By Bradley J. Fikes
Three others have gone before him. This time it’s alleged LA Times business columnist David Lazarus, with a video showing him acting stoned.
Journalism didn’t work out for Lazarus, so now he’s trying this:
As with everything I write here, this represents my views, and not necessarily that of my employer, the North County Times.
Here is a piece about the price of gold and the future of the economy that has the ring of truth. Of course, I am a pessimist.
The rise in the gold price above $1,100 per ounce last week is a pretty good indicator that something has changed. For 18 months, the gold price had been in a trading range topping out around $1,000. It has now broken out decisively from that range. The opportunity for the world’s central banks to change policy and affect the economic outcome has been lost. The world economy is now locked on to an undeviating track towards another train wreck.
At most times, the gold price is not an economically significant indicator. In 1980-2000, it declined irregularly from $850 to around $280, and movements in it seemed to have had little or no effect on the global economy. That’s what you’d expect; even at $1,000 per ounce, the global production of gold is only around $100 billion annually, which would put the entire world’s gold extraction industry only 17th on the Fortune 500. When Gordon Brown sold Britain’s entire gold reserves in 1999, at a price below $300 per ounce, it seemed a defensible decision. I went to a meeting in 2001 hosted by a diverse group which believed that the U.S. Treasury was conspiring to suppress the gold price, and my main thought was: why would Treasury bother?
The decline was, I believe, an indicator that inflation, at great cost, had been wrung out of the economy for decades. I bought gold at $405 an ounce in 1978 and sold it six months later for $810. Thereafter, it slowly declined. When Bill Clinton was elected, I bought gold shares and they made a nice profit his first year in office. After 1994, I sold them and made about an 80% profit on the deal. A few years ago, when gold had been slumping along around $300, I thought about buying again. I wish I had.
However, in relatively few periods, gold becomes of immense importance. When investors lose trust in conventional currencies, because monetary policy appears set to debauch them, gold is the immediately available safe haven. During such periods, gold’s former importance as a store of value becomes uppermost in the public mind, and its price becomes a major economic indicator.
Gold became important from about July 1978 to early 1980, during which period its price rose from $185 to $850 per ounce. For that 18 month period, the price of gold was the most important factor in day-to-day market fluctuations. The gold price, more than the inflation rate directly, moved markets and by extension moved monetary and to some extent fiscal policy in the major economies. Only after Paul Volcker took over at the Fed in late 1979 did M3 money supply begin to supplant it in investors’ analyses.
We now appear to be at the beginning of another such period.
I agree and am very worried about the future. Obama seems locked in a leftist ideology that nothing can change. He has no experience in the world, academia and “community organizers” being sheltered from reality. I wonder sometimes about his progress from college student to Senator and tend to be a bit paranoid about it. He really is a mystery man.
Ben Bernanke’s Fed is ignoring this. It insists that it will maintain interest rates at the current near-zero level for an extended period, regardless of what the gold price does. By this, it is ensuring that the present bubble in gold and commodities will play out to its full extent. Had the Fed begun to tighten gently during the late spring or early summer, when it had become obvious that the U.S. economy was bottoming out, but while stock markets remained subdued and gold remained within its 2008-09 trading range, it’s possible that it could have deflated the incipient bubble, steering the U.S. and global economies back on to a sustainable growth path. The U.S. Treasury would have had to cooperate by beginning to reduce the federal deficit, but at this stage with unemployment in the 10% range, there would have been no need for draconian action on that front.
With current Fed policy, gold is headed rapidly toward $2,000 per ounce, probably within six months. The forecasters who see such a price, but suggest it would take four to five years to get there, are ignoring history. Since gold was able to get from $185 to $850 in 18 months in 1978-80, there is no reason why it cannot get from $1,100 to $2,000 in six months now. What’s more, although 1980’s peak seemed madness at the time, and was equivalent to nearly $2,400 today, there is no reason why gold cannot go much higher if it is given another year or so to get there.
If I had a store of liquid funds available, I would buy gold now, even at $1100. Instead I have two houses and a child in college so my options are limited. Houses, even with mortgages, are probably better to hold than dollars for the next few years but they are not very liquid. I remember very well the survivalist mentality of the late 70s when people were stocking up dried food and other supplies for a period of unrest. If we get to 15% unemployment, and I think we will, those lessons may need to be learned again.
We only thought that Carter was the worst president ever. Who knew that the lesson would have to be learned again?
Read the rest of that piece. Here is another segment:
At some point, probably before the end of 2010, the bubble will burst. The deflationary effect on the U.S. economy of $150 plus oil will overwhelm the modest forces of genuine economic expansion. The Treasury bond market will collapse, overwhelmed by the weight of deficit financing. Once again, the banking system will be in deep trouble. The industrial sector, beyond the largest and most liquid companies and the extractive industries, will in any case have remained in recession – it is notable that, in spite of the Fed’s frenzy of activity, bank lending has fallen $600 billion in the last year. Unemployment, which will probably enter the second downturn at around current levels, will spike further upwards. The dollar will probably not collapse, but only because it will have been declining inexorably in the intervening year, to give a euro value of $2 and a yen value of 60 to 65 yen to the dollar.
In the next downturn, the Fed will not be able to cut interest rates, because inflation will be spiraling, as in 1980. Instead it will need to raise them while dealing with a profound crisis in the bond markets. Capital in the U.S. will become still more difficult to come by, and unemployment will approach 15%.
Maybe another 1994 Congressional turnover will save us but I think it may be too late.
UPDATE: We are now learning that some of the actions taken last year were unnecessary, which makes us wonder why they were taken.
In the fall of 2008 the New York Fed drove a baby-soft bargain with AIG’s credit-default-swap counterparties. The Fed’s taxpayer-funded vehicle, Maiden Lane III, bought out the counterparties’ mortgage-backed securities at 100 cents on the dollar, effectively canceling out the CDS contracts. This was miles above what those assets could have fetched in the market at that time, if they could have been sold at all.
The New York Fed president at the time was none other than Timothy Geithner, the current Treasury Secretary, and Mr. Geithner now tells Mr. Barofsky that in deciding to make the counterparties whole, “the financial condition of the counterparties was not a relevant factor.“
Whaaat ??? Read the rest.
UPDATE # 2: The story of TARP and it isn’t pretty.
I don’t know that I need to add anything. Others have explained this very well.
Trying KSM in civilian court will be an intelligence bonanza for al Qaeda and the hostile nations that will view the U.S. intelligence methods and sources that such a trial will reveal. The proceedings will tie up judges for years on issues best left to the president and Congress.
Whether a jury ultimately convicts KSM and his fellows, or sentences them to death, is beside the point. The treatment of the 9/11 attacks as a criminal matter rather than as an act of war will cripple American efforts to fight terrorism. It is in effect a declaration that this nation is no longer at war.
Andy McCarthy, who tried the 1993 WTC bombers says, “During the 1993 World Trade Center bombing trial of Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman (aka the “blind Sheikh”), standard criminal trial rules required the government to turn over to the defendants a list of 200 possible co-conspirators.
In essence, this list was a sketch of American intelligence on al Qaeda.”
According to Mr. McCarthy, who tried the case, it was delivered to bin Laden in Sudan on a silver platter within days of its production as a court exhibit.
Bin Laden, who was on the list, could immediately see who was compromised. He also could start figuring out how American intelligence had learned its information and anticipate what our future moves were likely to be.
Oh well. I don’t understand Obama and am a bit afraid of what I would find if I did.
There is an interesting post today on Powerline from a professor at Hillsdale College. I have attended a couple of Tea Party rallies and am convinced this is a major movement in the country. They were not organized by the Republican Party or Fox News and they are largely libertarian in philosophy. I can’t even recall seeing an anti-abortion sign at one of them. That’s not to say that the attendees are not social conservatives. I just think that financial and tax issues trump all that right now. Here are some of the statements from that piece that particularly struck me.
However, the Guardian, a left wing newspaper in Britain, is alarmed at this phenomenon.
Indeed, to examine the impact of both Palin and Bachmann is to see an America split firmly into two different worlds. The first is a liberal one where such politicians make outlandish comments that become the butt of jokes on the Daily Show or Saturday Night Live. The other is one where Palin and Bachmann are the victims of a liberal media that hates its own country. “For their supporters, attacking Palin and Bachmann actually gives them the proof that they are the victims that they already believe themselves to be,” said Bowler. To the conservative mind-set, these women are truth-tellers who are viciously attacked precisely because of the validity of the message that they are carrying.
Yes, it is alarming. Unfortunately, there is no similar movement in Britain. Instead, Labour voters seem to be joining a real fascist party.
Back in early September, I attended the annual meeting of the American Political Science Convention, which was held — for the first time — outside the United States in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
One of the panels I attended had as its focus the first eight months of the Obama administration and that administration’s prospects. Those on this particular panel were for the most part on the right, and in an utterly sober fashion they discussed the stimulus bill, the likelihood that the Democrats would pass a health care bill, and the prospects of the two parties in the 2010 midterm elections.
I was struck by one thing. No one even mentioned the tea-party movement and the explosions that had taken place at town meetings throughout the country in August.
So I asked why no one had mentioned it, and one political scientist — an exceedingly distinguished and astute student of presidential elections — responded that the tea-party phenomenon was, indeed, strange. It had, he noted, no institutional support. Nothing more was said. That was the beginning and the end of the panel’s discussion of this phenomenon.
Here is a political science meeting by the national association of scholars in this field. There is no mention of the Tea Party movement. Is there a better example of the failure of academic institutions to understand the country ?
He then links to an earlier post on a previous example of a spontaneous mass movement in American history.
In the early 1830s, when Alexis de Tocqueville visited Jacksonian America, he was taken aback by much of what he encountered. Nothing impressed him more, however, than the demonstrated capacity of the Americans to form private associations for public purposes.
This phenomenon – illegal in Tocqueville’s France and rare on the continent of Europe, even today – amazed him. He was particularly struck by the political consequences of the Americans’ confident practice of what he called “the art of association.” For, as he discovered, opposition had sprung up to the so-called Tariff of Abominations outside the existing political parties.
This opposition was especially emphatic in the South. But, in a fashion that seemed spontaneous, organizations had been independently formed in every district of the country, and then they had joined together in a great network to bring pressure upon Congress.
Tocqueville did not express an opinion regarding the justice or wisdom of this movement. What interested and excited him was simply its existence. For it proved that, in a great commercial democracy established in an extended territory, civic agency was a genuine possibility. It proved that the residents of the United States of America were citizens, not subjects, and it demonstrated that the condition that he called “soft despotism” was not the only possibility afforded by liberal democracy.
The tariff is explained at the link but it does not mention the Great Awakening, which is often described as religious in nature. The first Great Awakening occurred in colonial times and is thought to have contributed to the Revolution. The Second Great Awakening is still considered to have been religious but it led to the abolition movement and, eventually, to the Civil War. To de Tocqueville, however, the crisis of the tariff was at least a part of the movement. Henry Clay, in an attempt to defeat a protective tariff sponsored by New England manufacturers, added provisions that harmed them as well as the South, which he represented. The resulting Tariff of Abominations was passed and signed by President John Quincy Adams in spite of reservations by all the parties. It led to Adams’ defeat by Jackson in 1828 and to the Nullification Crisis of 1832. There is an interesting parallel between the 1828 tariff, which was signed by Adams in spite of the fact that it hated by almost everyone, punishing both northern manufacturers and southern agriculture, and the present health care bill. The Cap and Trade bill is also widely hated although it has not yet gotten much attention.
What remains remarkable, however, is the fact pointed out by the political scientist mentioned above. The Tea-Party movement lacks institutional support. Back in the early 1990s, when Hillary Clinton announced her proposal for a federal takeover of healthcare, the insurance companies mounted a campaign against it.
This time, the Democrats have squared everything with the special interests. The National Association of Manufacturers quickly climbed on board, eager to free its members from having to provide health care insurance for their members’ employees. The pharmaceutical companies did a deal with Obama aimed at protecting their short-term interests, as did the American Medical Association. The American Association of Retired Persons — which purports to represent the interests of the elderly, but which has business interests of its own — was bought outright, and the same thing can be said with regard to the health insurance companies. The industrial labor unions are similarly on board.
Indeed, everyone appears to have been taken care of . . . except, of course, for the ordinary citizens who will be subject to the new regime. There is no one to stand up for them. The Republican Party lacks the requisite votes, and everyone else has been bought.
This is what makes the comparison so apt. No one is standing up for the people except themselves.
In the circumstances, it is heartening that Americans still know how to stand up for themselves. With continued cooperation from Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Barack Obama, the Tea-Party movement may find itself blazing the trail for a partisan realignment that no one in the Republican Party yet has the wit to imagine.
What the leaders of the latter need to be taught is something akin to the rhetoric articulated by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1936 — for it nicely summarizes the argument made before almost every major party realignment in our history.
Whether the Republicans will manage to clamber aboard this train before it leaves the station is a question still to be answered.
This photo from the LA Times sort of captures the essence of yesterday’s game. This was the worst SC loss I’ve seen in decades. In the fourth quarter, before I left, the defense had quit. They just wanted to get the game over. The offense wasn’t much better. Barkley was throwing foolish passes and fumbled when he shouldn’t have. Joe McKnight took off on a great run but was caught from behind by a Stanford D back. As a Times writer pointed out, that would not have happened with Reggie Bush.
What has happened ? First, I think Carroll has lost too many assistant coaches. I don’t know why; maybe they are not paid enough; maybe he is not the easiest guy to work for.
Whatever it is, he is in trouble.
The defense played poorly, even the stars. On one completed touchdown pass, Taylor Mays was way out of position. If I know this, the coaches must know it.
I have been struck at how the SC team is losing to teams with shorter players. They have not been recruited, I suspect, because their physical attributes did not fit some template for an SC player. They are not tall enough, for one thing. Look at Oregon State. The Rogers brothers are both short; very short. The Oregon quarterback, Masoli, is short. The conventional wisdom is that short quarterbacks cannot see over tall linemen. If so, why did 6-3 Barkley throw three interceptions ? Stanford running back Gerhart is short and slow. Well, that’s what they said. Reality seems to be different.
I think the season is over for SC. They will be lucky to beat UCLA and very lucky to beat Arizona. This is the year that the PAC 10 teams get even for all those years when SC was dominant.
We have been hearing about the loss of manufacturing jobs in this country for years. Ross Perot talked about a “great sucking sound” in Mexico. That may apply for unskilled jobs but the real manufacturing job is one requiring skill. Not everyone can be a packer or a assembler. A lot of that can be automated. Why is manufacturing leaving our shores ? There are some theories being talked about now. An interview of an executive a couple of weeks ago started another round.
Nov. 11 (Bloomberg) — Emerson Electric Co. Chief Executive Officer David Farr said the U.S. government is hurting manufacturers with regulation and taxes and his company will continue to focus on growth overseas.
“Washington is doing everything in their manpower, capability, to destroy U.S. manufacturing,” Farr said today in Chicago at a Baird Industrial Outlook conference. “Cap and trade, medical reform, labor rules.”
Emerson is a big company and has been expanding in other countries for a while. Still, he struck a chord as the administration produced a response from a spokesman for Gary Locke, who is the Secretary of Commerce but has no business experience.
“This attack isn’t supported by the facts,” Kevin Griffis, a spokesman for U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke, said today in an e-mail from Singapore, where they are attending the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meetings.
“This administration has made a significant commitment to U.S. manufacturing, including reforming the country’s health insurance system to bring down costs and make American companies more competitive globally,” Griffis said.
If Locke thinks that health care bill will bring down costs, he hasn’t read it. Of course, no one else has either.
Here is a response, to the Obama Secretary of Commerce and his flunky.
Well, yes it is Kevin. There is a great article in today’s Wall Street Journal that you and Gary ought to read on global warming before they rush off and saddle American manufacturing with Cap and Trade. And rather than slam the manufacturing community represented by the US Chamber of Commerce because they have ideas on health care that are different from the government take-over scheme your boss urges, you ought to shut up and listen. And even the Democrats who control the Senate won’t support your ridiculous Card Check scheme to try to bring labor unions back from the dead. You set up a labor lawyer as the manufacturing czar and a certifiable nut case on the NLRB. You have attacked manufacturing at every turn since taking office.
The Wall Street Journal article on Global Warming closes with:
But from our first column on this subject, we have been convinced that the scientific questions are interesting and irrelevant, since it was never in the cards that Western societies (or Brazil or India or China) would sacrifice economic growth for the uncertain benefits of fighting climate change. Unable to do anything meaningful about climate change, policy would therefore default to satisfying the demand of organized interests for climate pork.
That is no way to run a railroad. Cap & Trade will kill off the rest of manufacturing. I remember when a lot of the fiberglass boat building industry was in Orange County, a half hour or less from my home. The Clean Air Act drove most of it out of business, along with the oil crisis of the 70s as petroleum products quadrupled in price. OIl came back down but the EPA was still there so most of southern California manufacturing moved to Mexico where the Mexican liked jobs more than clean air. In fact, the air was pretty clean in Newport Beach all along.
What else is Obama doing to help industry?
Well, the new hand-picked CEO of AIG, e insurance giant bailed out by the administration last spring wants to resign after 3 months on the job. Why ?
“The executive is chafing under constraints imposed by AIG’s government overseers, particularly a recent compensation review by the Obama administration’s pay czar, Kenneth Feinberg,” WSJ said citing people close to the development.
AIG, which is 80 per cent government owned since its rescue last year, is one of the companies under Feinberg’s purview.
That’s not manufacturing but one thing executives have in common is the desire to make money. Then, of course, there are the new taxes. These are enormous increases in marginal tax rates and they are not indexed for inflation.
In order to raise enough money to make their plan look like it won’t add to the deficit, House Democrats have deliberately not indexed two main tax features of their plan: the $500,000 threshold for the 5.4-percentage-point income tax surcharge; and the payroll level at which small businesses must pay a new 8% tax penalty for not offering health insurance.
This is a sneaky way for politicians to pry more money out of workers every year without having to legislate tax increases. The negative effects of failing to index compound over time, yielding a revenue windfall for government as the years go on. The House tax surcharge is estimated to raise $460.5 billion over 10 years, but only $30.9 billion in 2011, rising to $68.4 billion in 2019, according to the Joint Tax Committee.
Then there is the stimulus which takes the taxes and throws them away.
Taxing the rich hits small business very hard as many file personal returns and many of these new taxes are not subject deductible expenses, just like the AMT.
Americans of a certain age have seen this movie before. In 1960, only 3% of tax filers paid a 30% or higher marginal tax rate. By 1980, after the inflation of the 1970s, the share was closer to 33%, according to a Heritage Foundation analysis of tax returns.
These stealth tax increases—forcing ever more Americans to pay higher tax rates on phantom gains in income—were widely seen to be unjust. And in 1981 as part of the Reagan tax cuts, a bipartisan coalition voted to index the tax brackets for inflation.
We also know what has happened with the Alternative Minimum Tax. Passed to hit only 1% of all Americans in 1969, the AMT wasn’t indexed for inflation at the time and neither was Bill Clinton’s AMT rate increase in 1993. The number of families hit by this shadow tax more than tripled over the next decade. Today, families with incomes as low as $75,000 a year can be hit by the AMT unless Congress passes an annual “patch.”
The Pelosi-Obama health tax surcharge will have a similar effect. The tax would begin in 2011 on income above $500,000 for singles and $1 million for joint filers. Assuming a 4% annual inflation rate over the next decade, that $500,000 for an individual tax filer would hit families with the inflation-adjusted equivalent of an income of about $335,000 by 2020. After 20 years without indexing, the surcharge threshold would be roughly $250,000.
This is a job killer. So is card check.
And on we go toward the fate of Argentina.
There are growing suspicions that China may be heading for a collapse. The first inkling of this was in Stratfor.com’s chief George Friedman’s book, The Next 100 Years . My review of the book is here. Here is an excerpt:
His analysis of Russia and China seem very astute and correlate with other reliable sources such as the columnist “Spengler” with the Asia Times. I hadn’t thought about the population distribution of China until I looked at the map on page 90. He does not mention the very recent unrest in China although he predicts it. There have been 70,000 factories close in China in the past year with 20 million suddenly unemployed . I don’t believe this sort of insight is available at this price anywhere else.
Now we havethis warning .
“Purchases of U.S. consumers cannot be as dominant a driver of growth as they have been in the past,” Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said during a trip to Beijing this spring. “In China, … growth that is sustainable will require a very substantial shift from external to domestic demand, from an investment and export-intensive growth to growth led by consumption.”
That’s one vision of the future.
But there’s a growing group of market professionals who see a different picture altogether. These self-styled China bears take the less popular view: that the much-vaunted Chinese economic miracle is nothing but a paper dragon. In fact, they argue that the Chinese have dangerously overheated their economy, building malls, luxury stores and infrastructure for which there is almost no demand, and that the entire system is teetering toward collapse.
A Chinese collapse, of course, would have profound effects on the United States, limiting China’s ability to buy U.S. debt and provoking unknown political changes inside the Chinese regime.
The China bears could be dismissed as a bunch of cranks and grumps except for one member of the group: hedge fund investor Jim Chanos.
Chanos, a billionaire, is the founder of the investment firm Kynikos Associates and a famous short seller — an investor who scrutinizes companies looking for hidden flaws and then bets against those firms in the market.
His most famous call came in 2001, when Chanos was one of the first to figure out that the accounting numbers presented to the public by Enron were pure fiction. Chanos began contacting Wall Street investment houses that were touting Enron’s stock. “We were struck by how many of them conceded that there was no way to analyze Enron but that investing in Enron was, instead, a ‘trust me’ story,” Chanos told a congressional committee in 2002.
Chanos has some disturbing data.
First, they point to the enormous Chinese economic stimulus effort — with the government spending $900 billion to prop up a $4.3 trillion economy. “Yet China’s economy, for all the stimulus it has received in 11 months, is underperforming,” Gordon Chang, author of “The Coming Collapse of China,” wrote in Forbes at the end of October. “More important, it is unlikely that [third-quarter] expansion was anywhere near the claimed 8.9 percent.”
Chang argues that inconsistencies in Chinese official statistics — like the surging numbers for car sales but flat statistics for gasoline consumption — indicate that the Chinese are simply cooking their books. He speculates that Chinese state-run companies are buying fleets of cars and simply storing them in giant parking lots in order to generate apparent growth.
Another data point cited by the bears: overcapacity. For example, the Chinese already consume more cement than the rest of the world combined, at 1.4 billion tons per year. But they have dramatically ramped up their ability to produce even more in recent years, leading to an estimated spare capacity of about 340 million tons, which, according to a report prepared earlier this year by Pivot Capital Management, is more than the consumption in the U.S., India and Japan combined.
This, Chanos and others argue, is happening in sector after sector in the Chinese economy. And that means the Chinese are in danger of producing huge quantities of goods and products that they will be unable to sell.
This is not the time for us to double the US national debt.
There is an essay, actually a pamphlet, that explains a strategy to win in Afghanistan. The author is a Special Forces major who has been there, and in Iraq, for years and who seems to know what he is writing about. I doubt it will happen but it is worth reading. It’s interesting that it is on Steven Pressfield’s blog. For those unfamiliar with his novels, you should read some of them. I suspect his novel about Alexander’s campaign in Afghanistan is based on real life experience the past nine years. The pamphlet also agrees with my idea that the campaign against the poppy is doomed.
It is a pdf document and is worth reading.
UPDATE # 4: How do we address the threat of radical Islam ? A committee.
Thinking Anew—Security Priorities for the Next Administration
A coherent strategy to address 21st century threats to the United States, one that treats national and homeland security as a seamless whole, has yet to emerge… To help fuel this process, in April 2008 The George Washington University Homeland Security Policy Institute (HSPI) established the Presidential Transition Task Force, comprised of national and homeland security experts, policymakers and practitioners… The goal was to determine the top strategic priorities to advance the nation’s security in the coming decade…
Event Participants:
…Amanda Halpern
U.S. House of Representatives
Beth Hampton
Homeland Security Institute
Nidal Hasan
Uniformed Services University School of Medicine
Donald Hawkins
U.S. Department of Homeland Security
Eric Heighberger
Homeland Security Council…
Well, he certainly was an expert on threats.
UPDATE #3: Obama weighs in with a bushel of nonsense about diversity on his radio broadcast today.
Hasan reportedly shouted “Allahu Akbar!” before the killings, wrote Internet postings justifying Muslim suicide bombings, considered U.S. forces the enemy, and opposed American involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan as wars on Islam. His rampage at Ft. Hood has the markings of an act of Islamic terrorism.
But in his weekly address, Obama says, “We cannot fully know what leads a man to do such a thing.” And while the killings were “heartbreaking” and “despicable” and “devastating,” the president says, it is important to remember not only that Hasan’s fellow soldiers responded bravely in coming to the aid of the wounded but also that “Americans of every race, faith and station” have served in the U.S. armed forces. “They are Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus and nonbelievers,” Obama says. “They reflect the diversity that makes this America.”
What a load of crap !
UPDATE #2: here is the transcript of a call-in program that answers a lot of questions and provides some new information.
UPDATE: The shooter described his nationality as Palestinian. So much for his oath as an officer. WHy wasn’t this noticed ?
On a form filled out by those seeking spouses through a programme at the mosque, Hasan listed his birthplace as Arlington, Virginia, but his nationality as Palestinian, Khan said.
‘I don’t know why he listed Palestinian,’ Khan said, ‘He was not born in Palestine.’
Am Egyptian friend of mine, another physician, knows that is a bad idea. He got a wife from Egypt, arranged by his family, and she spent about 15 years in the US, then she divorced him, took all his money and went back to Egypt. Hie had a heart attack during the ordeal. I think he picked an American girl the next time.
I have a couple of observations that I haven’t seen much of so far.
1. It’s obvious that the legacy media is tying itself in knots to avoid the obvious fact that this was a “grass roots jihad.” This will be an increasing problem due to inflammatory rhetoric from Muslim mullahs. The New York Times earlier this morning was still maintaining:
Military records indicated that Major Hasan was single, had been born in Virginia, had never served abroad and listed “no religious preference” on his personnel records.
Now, at least, they are starting to face the truth, albeit reluctantly:
In an interview on NBC’s “Today” show, Lt. Gen. Robert W. Cone, a base spokesman, was asked about the reports that Major Hasan had yelled “Allahu Akbar.”General Cone said soldiers at the scene had reported “similar” accounts.
2. This physician had been using the army to pay for his education all the way through residency and fellowship. When it comes time to deploy, like a couple of other military trained physicians, he didn’t want to fulfill his obligation. I remember two cases (I can’t find the stories with Google), one a women physician in MIssouri during the first Gulf War, the other an Asian American physician in Washington state in 2003 or so. I apparently misremembered as he was not a physician. Note the reading he had been doing.
Anyway, the shooter had one other motivation, mentioned briefly by the cousin. His medical education, even at the Armed Service medical school, is worth $200,000 or more. He has an obligation to serve to repay it and wanted to get out of that obligation.
3. Finally, and the most significant perhaps, is the fact that, as a psychiatrist, he has been interviewing returned soldiers and their stories may have fed his Muslim rage about the war. Finally, it exploded in an act of personal jihad. As a psychiatrist, he was probably talking to young soldiers who may have witnessed disturbing things or even committed acts that bothered them. Nobody was thinking about this sort of stuff affecting the Muslim psychiatrist but I suspect it did.
If I were the military, I would be more concerned about Muslims now than gays. After all, it isn’t the first time.
Akbar, an African-American who grew up near Los Angeles, was born Mark Fidel Kools. He had his name changed when he was young by his mother when she married his stepfather, William Muhummad Bilal — a Muslim convert — more than 20 years ago.
Last night, as the FBI and Pentagon investigated his life, including interviewing members of the Los Angeles mosque where he worshipped, concerns were mounting over the effect his actions may have on the US military’s 4,700 other Muslim members, many of whom are Arab-Americans.
What has shaken the US military is the premeditation of Akbar’s alleged attack, and the political motives behind it.
That was 2003. Supposedly, other officers who knew Hasan had complained yet he was untouched.
UPDATE: There are some strange things going on in the final vote count. Maybe it’s not over. They sure got Owens sworn in fast. What happens if he lost the election ?
Well, Hoffman lost but not by much. Dede Scozzafava managed to sink him by endorsing the Democrat. So much for Newt Gingrich’s counsel. He had several factors against him. He apparently did not live in the district although it is huge. I suspect his business is in the district but that was not enough. He also did poorly on local issues in a newspaper interview. That could be a phony issue if the paper was supporting someone else but this was not a good moment.
Regarding the proposed rooftop highway across the top of the district linking Watertown to Plattsburgh, Mr. Hoffman said only that he was open to studying the idea that has been around for years and will require federal financial assistance to complete.
Mr. Hoffman had no opinion about winter navigation and widening the St. Lawrence Seaway with their potential environmental damage. He was not familiar with the repercussions of a proposed federal energy marketing agency for the Great Lakes, which could pay for Seaway expansion contrary to district interests.
A flustered and ill-at-ease Mr. Hoffman objected to the heated questioning, saying he should have been provided a list of questions he might be asked. He was, if he had taken the time to read the Thursday morning Times editorial raising the very same questions.
That was lame. He is also not that impressive being interviewed on TV. I can see how the locals would resent the effort to make the campaign about national issues. Jobs and spending and deficits are universal but he seems to have done a poor job with the local paper.
Coming to Mr. Hoffman’s defense, former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas, who accompanied the candidate on a campaign swing, dismissed regional concerns as “parochial” issues that would not determine the outcome of the election.
Ouch ! Armey should know better than that.
Here is a post by a Hoffman supporter on the election. He makes some sweeping claims that may not bear out. A few commenters add to the discussion, then the usual trolls appear. You can spot the lefties by their use of the obscene derogatory “teabagger.” Once you see that word, you know they do not mean well and anything they say is spin.
The Virginia election was a real triumph for the GOP with the whole top slate plus many down ballot races being won.
I think it is worthwhile to note that McDonnell campaigned on the issues of spending, taxes and regulation while his opponents, including the Washington Post, got hysterical about his social views. I think that is the right approach and I think the less said by candidates about social issues next year, the better.
New Jersey turned out better than many expected. Christie was criticized before the election for refusing to rule out tax increases and by resisting the property tax issue in debates. Since he won, I guess he was right.
In California, I had some hopes for the special election in the Bay Area where Garamendi was running for CA 10 against David Harmer and won in a low turnout election. That has been a safe seat for the Democrats for years but hope springs eternal.
Turnout was estimated to be about 39 percent – “an exceptionally high figure” for a special congressional election in California, said Steve Weir, clerk-recorder for Contra Costa County, where nearly 70 percent of the district’s voters live. The district includes parts of Alameda, Solano and Sacramento counties.
The vote totals, as pointed out by a commenter at Patterico, suggest that Republicans turned out well but there just aren’t enough of them in that district.
In Tucson, the tea party movement had some success in ousting one of the left wing city council members. One has been counted as lost and the other is close. That would be a significant achievement.
Tea parties and a testy national mood aside, Ward 3 incumbent Karin Uhlich is holding on to a narrow lead over Ben Buehler-Garcia.
Nina Trasoff was trailing Republican Steve Kozachik, leaving both races too close to call, with thousands of early ballots still to be counted.
Well, 2010 is coming.