Should we abolish the Fed? The Federal Reserve Bank, or "The Fed" as it is commonly known, is the central bank of the United States. It was created by Congress in 1913 as the direct result of the Panic of 1907 (recessions or depressions were previously called panics, and they tended to be short lived and self-correcting).

The United States had been without a central bank since the closure of the Second Bank of the United States in 1836 by Andrew Jackson. A major goal of the Fed was to stop bank panics which had occurred with some regularity from the Founding of the American Republic. The Fed also was charged with maintaining a stable price level and full employment.

When considering whether the Fed should be kept, or at least kept in its present form, it is always useful to look at the data. Specifically, what happened in the 94 years prior to 1914 (when the Fed became operational), and what happened in the 94 years since 1914?

This week (5/26), the New York Times published another front-page article based on a leaked classified document. This time, it was an order signed by Gen. David Petraeus authorizing black operations against adversaries and such dubious friends as Iran, Syria, Yemen and Saudi Arabia.

Gee, thanks. We really needed to know that. The world's a better place now.

Yet the Times' sin was the lesser one. The paper has long since given up any pretense of patriotism.  Its editors are just publishing and perishing as citizens of the world.

It's whoever leaked the document that bears the burn-in-hell blame. And that person resides somewhere in the White House.

The recent drop in oil and other commodity prices makes it almost a certainty that some unstable commodity-exporting nations will reach a crisis stage in the next few months. The only question is, which countries are likely to erupt first?

The Middle East is always a safe bet for an explosion, but there is a very good chance the next eruption will be in Africa, with the most likely location being Congo, followed by Sudan.

In Latin America, Argentina is headed for another debt default and financial meltdown, and Venezuela continues to rapidly deteriorate.

And there is Russia, which is likely to react poorly as its once booming economy goes into to a sharp recession.

But -- pressures will mount on the United States to become involved, particularly in Africa, as mass killings begin again.

The world changed this week and we yawned. Our government and media utterly failed to grasp the meaning of the Iran-Brazil-Turkey nuke deal.

What Brazil and Turkey just did wasn't intended to impede Tehran, but to make it harder for Western powers to impose sanctions. Both countries want Iran to run interference for them.

Once Iran gets the bomb and takes the (slight) heat, Brazil and Turkey both intend to go nuclear.

As Western states fantasize about a "nuclear-weapons-free world," their developing-world darlings are scrambling like mad to develop nuclear arsenals. And we don't get it.

Which leads to the second problem with our asleep-at-the-wheel foreign policy (content to equate Arizona's human-rights record with China's): New alliances are developing that are already destabilizing our strategic architecture -- even without nukes.

Let's connect a few of the Iran-Turkey-Brazil dots:

On the eve of July 4^th, I've discovered I can't do what I've done for the past five years:  provide a cheery update for Freedom's Birthday.

Yes, the 4^th is a time to feel good about America.  But our country is in such extraordinary danger - more than any time since the Civil War - that just feeling good and proud doesn't cut it.  Especially when the danger is internal, not foreign.

This example just appeared in Israeli papers today (7/03):  That Zero intends to block any new sanctions on Iran at the upcoming G8 summit next week.

Never before in our nation's history have we ever had a president who hated his country, who by his every action sought to weaken its national security, destroy its prosperity, and expand government control over our lives to literally the level of Orwell's 1984.

Thus the phrase you'll hear at many a Tea Party tomorrow:

"To avoid 1984, you have to go back to 1776."

Does the value of your stock market holdings depend on which party controls Congress? There is overwhelming evidence it does.

As can be seen in the accompanying chart, over the last quarter of a century when the Republicans controlled both houses of Congress, the stock market rose by an average of about 20 percent per year.

When the Democrats controlled both houses of Congress, the stock market only rose at an average annual rate of 6.9 percent for the Dow Jones and a tepid 5.1 percent for the Standard and Poor 500.

The Afghan room has more than its share of corners, and we've painted ourselves into every single one of them. Setting aside the Taliban, we're suffering from plenty of self-inflicted wounds.

To start, there's the continuing denial that Islam has anything to do with the Taliban's persistence or Afghan resistance to our goodwill gestures: This mullah's corrupt; that suicide bomber wasn't very religious(!); that local uprising's just a neighborhood feud. Religion has nothing to do with it.

Next, Afghans aren't interested in fighting for a foreign-backed government or for ethnic groups other than their own. If you want to succeed in a tribal society, you exploit tribal identities. Our officials insist that would undercut our goals. Well, perhaps our goals should be more realistic.

So we wind up supporting yet another disdained "president" because we insist that a tribal society must subject itself to a strong central government defended by an American-model army that refuses to be built. This is not a formula for success.

Another sign that Afghanistan's in "beaucoup deep kimchee" (as a former NCO of mine used to say) is that the pundits are already assigning blame -- even on Obama.

Naked evil.  That's what was on display this week in much of the world - what could be half-full about it?

The world's scum are all in support of Ahmadinejad's "election."  The Red Chinese, Chavez, Putin, et al, are congratulating the thugs who run Iran on their "exercise of democracy."

The world's actual democracies are all a-flutter, trying to decide how to condemn the butchery and kow-tow to the Chicoms and the Kremlin at the same time.  Zero doesn't have the guts to take the side of the protestors getting butchered and beat up.

What's half-full is that the mullah regime has lost all legitimacy in the eyes of a majority of the Iranian people. This is a regime with no future.  It's worth recalling that the revolution replacing the Shah with the Ayatollahs did not occur overnight.

The protests started in January of 1978, and succeeded with the Shah fleeing the country in January of 1979.  During that year, there were many periods of quiescence, when the protests seemed to vanish and the Shah's rule was deemed secure.  Then they would crank up again, and up a notch.

So this is a marathon, not a sprint.  There is very serious dissention within the mullahs themselves, there is no longer a center of the regime that can hold.  The protestors are young, determined, and smart.  This is far from over, it has only just begun.

Have you ever wondered why billionaires like George Soros financially support politicians who say they will "increase taxes on the rich"?

The answer quite simply is that the tax increases are most often put on people trying to become rich, not those already rich. Hence, the rich, big government advocates can gain far more by "buying" the politicians. The "bought" politicians then provide them with confidential information about administrative decisions, which these donors then use to place big bets in the market, making themselves much richer. If you have deep financial pockets and inside information, you can make huge amounts of money when markets drop.

Mr. Soros, the Democrats' financial angel, is often referred to as the "man who broke the bank of England" in the 1992 Sterling crisis. During that episode, he made $1 billion in one day at the expense of British taxpayers. The relevant question is, did Mr. Soros bet a couple of billion dollars on mere guesses of what the German, French and British officials would do, or did he have inside information?

Appeasement doesn't work. It doesn't work with dictators, and it doesn't work with terrorists. The attempted Times Square bombing on May 1^st was yet more proof.

We've allowed Islamist extremists to dictate what we can say, print or portray. We don't want to offend them. The First Amendment bows before Islam.

The Obama administration has ducked all unwelcome evidence that such appeasement doesn't work. Instead, it goes to absurd lengths to convince Moslem radicals that we respect their views.  Since the Obama administration deepened our submissive attitude toward Islam -- banning all references to "Islamist terror" or "Moslem radicalism" from government documents and statements -- the number of terror attacks on our soil has gone up. Do any of you believe this is just a coincidence?