It’s rare that I change security programs. I’ve suggested you pay $40 for Ad-aware; I consider it a useful inexpensive program that protects your computer from intruders.
The eurozone debt crisis is deepening and threatens to re-erupt on a larger scale when the liquidity cycle turns, a leading panel of economists warned in a clash of views with German officials in Berlin.
"Debts above 130% of GDP for Italy and 170% for Greece are a recipe for disaster once we go into the next downturn," said Professor Charles Wyplosz, from Geneva University.
"Today's politicians believe the crisis is over and don't want to hear any more about it, but they have not tackled the core issues of fiscal union and public debt," he said, speaking at Euromoney's annual Germany conference.
Ludger Schuknecht, director-general of the German finance ministry, insisted that the debt-stricken states of the eurozone are well on the way to recovery, ending their EU-IMF rescue programs successfully one by one. There is no need for any major shift in policy. "The strategy has been right. We need to bring down debt and this is now consensus," he said.
This optimism is sharply at odds with the view of almost every foreign-based economist attending the event. Charles Dallara, former head of the International Institute for Finance and chief negotiator for global banks in Greece's debt-restructuring, said little has been done to put the eurozone on a viable footing, even if sovereign bond yields in southern Europe have fallen to record lows.
[Note from JW: Dr. Rahn here presents an economic discussion of immigration - after all, he is an economist. It is not a discussion of the national security threat of immigration, specifically that of illegal immigration from Mexico. A lively discussion of Dr. Rahn's arguments is expected on the TTP Forum!]
How many new immigrants should the United States allow each year? How many guest workers? These are not easy questions, which is why there is as much fierce debate within the two parties as between them.
The two main reasons given for restricting current immigration are the myths that immigrants take away American jobs and that immigrants are more likely to go on welfare, thus putting an additional burden on the taxpayers.
Rather than taking away American jobs, good economists understand that immigrants who work create wealth in America, which in turn creates more and higher paying jobs for everyone.
To explain the economics of this adequately would take more space than this entire commentary, but the truth of the assertion can be seen in the fact that high-wage countries with many immigrants such as Switzerland, Australia and Canada tend to have much higher labor force participation rates and lower unemployment rates than low-wage countries.
(AP) The formal announcement yesterday (3/05) by the Venezuelan government that Hugo Chavez has died sent shockwaves through the ranks of the Hollywood elite, who had long been the Venezuelan leader's staunchest supporters. Throughout the day, celebrities struggled to cope with the devastating loss.
"Sean is devastated, completely inconsolable," Sean Penn's publicist Amy Glattensturmer told the AP. "He's been in his bedroom all day. He won't eat, he won't berate his staff, he won't punch women, he wouldn't even come outside to look at the brand new Ferrari Enzo the studio sent him as incentive to read a script. He realizes that a true champion of the working class has died today, and, as one himself, Sean has taken the hit very hard."
"The relationship between celebrities and their dictators is a very close one," PR guru Benjamin Shaltzberg told the AP. "Hollywood celebrities had formed a huge bond with Chavez. It will be difficult to replace."
Ancient Rome's greatest historian was Titus Livius, known to us as Livy (59 BC-17 AD). In the Second Book of his monumental history of Rome, Ab Urbe Condita (From the Founding of the City), he tells the famous story of Horatio at the Bridge.
In 510 BC, Rome was threatened with destruction from an invading army of Etruscans. All Romans living in the countryside had abandoned their homes and fled for protection inside the city. The city walls were heavily garrisoned, but the most vulnerable point was a wooden bridge, the Pons Sublicius, across the river Tiber and into Rome.
When Etruscan forces focused their attack on the bridge, the Roman troops guarding it fled in fear - save for one man, a soldier named Horatius, whom we call Horatio.
Watching the President's State of the Union speech last night, I thought of Horatio at the bridge. When I talked to Tony Snow, the president's spokesman today, I understood why.
For at least a quarter-century now, I've been hearing the same mantra from soccer enthusiasts: "Every little kid in America plays soccer. When they grow up, soccer will be more popular than football or baseball."
This hasn't happened and never will happen. Kids love to run around and kick a ball. Watching grown-ups do it has all the drama of watching paint dry.
A majority of Americans will not pay much attention to the World Cup this month while the rest of the world goes bananas about it because "soccer" should really be named "bograkab" - bunch-of-guys-running-around-kicking-a-ball.
Here's a synopsis of most every period of most every professional soccer game ever played:
Run around kick a ball, run around kick a ball, run around kick a ball, run around kick a ball, run around kick a ball - never score.
Run around kick a ball, run around kick a ball, run around kick a ball, run around kick a ball, run around kick a ball - never score.
It doesn't get more exciting in sports than this. Except for curling.
So - now that I have all soccer fans totally enraged (something that's very easy to do, by the way), let's talk for real about why soccer will never be a competitor to football or baseball or basketball for the hearts of American sports fans.
The world’s wealthiest exiles are the Iranians – folks who fled Iran after Jimmy Carter betrayed the Shah and let him be overthrown by Ayatollah Khomeini. The Cubans who fled after Castro took over Cuba and amassed fortunes in Miami are financial pikers compared to the Iranians.
Cumulatively they are worth billions. There are thousands of millionaires among them. And they are the stupidest millionaires on the planet. Because of their stupidity, they now face the extinction of their country.
Meet Hassan Abbasi, a well-known Iranian political scientist, longtime top official of the Revolutionary Guards, and currently "theoretician" in the office of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei (how does one get a job description like that, I wonder) and the head of the National Security and Strategic Research Center. Abbasi holds special responsibility for North American affairs.
Speaking at the Technical College of Tehran last Sunday, May 23, he proclaimed:
"We have identified some 29 weak points for attacks in the U.S. and in the West, we intend to explode some 6,000 American atomic warheads, we have shared our intelligence with other guerilla groups and we shall utilize them as well. We have set up a department to cover England and we have had discussions regarding them. We have contacted the Mexicans and the Argentineans and will work with anyone who has an axe to grind with America."
The week before last I discussed a class of intruders known interchangeably as Adware, Spyware and Malware. At the end of the column I introduced a particularly insidious subset of these intruders known as ‘dialers’. This week we’ll learn how to deal with dialers. There are a number of choices, depending on how much work you want to do, how adept you are around a computer, and the severity of the threat.
There is considerable evidence that drinking one glass of red wine per day for most middle-aged men has more health benefits than costs. There is also considerable evidence that drinking three or more glasses of wine per day causes more health problems than benefits.
Even so, the owner of your favorite winery might encourage you to drink at least three glasses a day, perhaps with the following argument: "If you and my other customers drink three times as much, it will enable me to hire more workers, thus increasing employment."
What the winery owner conveniently ignores is the damage the additional drinking causes to both your health and your pocketbook, and the fact that if you spend less on wine, you probably will be spending more on other goods and services, thus increasing employment in those areas.
Many of the economic arguments I hear from the political class -- including members of Congress and President Obama -- are equally fallacious. It is tiresome to hear the president (as he did again last week during his news conference) and others say, time and time again that if we just tax and spend a bit more, our problems will diminish.
It is imperative that you tend to your Plan B program, whether you decide to stay in Dodge (the US) or not!
One significant part of your preparation should be to put together a medicine cabinet, because when the Unaffordable Healthcare Act fully kicks in, it may not be possible to secure critical prescription items such as antibiotics, even with a prescription. Yet it is possible to acquire antibiotics and other items today without a prescription.
Furthermore, as has already been the case in Canada for some years under socialized medicine, certain surgical procedures may be unavailable because of your lack of "social utility," especially depending on your age. Or wait lines may be so long that your prognosis changes from problematic to critical during the intervening time.
Also, new medical modalities may not be available here in the United States. This is why, as part of your Plan B, you need to know about medical tourism, through which it will be possible to access new alternatives, and to do so far less expensively than in the U.S.
A healtcare storm is about to descend upon us. How do you prepare for it?
Robert Roy MacGregor (1671-1734) became a Scottish folk hero by fighting English perfidy. In 1817, Sir Walter Scott wrote a historical novel about his life, entitled with the name he is known to history: Rob Roy. In 1995, Liam Neeson played the hero in a movie based on Scott's book, Rob Roy.
It's a terrific action flick, with the climactic duel between Rob Roy and the villain Cunningham (Tim Roth) one of filmdom's greatest sword fights. But that's not why I remember it. The scene that has always stayed with me is when Rob Roy's wife Mary (Jessica Lange) tells him that she is pregnant as a result of her being raped by Cunningham, and asks him apprehensively what to do. In tears, she admits, "I could not kill it, husband."
His response: "It is not the child who needs killing."
He steps outside the dark cottage into the daylight. Mary knows he is off to challenge Cunningham to the death, who is a far better swordsman than he. "What if you do not return to us?" she asks with fear in her eyes.
With a tender smile, he answers, "If it's a boy, call him Robert. If a lass, name her for my love - Mary MacGregor."
This is possibly the most touchingly pro-life scene in motion picture history. If Todd Akin had recalled it to explain his pro-life position, rather than his crackpot "legitimate rape" irrelevancy, he'd still be an unknown politician beyond the borders of Missouri.
This past week, the chief proponent of Jihadi Islam and the use of terror to force people to believe in his religion, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, traveled to Latin America to create an alliance with three atheistic Communists: Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua, and Rafael Correa of Ecuador.
This emerging "Marxist-Islamist entente," as it has been described, has caught a lot of folks by surprise. How in the world, they ask, could Chavez toast Ahmadinutjob by hailing him as the leader of "a revolution kindred to the Venezuelan revolution: the Islamic revolution."
What could the imposition of atheistic Marxism upon a society, Chavez's goal, have in common with the imposition of a theocracy? The answer must be, can only be for these puzzled folks, the bond of anti-Americanism.
As an editorial in the conservative New York Sun expresses it:
That the left makes common cause with the Islamists is one of the bizarre facts of modern geopolitics. The only thing Marxists like Messrs. Chavez, Ortega, and Correa have in common today with the likes of Mr. Ahmadinejad is a hatred of America. That is the foundation on which the Marxist-Islamist scheme is formed and the motivation behind any actions it carries out.
The New York Sun is almost infinitely superior to the New York Times in its understanding of the world. It is well aware of the dangers of the alliance of Marxists and Islamists to America's national security.
Yet the common bond between the two is far, far deeper than a simple emotion of hate. The bond is as deep as you get. It is metaphysical. That is because Marx and Mohammed share the same view on the nature of reality.
You've heard of the Darwin Awards, right? They're awarded to idiots who kill themselves doing something astoundingly dumb, thereby contributing to human evolution by removing themselves from the gene pool.
Awardees are individuals, but I am nominating an entire inhabited region of the world: Palestinian Gaza. Gaza should, in fact, be re-named Darwin City. Consider this news bulletin from Gulf Daily News of Bahrain, dated May 27, 2006:
GAZA CITY: Four Palestinians were killed in northern Gaza yesterday as Israel fired dozens of artillery shells into the territory. Three men died and five other were wounded in a house when a family member brought in and accidentally set off an unexploded Israeli shell that landed near the area, Palestinian security sources said.
Ever since I beat Vladimir Putin in an arm-wrestling match (yes, it’s a true story, told in Arm Wrestling With Russia), I haven’t had a high opinion of him. He was an officer in the KGB, and bemoaned that the collapse of the Soviet Union was “the greatest catastrophe of the 20th century” (no, Pootie-Poot, the existence of the USSR was the century’s greatest calamity.)
But not until now has it become fully apparent how stupid he is.
As we saw last week in The Next War In Europe, Pootie tried to screw Ukraine for bolting from his imperial clutches in the Orange Revolution. I predicted this would fail if Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko stood up to him and called his bluff.
Sure enough, once Viktor did so, and showed the Euroweenies what it looks like to be a mensch with a backbone, Europe exploded in anger against Putin.
Big mistake, Pootie.
