a serious in depth analysis of what is really happening, what we thought would happen, and what we have to consider in developing a new strategy and a new system of implementation.
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5)The U.S. economy will eventually fall into a recession, smothered by an excessive debt load, says David Levy, chairman of the Jerome Levy Forecasting Center.
"We are still in a disinflationary and balance-sheet adjusting phase in the U.S. and globally, and that is going to bring, at some point, another recession," he told Barron's.
"It could be sooner rather than later, and when that happens, we'll probably get a little bit of deflation. At some point, we'll see the 10-year Treasury yielding well under 1 percent, much as we have seen in Japan." The 10-year yield stood at 2.63 percent Wednesday morning.
The economy is showing signs of improvement. "But the big picture is that we still have way too much debt relative to income," Levy said.
The household debt-to-income ratio has dropped to 104 percent from a peak of about 128 percent, he noted. But, "we would like to see it down back around 80 percent to really feel we are in good shape."
In 2014, the economy could have "another plodding-along year," Levy predicted. "Whether we have a recession will depend on political decisions made in Washington, Europe and China."
The U.S. budget deficit will play a major role, Levy explained. "If we have a significant further deficit reduction — but we may well not — that would definitely increase the recession risk," he stated. "It would be hard for the economy to absorb a sizable deficit reduction two years in a row."
The deficit totaled $1.1 trillion in fiscal 2012, which ended last Sept. 30. The White House budget office forecasts a deficit of $759 billion for this fiscal year.
Some economists argue that the Federal Reserve can buoy the economy with its easing. "But at this point, the Fed is relatively powerless when using monetary policy," Levy argued.
"When you actually look at how monetary policy gets into the individual profit sources, quantitative easing ends up looking a lot less important."
If we enter a recession, deflation is a risk, Levy asserted. "In that case we actually could see not only some goods and services prices drop, but possibly even wage gains drop to zero or even slightly negative."
Other economists expect continued sluggish growth in the United States, at least for the short term. "The basic story of a deep recession followed by a lackluster recovery is essentially unchanged," Nariman Behravesh, chief economist at IHS, told The New York Times.
So what does Levy's view mean for investors? He is bullish on Treasurys and the dollar. "For the long-term patient investor who can ride out a little volatility, there are significant capital gains in Treasury positions and, obviously, protection from a lot of risk," he said.
Levy likes the dollar because he thinks the U.S. economy is the strongest in the world, despite its difficulties.
As for stocks, "we don't really trust the U.S. equity market, per se," Levy noted. "Still, we feel it is a lot sounder than the European and emerging markets broadly speaking. So we are actually doing a long-short play," explaining that he's long the U.S. stock market and short European and emerging markets.
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6) Blacks Raised Conservative. Vote Liberal. Go Figure.
By The Drive-By Pundit
All black families have a member they consider just a hair above subhuman.
Not the wife-beaters, nun-clubbers, or even the baby seal-rapers. It's someone far lower: the conservative.
At family gatherings, the conservative is strategically seated where wary eyes can be kept on him at all times in case he suddenly jumps up and starts trying to impose life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness on everyone. Families have been known to assign the comparatively more trustworthy members of their clans -- wife-beaters, etc. -- to record his every move and comments.
When young, black conservatives are very self-conscious and will seek out places to hide. A favorite place is behind bookshelves. Few ever bother to look in that direction. As the old joke goes: the best way to hide something from a black person is to put it in a book (or behind one).
As black conservatives age, they become more self-assured and gradually make their way out in front at family events -- the center of attention, running their mouths at every opportunity. It's amusing watching black families' discomfort as they feign small talk in desperate bids to steer clear of any subject the least bit political. But a black conservative in a mood for a bit of mischief is not one to be daunted.
Grandma: Nice weather we're having.
Family: It certainly is. Quite. Quite. Indubitably. Why don't we just kill this Uncle Tom? Hush, child.
Black Conservative: Great weather, indeed. No thanks to the stupid liberals. They fly around in gas-guzzling jets while they want us to drive little bitty wind-up cars to solve the "global warming" scam they're peddling. Damn hippies! When I think of the environmental crud they want us to swallow, I could puke toxic waste. You don't see any blackies among the greenies. Negroes got real problems to deal with. Thank you very much, Mr. Obama. You and those tree-huggers can kiss my black behind.
And so on and so forth until he's left completely alone. A black conservative on a rant can clear out a room full of family like nobody's business.
Every now and again, younger relatives of a black conservative work up the courage to ask about his beliefs. They approach with nervous little faces, as one might when querying an axe murderer:
"Are you really a conservative?"
"Yes, I am. And do you want to know what brought me to this lowly state? Your elders sitting over there, glowering at me with hate. They made me conservative."
They may vote liberal, but the values black parents once drilled deep into their children were antithetical to all things the left stands for. The lessons taught were done more out of necessity than kindness. No one knew more how difficult life can be when you do stupid, irresponsible things than a parent of a black child.
Black children were taught that no one else was responsible for their upkeep, so they'd better learn to love or at least tolerate working if they liked eating on a regular basis.
Black children were taught that no work was beneath them, especially if he or she didn't have a job, in which case any job was a good job to be appreciated and done well. Even if the job involved nothing more than sweeping floors, black parents taught their children to polish that pine until their reflection shone back at them.
Black children were taught that they had to be twice as good as any white person in the workplace if they expected to do half as well. No allowances would be made so don't waste time complaining. That's just the way things are so get used to it. Do your work and do it better than anyone else and success would follow.
Black children were taught that there were only two kinds of fair in this life -- state and county. If there were any other kind worth fretting about, then their skin would be white, their hair straight, and their last name Rockefeller.
Whenever most black children desired something beyond the basics, such as a bicycle, they were told: "Negro, there's these things called 'jobs,' and if you want money for a bike, I suggest you get up off your narrow black behind and go find one."
Black children were taught that many of the social issues that have become liberal touchstones -- such as gay marriage -- are sinful. Doubt it? Then walk into any black church, get up before the congregation, and say gay people should be able to get married. You'll quickly discover that the baptismal pool has uses beyond the cleansing of souls.
There was nothing special about the conservative lessons that black children were taught. Americans of all races, creeds, ethnicities, and national origins were also once taught the same by their parents. If you can believe it, the very same lessons were once staples of public school curricula across the nation. How long ago that seems.
The Drive-By Pundit is the pen name of Perry Drake, author of two recently published e-books, The Book of Racist Democrat Quotes and "Democratic Nigger!": The Long, Racist, Bloody Account of the Democrat Party's Hatred for Blacks.
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7)
Washington Post wrote its own fate
John Podhoretz
The startling news that The Washington Post has been sold for a wad of cash out of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ pocket — a huge wad, to be sure, $250 million, but 1/20th of what the paper’s selling price might have been 15 years ago when no one thought it would ever be for sale — is a reminder of the biblical adage: How art the mighty fallen.
It certainly was mighty. And it deserved its fall.
The Washington Post was once both a great and hateful newspaper.
The depth and breadth of the paper’s news coverage in the 1970s and 1980s was remarkable. It was well-written, well-reported, thorough, an educated reader’s dream in some ways.
But those qualities went hand in hand with its grotesque self-infatuation and an unimaginably obnoxious sense of its own importance. More than any other institution, it was the Post that typified the tone of the American media that the public came to loathe in the 1980s.
The Post knew what was best: To wit, liberal social views and liberal politics. And it sneered at anyone who might have thought otherwise, from the front page on back.
Was there a crime wave? Pity the criminals; they had it rough. Were communist regimes around the world oppressing hundreds of millions? Tut-tut, you warmonger.
The Post’s utter refusal to be even minimally respectful of conservatives and Republicans was a mark of its blind arrogance.
You might think The Washington Post would have felt itself duty-bound, as the leading paper in the nation’s capital, to write about the GOP in a neutral tone. What’s more, much of the paper’s circulation area was in Republican Virginia, so you might think the Post would want to be careful about insulting its own readers and their views.
Nope. Ben Bradlee, its editor, was an unabashed liberal. He loathed Ronald Reagan, he hated conservatives, and everybody knew it, and almost everybody at the paper was liberated to follow his example.
Why did it have so much power? Well, it certainly played the central role in bringing down the Nixon presidency. But in truth, the Post’s executives made several business decisions in the 1950s and 1960s that made it into a money machine.
Primarily, it expanded into the DC suburbs effectively, thus solidifying an enormous market share, when its competitors failed to do so and dwindled away.
It was filthy rich. And all credit to Katharine Graham, its CEO — she pumped a lot of money back into the paper, and it produced some amazing journalism.
But it’s a cold, hard fact that people were buying the paper then for the reasons people don’t buy it now — the very reasons it made money then and loses money now.
They bought it for the supermarket and department-store ads, the classifieds, the box scores, the movie listings and the funnies. Now they get all of them elsewhere.
The decline of the Post over the past 15 years was nothing short of astonishing. It was once one of the two must-reads in the United States. Now it’s a pretty dull local paper with a halfway decent Web site.
It’s unfortunate that a great journalistic institution has been laid so low.
But it’s good that the Post got knocked on its heels. The Bible also tells us that “pride goeth before a fall,” and, oh, were the Post and its people proud of themselves.
Well, now they’ve fallen. Maybe Jeff Bezos can get them back up.
Maybe
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