God Save America From The Queen!!! Obama's Nuclear Gift To His Persian Friends! Grandma Come Out and Play With The Kids!

My oldest daughter, Debra, celebrates her birthday in Sedona and her 35th anniversary as well.

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Sent to me by my dearest friend, severest critic and fellow memo reader.

It is the story of a Grandma who wants to become your queen and how she plans to connect with the commoners she hopes to preside over from her throne.

God Save America From The Queen!!!! (See 1 below.)
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Sent to me by a long time friend and fellow memo reader.

I have not verified the content. (See 2 below.)
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Will Greece fall on its sword? (See 3 below.)
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Why won't Grandma come out and play with the others?  Why does she hide in the cupboard?  (See 4 below.)
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Obama's America threatens world peace and this is something new for our allies and Israel because Obama does not believe in a strong America and is hell bent on becoming the first president to give a nuclear gift to his Islamic/Persian friends. (See 5 below.)
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Dick
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1)A Message from H.M.Q. 

As you know my dear people the last year for me has been an   annus horribilus. We, Prince William and I, have been tormented by questions about our handling of finances, and the royal house of Clinton has been subjected to tiresome questions about the tragic events in Benghazi–in the furthest regions of our empire. We are not amused!

Nevertheless, I will not be daunted in my desire and commitment to serve you the people. For the next seventeen months I will be traveling among you as one of you to listen to your deepest longings and needs. I will be with you in your Wal-Mart and beside you in your Burger Kings. I will drive with you down the busy interstate highways of our land sharing your poverty and need with you. 

How well I remember the days when Billy of Arkansas and I were impoverished. After we were expelled from our Washington Palace we hardly had two mansions to rub together. We were so poor we had to remove thousands of dollars of china, flatware, carpets and gifts from the Washington Palace just to survive. Now, happily, benefactors from around our empire have given just enough for us to scrape by. 

During those difficult times we had to cut back when our only daughter Chelsea was married. We only had three million dollars to spend on her wedding and I remember our hopes as she moved into her $10m Manhattan apartment that one day she would be able to move on from that humble abode to something more fitting. So as I travel across our land to meet you all I will be listening and sharing with you. I won't be tipping. Can't afford that.

Then when the time for the royal election comes I know you will crown me as your rightful monarch so that we can all live happily ever after. Send money.

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2)All:

I'm a 54 year old consulting engineer and make between $60,000 and $125,000 per year, depending on how hard I work and whether or not there are work projects out there for me.

My girlfriend is 61 and makes about $18,000 per year, working as a part-time mail clerk.

For me, making $60,000 a year, under ObamaCare, the cheapest, lowest grade policy I can buy, which also happens to impose a $5,000 deductible, costs $482 per month. 

For my girlfriend, the same exact policy, same deductible, costs $1 per month.  That's right, $1 per month.  I'm not making this up. 

Don't believe me?  Just go to Âhttp://www.coveredca.gov/   , the ObamaCare website for California and enter the parameters I've mentioned above and see for yourself.  By the way, my zip code is 93940. You'll need to enter that. 

So OK, clearly ObamaCare is a scheme that involves putting the cost burden of healthcare onto the middle and upper-income wage earners.  But there's a lot more to it.  Stick with me.   

And before I make my next points, I'd like you to think about something:

I live in Monterey County, in Central California.  We have a large land mass but just 426,000 residents - about the population of Colorado Springs or the city of Omaha.  But we do have a large Hispanic population, including a large number of illegal aliens, and to serve this group we have Natividad Medical Center, a massive, Federally subsidized county medical complex that takes up an area about one-third the size of the Chrysler Corporation automobile assembly plant in Belvedere, Illinois (see Google Earth View).  Natividad has state-of-the-art operating rooms, Computed Tomography and Magnetic Resonance Imaging, fully equipped, 24 hour emergency room, and much more.  If you have no insurance, if you've been in a drive-by shooting or have overdosed on crack cocaine, this is where you go.  And it's essentially free, because almost everyone who ends up in the ER is uninsured.

  

Last year, 2,735 babies were born at Natividad.  32% of these were born to out-of-wedlock teenage mothers, 93% of which were Hispanic. Less than 20% could demonstrate proof of citizenship, and 71% listed their native language as Spanish. Of these 876 births, only 40 were covered under [any kind of] private health insurance.  The taxpayers paid for the other 836.  And in case you were wondering about the entire population - all 2,735 births - less than 24% involved insured coverage or even partial payment on behalf of the patient to the hospital in exchange for services.  Keep this in mind as we move forward.   

Now consider this: Â 

If I want to upgrade my policy to a low-deductible premium policy, such as what I had with my last employer, my cost is $886 per month.  But my girlfriend can upgrade her policy to the very same level, for just $4 per month  That's right, $4 per month.  $48 per year for a zero-deductible, premium healthcare policy - the kind of thing you get when you work at IBM (except of course, IBM employees pay an average of $170 per month out of pocket for their coverage). 

I mean, it's bad enough that I will be forced to subsidize the ObamaCare scheme in the first place.  But even if I agreed with the basic scheme, which of course I do not, I would neveragree to subsidize premium policies.  If I have to pay $482 a month for a budget policy, I sure as hell do not want the guy I'm subsidizing to get a better policy, for less that 1% of what I have to fork out each month for a low-end policy.

Why must I pay $482 per month for something the other guy gets for a dollar?  And why should the other guy get to buy an $886 policy for $4 a month  Think about this: I have to pay $10,632 a year for the same thing that the other guy can get for $48.  $10,000 of net income is 60 days of full time work as an engineer.  $48 is something I could could pay for collecting aluminum cans and plastic bottles, one day a month.

Are you with me on this?  Are you starting to get an idea what ObamaCare is really about?

ObamaCare is not about dealing with inequities in the healthcare system. That's just the cover story  The real story is that it is a massive, political power grab.  Do you think anyone who can insure himself with a premium policy for $4 a month will vote for anyone but the political party that provides him such a deal?  ObamaCare is about enabling, subsidizing, and expanding the Left's political power base, at taxpayer expense.  Why would I vote for anyone but a Democrat if I can have babies for $4 a month?  For that matter, why would I go to college or strive for a better job or income if it means I have to pay real money for healthcare coverage?  Heck, why study engineering when I can be a schlub for $20K per year and buy a new F-150 with all the money I'm saving?

  

And think about those $4-a-month babies - think in terms of propagation models.  Think of just how many babies will be born to irresponsible, under-educated mothers.  Will we get a new crop of brain surgeons and particle physicists from the dollar baby club, or will we need more cops, criminal courts and prisons?  One thing you can be certain of: At $4 a month, they'll multiply, and multiply, and multiply.

ObamaCare: It's all about political power!!

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3)- The 'Grexit' Issue and the Problem of Free Trade

By George Friedman

The Greek crisis is moving toward a climax. The issue is actually quite simple. The Greek government owes a great deal of money to European institutions and the International Monetary Fund. It has accumulated this debt over time, but it has become increasingly difficult for Greece to meet its payments. If Greece doesn't meet these payments, the IMF and European institutions have said they will not extend any more loans to Greece. Greece must make a calculation. If it pays the loans on time and receives additional funding, will it be better off than not paying the loans and being cut off from more?

Obviously, the question is more complex. It is not clear that if the Greeks refuse to pay, they will be cut off from further loans. First, the other side might be bluffing, as it has in the past. Second, if they do pay the next round, and they do get the next tranche of funding, is this simply kicking the can down the road? Does it solve Greece's underlying problem, which is that its debt structure is unsustainable? In a world that contains Argentina and American Airlines, we have learned that bankruptcy and lack of access to credit markets do not necessarily go hand in hand.

To understand what might happen, we need to look at Hungary. Hungary did not join the euro, and its currency, the forint, had declined in value. Mortgages taken out by Hungarians denominated in euros, Swiss francs and yen spiraled in terms of forints, and large numbers of Hungarians faced foreclosure from European banks. In a complex move, the Hungarian government declared that these debts would be repaid in forints. The banks by and large accepted Prime Minister Viktor Orban's terms, and the European Union grumbled but went along. Hungary was not the only country to experience this problem, but its response was the most assertive.

A strategy inspired by Budapest would have the Greeks print drachmas and announce (not offer) that the debt would be repaid in that currency. The euro could still circulate in Greece and be legal tender, but the government would pay its debts in drachmas.

The Deeper Questions

In considering this and other scenarios, the pervading question is whether Greece leaves or stays in the eurozone. But before that, there are still two fundamental questions. First, in or out of the euro, how does Greece pay its debts currently without engendering social chaos? The second and far more important question is how does Greece revive its economy? Lurching from debt payment to debt payment, from German and IMF threats to German and IMF threats is amusing from a distance. It does not, however, address the real issue: Greece, and other countries, cannot exist as normal, coherent states under these circumstances, and in European history, long-term economic dysfunction tends to lead to political extremism and instability. The euro question may be interesting, but the deeper economic question is of profound importance to both the debtor and creditors.

In our time, economic and financial questions tend to become moralistic. On one side, the creditors condemn Greek irresponsibility. The European Union has dropped most pretenses about this being a confrontation between the European Union and Greece. It is increasingly obvious that although the European Union has much at stake, in the long term this is about Germany and Greece, and in the short term it has become about the IMF and Greece. Germany feels that the Greeks are trying to take advantage of its good nature, while the IMF has institutionalized a model in which sacrifice is not only an economic tonic to debtors but also a moral requirement. This is not frivolous on the part of Germany and the IMF. If they give Greece some leeway, other debtors will want the same and more. Giving Greece a break could lead to Italy demanding one, and Italy's break could swamp the system.

On the Greek side, the Syriza party's leaders are making the decisions. Those leaders have onlylimited room to maneuver. They came to power because the mainstream eurocratic parties had lost their legitimacy. Since 2008, Greek governments appeared to be more concerned with remaining in the eurozone than with the spiraling unemployment rate or a deep salary cut for government workers. That stance can work for a while, if it works. From the Greek public's point of view, it didn't; many Greeks say they did not borrow the money and they had no control over how it was spent. They are paying the price for the decisions of others, although in fairness, the Greeks did elect these parties. The Greeks do not want to leave the euro, interestingly. They want to maintain the status quo without paying the price. But in the end, they can't pay the price, so the discussion is moot.

The Greek government is thus calculating two things. First, would covering the next payment be better or worse than defaulting? Second, will behaving like the eurocratic parties they forced to the wall leave Syriza internally divided and ripe for defeat by a new party? The German calculation has to be whether a default by the Greeks, one that doesn't cause the sky to fall, would trigger recalculations in other debtor countries, causing a domino effect.

The Future of Free Trade

The more fundamental issue concerns neither the euro nor the consequences of a Greek default. The core issue is the future of the European free trade zone. The main assumption behind European integration was that a free trade zone would benefit all economies. If that assumption is not true, or at least not always true, then the entire foundation of the European Union is cast into doubt, with the drachma-versus-euro issue as a short footnote.

The idea that free trade is beneficial to all sides derives from a theory of the classical economist David Ricardo, whose essay on comparative advantage was published in 1817. Comparative advantage asserts that free trade allows each nation to pursue the production and export of those products in which the nation has some advantage, expressed in profits, and that even if a nation has a wide range of advantages, focusing on the greatest advantages will benefit the country the most. Because countries benefit from their greatest advantages, they focus on those, leaving lesser advantages to other countries for which these are the greatest comparative advantage.

I understate it when I say this is a superficial explanation of the theory of comparative advantage. I do not overstate it when I say that this theory drove the rise of free trade in general, and specifically drove it in the European Union. It is the ideology and the broad outlines of the concept that interest me here, not the important details, as I am trying to get a high-level sense of Europe's state.

To begin with, the law of comparative advantages does not mean that each country does equally well. It simply means that given the limits of geography and education, each nation will do as well as it can. And it is at this point that Ricardo's theory both drives much of contemporary trade policy and poses the core problem for the European Union. The theory is not, in my opinion, wrong. It is, however, incomplete in looking at the nation (or corporation) as an integrated being and not entities made up of distinct and diverse interests. There are in my mind three problems that emerge from the underlying truth of this theory.

The first is time. Some advantages manifest themselves quickly. Some take a very long time. Depending on the value of the advantage each nation has, some nations will become extremely wealthy from free trade, and do so quickly, while others will do less well, and take a long time. From an economic point of view this may still represent the optimal strategies that can be followed, but from a more comprehensive standpoint this distinction creates the other two problems with the law of comparative advantage.

The first of these is the problem of geopolitical consequences. Economic power is not the only type of power there is. Disparate rates of economic growth make the faster growing economy more powerful in its relation to the slower growing economy. That power is both political and military and can be used, along with economic advantage, to force nations into not only subordinate positions but also positions where their lesser comparative advantage diminishes even further. This does not have to be intentional. Maximizing comparative advantage makes some powers stronger than others, and over time that strength can leave the lesser power crippled in ways that have little to do with economics.

The last problem is the internal distribution of wealth. Nations are not independent beings. They are composed of autonomous human beings pursuing their interests. Depending on internal economic and political norms, there is no guarantee that there will not be extreme distinctions in how the wealth is distributed, with a few very rich people and many very poor people. The law of comparative advantage is not concerned with this phenomenon and therefore is not connected to the consequences of inequality.

Breaking the Law of Comparative Advantage

In looking at the European Union, the assumption is that each nation pursuing its comparative advantage will maximize its possibilities. By this I mean that each country will export that thing which it does best, importing things that others produce more efficiently. The comparative aspect is not only between nations but also between the products within the nation. Therefore, each nation is focusing on the things that it does best. But "best" does not tell us how well they do it. It merely tells us that it's the best they can do, and from that they will prosper.

The problem is that the time frame might be so long that it will take generations to see a meaningful result of this measure. Thus, Germany sees the results faster than Greece. Since economic power can translate in many ways, the power of Germany limits the practical possibilities of Greece. Moreover, whatever advantage there is in free trade for the Greeks, it flows unequally.

This is when comparative advantage runs as it should. But it has not run that way in Europe, because Germany has been forced by its economic reality to pursue exports of not only those products where it has a comparative advantage internally, but many products for which it lacks an internal advantage but has a comparative advantage externally — these are not necessarily the things it does best, but it does them better than others. Since Germany is efficient in multiple senses, it has advantages in many products and takes that advantage. Germany has a staggering export rate of more than 50 percent of gross domestic product. Comparative advantage assumes it will want to export those things that it produces most efficiently. It is instead exporting any product that it can export competitively regardless of the relative internal advantage.

Put another way, Germany is not following the law of comparative advantage. Social scientists have many laws of behavior that are said to describe what people do and then turn into moral arguments of what they should do. I am not doing that. Germany empirically is not driven by Ricardo's theories but by its own needs. In other words, the law of comparative advantage doesn't work in Europe. As a result, Germany has grown faster than other European countries, has accumulated more power than other countries and has managed to distribute wealth in a way that creates political stability.

Comparative Advantage and the Greek Issue

The result is that Greece is answerable to Germany on its debts. In the same way that no moral judgment can be drawn about Germany, none can be drawn about Greece. It is what it is. However, whatever problem it has in maximizing its own exports, doing so in an environment where Germany is pursuing all export possibilities that have any advantage decreases Greece's opportunity to export, thereby creating a long-term dysfunction in Greece. The German superiority perpetuates itself.

It is important to note that Germany did not operate without protections after World War II. It protected its recovering industries from American competition. The United States, an economic colossus that exports a relatively small amount of its production, also was heavily protectionist in the late 19th century. Similarly, the United Kingdom maintained tariffs to protect the British Empire's markets. Greece has no such protection.

The theory of comparative advantage is generally true, but it doesn't take into account time disparities, the geopolitical consequences of time lags or internal social dislocation. That is why I said it was both true and incomplete. And that is also why the European Union, however it might have been conceived in its simplest sense, suffers from massive disparities in the speed that nations accumulate wealth, has nations that do not behave as the theory predicts they should, and creates geopolitical imbalances externally and social dislocation internally. It's not that free trade doesn't work. It's that it has unintended consequences.

This is why I would argue that the Sturm und Drang over Greece's debt and the future of the euro misses the point. The fundamental point is that the consequences of free trade are not always positive. It is not clear to me how Greece ever recovers without the protections that Germany or the United States had during their early growth period. And since nations do what they have to do, the issue is not the euro, but free trade.

And this is Germany's dread. It is a nation that exports as much as it consumes, and half of that goes to the European free trade zone. More than anyone, it needs the free trade zone for its own well-being. This is why, however the Germans growl, it is not the Grexit they fear but rising tariffs. The European Union already allows substantial agricultural tariffs and subsidies. If they allow broader tariffs for Greece, then when does it stop? And if they don't, and Greece crumbles socially, where does that stop? Free trade can be marvelous or dreadful, depending on circumstances, and sometimes both at the same time.

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4)- Chaos in the Primaries

By Thomas Sowell

Painful as it is to realize that both the Democrats and the Republicans will still be holding their primaries a year from now, that is one of the high prices we pay for democracy.

Seldom does the initial "front-runner" in either party's primaries end up being the actual candidate when election day rolls around. However, even if we cannot predict the outcomes of the primaries this far in advance, we can at least start trying to understand the candidates, the almost candidates and the people who are running just for the publicity.

One of the curious things this early in the process is that, while the Republicans' three freshmen Senators -- Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and Rand Paul -- have all had interviews on various television talk shows, veteran politician Hillary Clinton has been hiding out from real interviews by hard news reporters, as if she is afraid to be cross-examined.

This is by no means an irrational fear on Mrs. Clinton's part. There are all sorts of questions that she would find hard to answer. They range from questions about recent events like the e-mails from her days as Secretary of State that she destroyed illegally, after Congress called for her to produce them, to the still unsolved mystery as to what she and Barack Obama were doing during the hours when four Americans, including our ambassador to Libya, were under attack by terrorists in Benghazi.

Then there are the bald-faced lies, such as Mrs. Clinton's claim to have been shot at in a war zone, her claim that she and her husband were "poor" at the end of his terms as president, and her claim that charges of sexual misconduct against Bill Clinton in the White House were fictions invented by a "vast right-wing conspiracy."

Supporters of Hillary Clinton tout her "experience" in high-level institutions of government -- as first lady in the White House, as a Senator and as Secretary of State. But years of such "experience" raise the embarrassing question as to whether she ever actually accomplished anything in all those years, other than being physically present.

Among the many Republicans' announced and unannounced candidates, three of the most prominent are freshmen Senators with no tangible accomplishments to go with their rhetoric. Whatever their potential, which seems especially striking in the case of Senator Marco Rubio, the White House is not the place for on-the-job training, in an age of international terrorism and nuclear bombs.

Barack Obama has already given us repeated demonstrations of what a mess a freshman Senator with rhetoric can make in the White House.

While there are a number of Republican candidates who can point to substantial accomplishments as governors, the fact that most have strong track records as conservatives means that they may well split the conservative vote so many ways in the primaries as to let the nomination go by default to a mushy moderate -- of the sort beloved by the Republican establishment, but not by enough voters to beat even a weak or troubled Democrat on election day.

Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush is today's mushy moderate candidate who may well follow in the footsteps of a whole string of similar losers, from Mitt Romney and John McCain in recent elections, all the way back to Thomas E. Dewey, who managed to lose even in an election where three different Democrats were on the ballot, fragmenting that party's vote.

While the Republicans have several governors who would make good presidents, of whom Scott Walker and Bobby Jindal are the most prominent, that is very different from saying that these governors would make successful presidential candidates. How they handle themselves in the primaries can reveal that.

Former Governor Jeb Bush has lots of political savvy on his side -- his own savvy and that of others -- and a ton of money behind him. So he could end up being the last man standing after the many Republican conservatives knock each other off.

What could prevent that would be if each of the successive conservative Republican candidates who fall behind were to throw their support to whoever becomes the conservative candidate with the best chance of rescuing us all from another Clinton versus Bush election.

But we should never bet heavily on rationality prevailing in politics.

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5)

Israel Alone

Previous quarrels between Washington and Jerusalem were about differing Mideast perceptions. Now the issue is how the U.S. perceives itself.

By Bret Stephens

Recent conversations with senior Israeli officials are shot through with a sense of incredulity. They can’t understand what’s become of U.S. foreign policy.

They don’t know how to square Barack Obama’s promises with his policies. They fail to grasp how a president who pledged to work toward the abolition of nuclear weapons is pushing an accord with Tehran that guarantees their proliferation. They are astonished by the nonchalance with which the administration acquiesces in Iran’s regional power plays, or in al Qaeda’s gains in Yemen, or in the Assad regime’s continued use of chemical weapons, or in the battlefield successes of ISIS, or in Russia’s decision to sell advanced missiles to Tehran. They wonder why the president has so much solicitude forAli Khamenei’s political needs, and so little for Benjamin Netanyahu’s.

In a word, the Israelis haven’t yet figured out that what America is isn’t what America was. They need to start thinking about what comes next.

The most tempting approach is to wait Mr. Obama out and hope for better days with his successor. Israel and the U.S. have gone through bad patches before—under Ford in the 1970s, Reagan in the early ’80s, Bush in the early ’90s, Clinton in the late ’90s. The partnership always survived the officeholders.

So why should it be different this time? Seventy percent of Americans see Israel in a favorable light, according to a February Gallup poll. The presidential candidates from both parties all profess unswerving friendship with the Jewish state, and the Republican candidates actually believe it. Mr. Obama’s foreign policy is broadlyunpopular and likely to become more so as the fiascoes continue to roll in.

Yet it’s different this time. For two reasons, mainly.

First, the administration’s Mideast abdications are creating a set of irreversible realities for which there are no ready U.S. answers. Maybe there were things an American president could have done to help rescue Libya in 2011, Syria in 2013, and Yemen last year. That was before it was too late. But what exactly can any president do about the chaos unfolding now?

Shakespeare wrote that there was a tide in the affairs of men “which taken at the flood, leads men on to fortune.” Barack Obama always missed the flood.

Now the president is marching us past the point of no return on a nuclear Iran and thence a nuclear Middle East. When that happens, how many Americans will be eager to have their president intervene in somebody else’s nuclear duel? Americans may love Israel, but partly that’s because not a single U.S. soldier has ever died fighting on its behalf.

In other words, Mr. Obama is bequeathing not just a more dangerous Middle East but also one the next president will want to touch only with a barge pole. That leaves Israel alone to deal as best as it can with a broadening array of threats: thousands more missiles for Hezbollah, paid for by sanctions relief for Tehran; ISIS on the Golan Heights; an Iran safe, thanks to Russian missiles, from any conceivable Israeli strike.

The second reason follows from the first. Previous quarrels between Washington and Jerusalem were mainly about differing Mideast perceptions. Now the main issue is how the U.S. perceives itself.

Beginning with Franklin Roosevelt, every U.S. president took the view that strength abroad and strength at home were mutually reinforcing; that global security made us more prosperous, and that prosperity made us more secure.

Then along came Mr. Obama with his mantra of “nation building at home” and his notion that an activist foreign policy is a threat to the social democracy he seeks to build. Under his administration, domestic and foreign policy have been treated as a zero-sum game: If you want more of the former, do less of the latter. The result is a world of disorder, and an Israel that, for the first time in its history, must seek its security with an America that, say what it will, has nobody’s back but its own.

How does it do this? By recalling what it was able to do for the first 19 years of its existence, another period when the U.S. was an ambivalent and often suspicious friend and Israel was more upstart state than start-up nation.

That was an Israel that was prepared to take strategic gambles because it knew it couldn’t afford to wait on events. It did not consider “international legitimacy” to be a prerequisite for action because it also knew how little such legitimacy was worth. It understood the value of territory and terrain, not least because it had so little of it. It built its deterrent power by constantly taking the military initiative, not constructing defensive wonder-weapons such as Iron Dome. It didn’t mind acting as a foreign policy freelancer, and sometimes even a rogue, as circumstances demanded. “Plucky little Israel” earned the world’s respect and didn’t care, much less beg, for its moral approval.

Perhaps the next American president will rescue Israel from having to learn again what it once knew. Israelis would be wise not to count on it.

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