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And then there is Uncle Daniel holding Dagny and Mommy Tamara holding Stella, taken at Stella's second birthday party!
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Hussman and the Fed's two legged stool. (See 1 below.)
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By now you know I am a Conservative but I also recoil at the enormous number of extreme bills, laws legislation that are passed in reaction to progressive pressure.
In Georgia our Governor is going to sign a bill basically allowing you to bring a gun into almost every venue in the state.
I began to think about how ,why extreme measures and legislation comes to be and in many cases it is because of comparable extreme pressure to force rational and existing laws to be defended.
The irrational press to embrace bad and/or spurious science causes extraordinary backlashes in the environmental area and so the list goes from guns laws to The Pledge of Allegiance.
I do not support all the inanity that we are subjected to but much of it is forced upon those who are conservative in their view of what is rational, what is sensible and what works.
There is an unswerving and constant drum beat effort to bring about progressive change which is neither supportable in fact nor in practice. You cannot spend what you do not have forever and expect others to maintain your currency or its buying power. You cannot run down your defense posture without ultimately being challenged by rogue leaders and/or nations without scrambling to rebuild.
You cannot trample on course curriculum , offer feel good pap and expect the youth of this nation to be competitive, to stay out of trouble and to have any reason to feel good about their limited future because they cannot read, write, and reason. PC'ism be damned!!!
You cannot destroy the family unit and then spend billions on the dependent society you have created without tragic societal consequences that shake the very foundation of our Republic.
You cannot attack people who want to worship their own God and not create an enormous push back in defense of their Constitutional and God given rights.
For every action there is a reaction and there always are consequences.
I am not justifying overboard protection of what was, what serves us well and what works but I am convinced progressiveness has gone to extreme lengths that have caused backlashes, divisiveness and turned us into a disunited nation. This is not healthy.
And now we have a radical president, who does not support traditional American values of exceptionalism, who does not believe America's presence in the world is beneficial and who cares not a whiff about the sanctity of our fiscal posture. He is simply interested in having his own radical way regardless of Constitutional limitations. He is willing to engage in unconstitutional over reach not only by his own hand but also by willingly setting a tone and making appointments that encourage even worse abuses.
Benghzi, the IRS Scandal, etc. do matter and do make a difference in how we respond to each other because they force us to align sides that need not be. They force us to defend our very freedoms and sanctity of our home and person and this need not be.
Obama is the most tragic political figure to occupy the Oval Office and his actions, his lack of leadership threaten our Republic as no other ever has.
Call me radical, call me racist call me whatever. I remain comfortable in my own skin, my own assessment because I know what we had and what sacrifices were made to achieve and maintain what we had and I am sick of what Obama has caused us to endure and what he continues to do to our society, to our nation, to our place in the world. What a tragedy has befallen America in less than 5 years.!
Things really have turned bad if The Washington Post calls Obama to account for his failed red paint policies. (See 2 below.)
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Sowell continues about the high cost of Liberalism. (See 3 below.)
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In a recent memo I warned about Sen. Hagan and the tactics she was employing in order to snow N Carolina voters. Here is more evidence. Reid and Obama are going all out in order to hold the Senate and they will stop at nothing in the process.
The Romneying of her opponent has begun!
Lies and smear the Chicago/Nevada way! (See 4 below.)
Click on and then go to bottom of the article and click on the broadcast: http://freebeacon.com/blog/obamacare-supporter-kay-hagan-attacks-opponent-in-ridiculously-dishonest-radio-ad/
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The Land Management grab has shifted to Texas for the same reason it is being attempted in Nevada.
Large tracts of land are needed for greening and paying off Obama/Clinton constituent contributors. More corruption at the highest level.
This has not reported in the Liberal Media but they might be forced to in time. But 'what difference does it make?'
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Dick
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1)Hussman: The Fed Has Built a 2-Legged Stool
The Federal Reserve is resting the fate of the U.S. economy on a two-legged stool by focusing only on jobs and inflation, while financial excesses are left unchecked, according to Fed perma-critic and mutual fund manager John Hussman.
In his weekly market commentary, the founder of the eponymous Hussman Funds predicted the Fed has baked unavoidable consequences into the cake of massive monetary stimulus that will prevent its employment and inflation goals from being met.
"Make no mistake. The Federal Reserve's policy of quantitative easing has starved investors of all sources of safe return, provoking them to reach for yield in more speculative assets, including equities, leveraged loans, covenant-lite debt and other securities," he wrote.
"Having stomped on the pedal for years, all of these asset classes are valued at levels that are strenuously elevated from a historical perspective, and as a result, offer strikingly poor prospective returns for long-term investors."
Hussman noted also the 2000-02 stock market decline wiped out every shred of S&P 500 total return, "in excess of Treasury bill returns, all the way back to May 1996," and the 2007-09 decline eliminated "every bit of the market's excess return all the way back to June 1995."
There is no economic law that says the current bull market must likewise end in a dreadful plunge, he acknowledged.
"On the other hand, I have no doubt at all that having driven equity valuations to present levels, investors will be starved of total return — from current prices — for at least a decade (assuming valuations never move below historical norms), and possibly much longer (in the event that valuations do indeed move below historical norms 15 or 20 years from today)."
According to Hussman, it is too late in the current bull market for the Fed to unwind the policies that led to "malinvestment" and extreme valuations, but there may still be a way to manage the downside for the broader economy.
"Oversight – particularly in leveraged equity, leveraged loans, and covenant-lite lending — should be far higher on the [public] agenda than promoting further overvaluation and speculation, in the hope that some small benefit will trickle down to the masses," he said.
Michael Feroli, JPMorgan Chase's chief economist, believes the Fed is faced with an "impossible trinity," Bloomberg Businessweek reported.
In an essay, Feroli predicted that three things cannot possibly co-exist in the Fed — transparency, collegiality and clarity. While the Fed is striving to achieve all three, he says that will soon be demonstrated impractical because the Fed members do not agree on how to control inflation and asset bubbles.
In a guest column for Forbes titled "The Bizarro World of the Federal Reserve," contributor Mark Hendrickson questioned why the Fed has been so intent on achieving a higher level of inflation to spark the economy.
"I guess it's because I've always thought that the purpose of a central bank is to defend the soundness of its country's currencies, not to depreciate it. How quaint and naive of me," Hendrickson wrote.
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2) President Obama, disregarding his own red line, dithers on Ukraine
By Editorial Board
AFTER AN agreement to “de-escalate tensions and restore security” in Ukraine was announced Thursday, Secretary of State John F. Kerry was very explicit about U.S. expectations. “We fully expect the Russians . . . to demonstrate their seriousness by insisting that the pro-Russian separatists who they’ve been supporting lay down their arms [and] leave the buildings” in eastern Ukraine, he said. “I made clear to Foreign Minister [Sergei] Lavrov today that if we are not able to see progress . . . this weekend, then we will have no choice but to impose further costs on Russia.”
The weekend has come and gone, and far from standing down in eastern Ukraine, Russia has continued to escalate. Its operatives and those they control have not withdrawn from the government buildings they occupy. In Slovyansk, the crossroads where Russian military operatives appear to be headquartered, a shooting incident early Sunday morning has been seized on by Moscow’s crude propaganda apparatus, which is claiming — based on what looks like fabricated evidence — that a Kiev-based right-wing group was involved.
On Monday, Mr. Lavrov was back to threatening an invasion by the tens of thousands of Russian troops on Ukraine’s border, claiming that, in the words of his ministry, “Russia is increasingly called upon to save southeastern Ukraine from chaos.”
Again Vladimir Putin is flagrantly disregarding the warnings and “red lines” of the Obama administration. He has reason to do so: President Obama also doesn’t observe them. Despite Mr. Kerry’s clear words, sanctions that have been prepared against cronies of Mr. Putin and companies involved in his Ukraine adventure remain on ice at the White House, where they have languished for more than a week. When asked Monday how much longer they would be held back, White House spokesman Jay Carney said, “I don’t have an end date for you.”
Vice President Biden arrived in Kiev on Monday and is expected to announce more U.S. aid. But steps such as providing nonlethal equipment to the dysfunctional Ukrainian army will not stop a Russian invasion or induce Mr. Putin to comply with last week’s Geneva agreement. Perhaps nothing will; but the only strategy with a chance of working is to follow through on the administration’s own rhetoric. When the Russian-backed operatives first began taking over buildings in Donetsk and other cities two weeks ago, Mr. Kerry told a congressional hearing that broad sanctions against the Russian banking, energy and mining sectors were “on the table.”
Those steps would give pause to the Russian elite, if not Mr. Putin. Fear of them probably induced Mr. Lavrov to sign on to the de-escalation plan, as a way of preventing the West from acting. Yet now White House aides are waving off the “sectoral” sanctions Mr. Kerry spoke of and are delaying even more modest steps against individuals. They claim that the United States shouldn’t act independently of the European Union — which gives Greece and Cyprus a veto over how the Obama administration reacts to the crossing of its own publicly declared red lines.
For weeks Mr. Obama has held back on forceful measures against Mr. Putin’s aggression in Ukraine on the theory that a measured approach matched with diplomacy would yield results. The policy has failed. Now Mr. Obama must act — or doom Ukraine to dismemberment.
Read more about this issue: The Post’s View: The U.S., the E.U. and Russia strike a balance on Ukraine The Post’s View: It’s probably too late to prevent war in Ukraine The Post’s View: Russia will respond only to increased sanctions over Ukraine The Post’s View: The U.S. should not shut out Ukraine David Ignatius: The cost of Putin’s adventurism in Ukraine George F. Will: Russia’s brutality with Ukraine is nothing new Madeleine Albright and Jim O’Brien: The West’s obligation to Ukraine David Ignatius: Has the Ukraine crisis been defused?
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3)
The High Cost of Liberalism: Part II
By Thomas Sowell
Liberals can be disarming. In fact, they are for disarming anybody who can be disarmed, whether domestically or internationally.
Unfortunately, the people who are the easiest to disarm are the ones who are the most peaceful -- and disarming them makes them vulnerable to those who are the least peaceful.
We are currently getting a painful demonstration of that in Ukraine. When Ukraine became an independent nation, it gave up all the nuclear missiles that were on its territory from the days when it had been part of the Soviet Union.
At that time, Ukraine had the third largest arsenal of nuclear weapons in the world. Do you think Putin would have attacked Ukraine if it still had those nuclear weapons? Or do you think it is just a coincidence that nations with nuclear weapons don't get invaded?
Among those who urged Ukraine to reduce even its conventional, non-nuclear weapons as well, was a new United States Senator named Barack Obama. He was all for disarmament then, and apparently even now as President of the United States. He has refused Ukraine's request for weapons with which to defend itself.
As with so many things that liberals do, the disarmament crusade is judged by its good intentions, not by its actual consequences.
Indeed, many liberals seem unaware that the consequences could be anything other than what they hope for. That is why disarmament advocates are called "the peace movement."
Whether disarmament has in fact led to peace, more often than military deterrence has, is something that could be argued on the basis of the facts of history -- but it seldom is.
Liberals almost never talk about disarmament in terms of evidence of its consequences, whether they are discussing gun control at home or international disarmament agreements.
International disarmament agreements flourished between the two World Wars. Just a few years after the end of the First World War there were the Washington Naval Agreements of 1921-1922 that led to the United States actually sinking some of its own warships. Then there was the celebrated Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928, in which nations renounced war, with France's Foreign Minister Aristide Briand declaring, "Away with rifles, machine guns, and cannon!" The "international community" loved it.
In Britain, the Labour Party repeatedly voted against military armaments during most of the decade of the 1930s. A popular argument of the time was that Britain should disarm "as an example to others."
Unfortunately, Hitler did not follow that example. He was busy building the most powerful military machine on the continent of Europe.
Nor did Germany or Japan allow the Washington Naval Agreements to cramp their style. The fact that Britain and America limited the size of their battleships simply meant that Germany and Japan had larger battleships when World War II began.
What is happening in Ukraine today is just a continuation of the old story about nations that disarm increasing the chances of being attacked by nations that do not disarm.
Any number of empirical studies about domestic gun control laws tell much the same story. Gun control advocates seldom, if ever, present hard evidence that gun crimes in general, or murder rates in particular, go down after gun control laws are passed or tightened.
That is the crucial question about gun control laws. But liberals settle that question by assumption. Then they can turn their attention to denouncing the National Rifle Association.
But neither the National Rifle Association nor the Second Amendment is the crucial issue. If the hard facts show that gun control laws actually reduce the murder rate, we can repeal the Second Amendment, as other Amendments have been repealed.
If in fact tighter gun control laws reduced the murder rate, that would be the liberals' ace of trumps. Why then do the liberals not play their ace of trumps, by showing us such hard facts? Because they don't have any such hard facts. So they give us lofty rhetoric and outraged indignation instead.
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By Andrew Stiles
Senator Kay Hagan (D., N.C.) has released a new radio ad (see below) accusing her potential GOP challenger, Thom Tillis, of hypocrisy. The ad is ridiculously dishonest.
Tillis has attacked Hagan for her support of Obamacare, but the ad suggests these attacks are hypocritical because Tillis once described Obamacare as “a great idea.”
“Politicians, these days you’ve gotta watch ‘em close—real close,” says the narrator in Hagan’s ad, before playing a clip of Tillis saying “it’s a great idea” in reference to Obamacare.
“That’s right. Thom Tillis called Obamacare ‘a great idea,’” the narrator continues. “So Thom Tillis thinks he can attack Kay Hagan over something he calls ‘a great idea’? Watch close, seems Thom Tillis wants it both ways.”
The Tillis quote was taken from his February 6 appearance on the Bill LuMaye radio show. You can check out the full audio here. The quote in question takes place around the 9-minute mark.
Here’s what Tillis said, in the context of broader GOP efforts to repeal Obamacare: “The majority of the stuff that is in Obamacare is bad, because it’s not fiscally sustainable. It’s a great idea that can’t be paid for.”
He went on to describe Obamacare as a “policy that’s creating as many problems as it fixes in terms of healthcare,” and “creating the most devastating problem of a deficit that we can’t afford.”
Hagan, who voted for Obamacare and repeated the president’s false promisethat no one would lose existing coverage, has aggressively dodged the issue of late. On at least one occasion, she literally fled from reporters attempting to ask her about individuals who have lost their existing coverage. One wonders if, at this point, even Hagan still describe Obamacare as “a great idea.” But she’d rather not talk about it.
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