There’s a red-breasted rumor bird that’s been flying around Washington for a while now, but recently it’s been nesting in Capitol Hill. Talk to just about any Congressional Committee Chairman and they’ll tell what this bird has whispered in their ear.
The latest news from the EU Crisis Front: Southern Europe's debtor states must pledge their gold reserves and national treasure as collateral under a €2.3 trillion stabilization plan gaining momentum in Germany.
The German scheme -- known as the European Redemption Pact -- offers a form of "Eurobonds Lite" that can be squared with the German constitution and breaks the political logjam. It is a highly creative way out of the debt crisis, but is not a soft option for Italy, Spain, Portugal, and other states in trouble.
The plan is drafted by the German Council of Economic Experts and inspired by Alexander Hamilton's Sinking Fund in the United States -- created in 1790 to clean up the morass of debts left by the Revolutionary War. Flourishing Virginia was comparable to Germany today.
Germany would have a lockhold over the fund, able to enforce discipline. Each state would have to pledge 20% of their debt as collateral. "The assets could be taken from the country's currency and gold reserves. The collateral nominated would only be used in the event that a country does not meet its payment obligations," said the proposal.
This demand could enflame opinion in Italy and Portugal. Both states have kept their bullion, resisting the rush to sell by Britain and others. Italy has 2,451 tons of gold, valued at €98bn in March.
Rough justice. You've all seen the phone camera pics and videos. They are horrific, but you can't have much sympathy for a murderous monster like Gaddafi. He got what he deserved - especially since he was given a plethora of opportunities to safely leave Libya and live out his days in comfortable exile. The choice to end like this was his.
So Bush got Saddam and Zero will claim he got Gaddafi - even though Marco Rubio was right in observing that it was the Brits and French. The contrast in how they were "gotten" is, however, instructive in the extreme.
That contrast is between the humane calm professionalism of American soldiers pulling Saddam Hussein out of his spider hole, and the bloody frenzy of ragtag Libyan rebels pulling Moammar Gaddafi out of his drain pipe.
This is the difference between civilization and barbarism, between democracy and mobocracy. It is tempting to say the difference is reflected in that between the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street.
Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina. This is a beautiful place with a tragic history. As Communist Yugoslavia broke up after the fall of the Soviet Union, a Serbian nationalist by the name of Ratko Mladic commanded the Serbian forces that not only killed many residents in Sarajevo, but is said to have conducted the massacre of over 8,000 Bosnian men and boys in the Bosnian city of Srebrenica in July 1995.
Mladic was captured in Serbia last week (5/26) and now is in Scheveningen Prison in the Hague, awaiting a war-crimes trial.
The evening after the announced capture of Mr. Mladic, there did not appear to be much in the way of celebration that one might have expected in Sarajevo. Many young Bosnians, both men and women, were in the bars and restaurants having a good time as they do on most summer weekends. Good Moslems are not supposed to drink but, even though Bosnia is a majority-Moslem country, most seem to be far from rigorous in following their faith..
As one young Bosnian who had been wounded in the war said to me, "Most of us now are more interested in building our lives than we are following the religion of our ancestors and fighting old grudges." There's hope now for the Balkans.
Purple Turtle Beach, Dominica. Serendipity is finding something where you least expect it. I found it on Purple Turtle Beach.
This is just about the only appreciable beach on Dominica (da-ma-neek-ka), a tiny island Caribbean nation of 73 thousand folks, 290 square miles (less than 1/5th the size of Rhode Island), and 365 rivers - more than one river per square mile. (You saw a couple of these rivers in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies filmed on Dominica.)
I'm here keeping a promise to an extraordinary lady I met 25 years ago. Eugenia Charles was Prime Minister of Dominica in the 1980s, an ally of America's and friend of Ronald Reagan. When a Soviet-Cuban sponsored coup seized control of the island nation of Grenada in 1983 and began converting it into a Communist colony of the Kremlin, Eugenia Charles, in her capacity of chairman of the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States, appealed to President Reagan to liberate Grenada.
As we all know, Reagan did so, but he would not have been able to without the unwavering support of Eugenia Charles. It is thanks to her that the rollback of the Soviet Empire began.
At the time of the Grenada liberation I was in Angola with the anti-Soviet UNITA guerrillas. I'll always remember sitting by a campfire in the Angolan bush listening to BBC reports on my short-wave radio - and the coughs of lions out in the darkness.
[This is a follow-up to Frank Gaffney's Losing Our Sovereignty with LOST of last week. Again, I could not encourage you more to contact both your Senators and request they vote NO on this incredibly dangerous treaty's approval. ---JW]
Irony of ironies: The principal champion of the Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST) is the United States Navy. Yet predictably few organizations would suffer more than America's naval forces from a supranational government of the oceans empowered by U.S. accession to that treaty.
The absurdity of this situation was on display last week as the Navy's former senior officer, retired Chief of Naval Operations Vernon Clark, testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Adm. Clark waxed on about LOST as "a Magna Carta for the oceans that guarantees navigation freedoms throughout the world's largest maneuver space." The committee's ranking Republican, Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, declared in about as many words that, if the Navy wants the treaty, the Senate should give it to them. Period.
Fortunately, a necessary corrective was offered the next day by another distinguished retired four-star, Adm. James "Ace" Lyons.
The White House is becoming increasingly concerned about Pootie-Poot. He actually said point-blank to one of Bush’s key advisors: “Mr. Bush is in no position to criticize me on my actions towards the Russian press - look at how he fired Dan Rather.”
Today (5/220, Fitch Ratings has downgraded Japan two notches to A+ -- just above Spain and Italy -- citing a surge in public debt since the Lehman crisis and the lack of any plan to restore fiscal probity.
Key indicators are deteriorating on almost every front, raising concerns that the world's third largest economy is running aground after two "Lost Decades".
Japan's debt has jumped by 61 percentage points of GDP since 2008, compared to eight points for the AAA bloc. Public debt is expected to reach 239% of GDP this year, uncharted levels for a major economy in peace-time. `Net debt' - subtracting Japan's vast holdings of foreign bonds - is nearer 137% but this is rising at an even steeper trajectory.
"Japan's addiction to public sector spending is way beyond the boundaries or remedial `austerity'," said Dylan Grice from Societe Generale. "Political pressure on the Bank of Japan to crank the printing presses into top gear will become irresistible. We see no alternative."
The next GOP presidential candidate debate is four days from now, Tuesday, October 18, in Vegas on CNN. It will focus primarily albeit not exclusively on foreign policy.
I've been asked by friends of a particular candidate to provide him with a private briefing on the most critical foreign policy issues America faces. What follows is not the usual HFR but a condensed summary of that briefing, which contains much of my Map of the Future talk at Rendezvous XI last weekend.
Russia. Putin is an ersatz macho-man, all hat and no karovi. Russia's navy is made of rust. Russia's ill-trained army of drunkards couldn't conquer Romania. Russian male life expectancy is lower than that of Bangladesh. Russia is a mafiacracy with a doomed economy dependent on oil & gas exports that fracking in Europe & the US will make uncompetitive. Do svidanya.
China. No wives, no water, no banks - and a hyper-dangerous military. Much of China is uninhabited - deserts, mountains, and wastelands. Habitable China is about the size of the US east of the Mississippi, with over a billion people squeezed into it. Northern China is turning into a waterless dust bowl. Scores of millions of Chinese men will never get married due to the Chicom's idiotic one-child policy and resultant mass female infanticide.
Would you think it is smart to create regulations that make it all but impossible for Americans living abroad to get a bank account in the country where they live?
Do you think it makes sense to impose regulations and costs on U.S. financial institutions that would drive needed foreign investment out of the United States for the sole purpose of helping foreign governments collect taxes from their own citizens?
Last week, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and U.S. Treasury held a hearing on a proposed regulation that is so dumb and destructive that people had assumed it was buried for good a decade ago, when it originally was proposed. The Treasury/IRS is embarked on a program that can only be called national economic suicide.
The TTP San Diego Rendezvous was our 8th, and by general consensus, the best one yet.
Yes, there are TTPers like Ken Glass, Don Parker, Mark Gilligan, and Dan Barak who have been to all 8. There are several who come close, like the Dynamic Blonde Duo of sisters Eileen and Maureen or Joel Berman. There were so many TTPers who have become good friends over the years, and a goodly number of first Rendezvousers. We all had a wonderful time.
And for those of you who couldn't make it - we had most every session recorded by professional videographer (and TTPer) Mike Maslow. Mike did a fantastic job and we'll have CDs available soon.
Congressman Dana Rohrabacher started things off Friday evening (5/14), who stressed the importance of Republicans proposing viable positive alternatives in addition to their necessary opposition to the Dem agenda.
This was followed by a tour de force by Skye D'Aureous, the Forum's resident genius. In response to my intro of him which mentioned his IQ of 240, he wanted us to understand what IQ doesn't measure: moral values, creativity, seeing the big picture rather than focusing on complex small problems. Two of his thoughts:
If Americans have learned anything about the United Nations over the last 50 years, it is that this "world body" is, at best, riddled with corruption and incompetence. At worst, its bureaucracy, agencies and members are overwhelmingly hostile to the United States and other freedom-loving nations, most especially Israel.
So why on earth would the United States Senate possibly consider putting the U.N. on steroids by assenting to its control of 70% of the world's surface?
Such a step would seem especially improbable given such well-documented fiascoes as: the U.N.-administered Iraq Oil-for-Food program; investigations and cover-ups of corrupt practices at the organization's highest levels; child sex-slave operations and rape squads run by U.N. peacekeepers; and the absurd, yet relentless, assault on alleged Israeli abuses of human rights by majorities led by despotic regimes in Iran, Cuba, Syria and Libya.
Nonetheless, the predictable effect of U.S. accession to the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea - better known as the Law of the Sea Treaty (or LOST) - would be to transform the U.N. from a nuisance and laughingstock into a world government:
My wife just returned from a business trip to Paris last night. She hadn’t been there in a while and was shocked at its transformation. “Where are all the French?” she asked. “Every other person I saw was Arab or North African.” Now she understands how Europe is becoming Eurabia.
Yet standing in the way blocking France’s march to cultural doom is a short, wiry fellow with a distinctly un-French name. He’s the most popular politician in France, rock-star popular, married to a beautiful, glamorous model, and the odds-on favorite to be the next President of France. He’s Nicolas Sarkozy - the beloved “Sarko,” as everyone calls him, and he’s part Jewish.
If they did not put our troops, our citizens and our country at risk, the Left's fantastic lies about terror and terrorists would be hilarious.
The problem, of course, is that many of our national leaders have been brainwashed with the same slogans. The Left has mastered another technique dictators forged long ago: Repeat a lie often enough and it will be taken as truth. And, of course, our media play along.
So let's give the slogan-hucksters a brief time-out and dissect just seven of their favorite lines:
One: Killing terrorists only turns them into martyrs. Nope. Killing terrorists turns them into dead terrorists.
So we're down to three this week. Christie out to no one's dismay - except for his die-hard fans known as "girthers" - and so is Palin to the serious dismay of many. It's too late for late entries - say goodnight Donald and Rudy - while the other candidates are there just for stubbornness or ego. Rick, Mitt, or Herman, those are the only choices now.
The next debate is this coming Tuesday, 10/11. It could be make or break for Perry. The Forum's resident Perryista, Ella - she's a Texas gal - assures us that, while he wasn't prepared for the first three debates due to his laser focus on raising $17 million in 49 days, he's primed and pumped for this one. Let's hope so. I for one am rootin' for Rick to come out with guns blazing. It's show time.
Will it be show time for Cain? Will one of his competitors ask him about the fatal flaw in his 9-9-9 tax reform plan?
