Stabbing Westward

Europe is Between Decline and Fall, the World is Flowing East to West...

In a rare Obama administration success, we pulled off a major diplomatic offensive a few weeks back in Asia, setting China back on its heels, diplomatically speaking. We’re standing up a new beachhead in Northern Australia, Opening up Burma (Myanmar) and China’s neighbors are cosying up to us, encouraging our involvement in the region.

Looking across the Atlantic, things ain't so great...

“The nose of the British Bulldog has been slanted backwards so that he can breathe without letting go”  -- Winston Churchill

Meanwhile, Europe is in its death throes, with member states lacerating and devouring one another. First, irresponsible governments loaded up on free money, incurring crushing debt and demanding others pay, and now this …

“BRITAIN last night faced a revenge attack for David Cameron’s EU snub when a senior Brussels bureaucrat promised a new deluge of damaging red tape on UK business.”  (EU Plots Revenge against Britain)

What a slice of reality.  Europeans no longer fight wars.  They now threaten one another with onerous paperwork.  Britain was smart to keep its own currency, and it is now distancing itself further from the imploding EU experiment, incurring the wrath of the unelected Continental Poobahs in Brussels.  The British Bulldog, however, is not backing down…

Conservative MP Douglas Carswell said:  [...]  “If he is such an economic genius, why is the continent that he helps to preside over heading down a debt vortex? He should be worrying about his own maths, not ours.”

Stephen Booth, of the Euro-sceptic think tank Open Europe, said: “The threat of EU regulation on the City of London remains.

“The British Government must continue to push to prevent any further unnecessary and unwanted regulation from Brussels.”  (EU Plots Revenge against Britain) 

Britons are tough, but it worries me that we have a Great Britain hater in the White House.  Our closest and most trusted ally may need some backup if it is to survive the continental collapse...

Meanwhile, wild-eyed practitioners of the Religion of Peace bombed and shot up the city center of Liege, Belgium, killing or wounding almost 100 people.  It was all a matter of "honor" with links back to *Surprise!* Pakistan.

It’s the Decline and Fall of Rome on a continental scale...

Lest anyone on this side of the Atlantic give vent to a schadenfreude-induced chortle, let us recall that we ourselves teeter on the brink.

So the Olde Continent is in economic collapse, and its once brave societies have turned “weak and effeminate*.”  The barbaric invaders have overwhelmed the decadent hosts; the 7th century obscurantists who Europe invited in will finish the job, just as the Vandals and the Goths finished off Rome, picking through the ruins and hauling off the marble.  A darkness of ignorance will fall upon the continent, as it does anywhere civilization cedes ground to Islam.

So the US is right to turn our attentions away from the Middle East and Europe. They deserve one another. The Western Hemisphere has enough gas, oil and coal, there’s no further need to spill our blood and treasure on ungrateful bastards. Vietnam (yes, that Vietnam) and it’s neighbors are welcoming us because China is an imperial bully.

China's Hu tells all the Hu's in Huville to prepare for war

Chinese President Hu Jintao on Tuesday urged the navy to prepare for military combat, amid growing regional tensions over maritime disputes and a US campaign to assert itself as a Pacific power.

War with China is not inevitable.  Neither is the fall of Europe.  Our destiny is in our hands.  Do we have the wisdom, strength and courage to grasp it?

* - Gibbons’ observation on Rome’s decline

London’s Bankers Tell EU to Get Bent

Green Dreams, Economic Nightmares

California continues to serve as an object lesson to the rest of the nation.  

That most blessed land of Queen Calafia, that could be an economically and geographically viable nation in its own right, is stumbling and staggering under the weight of progressive statism. It's latest woe, like all the others, is of its own doing.

The state has mandated that one-third of its energy must come from renewable sources by 2020.

California's increasing use of renewable power will come at a price, pushing up electricity bills across the state.

And while it's impossible to tell how big the cost to consumers will be, some experts fear the total cost of renewable energy in California will be in the billions of dollars.

"You're going to see significant price increases over time from renewables," said Aaron Johnson, director of renewable energy policy at Pacific Gas and Electric Co. "As you add it to the system, it is going to result in higher costs for consumers."  (SF Gate - California Renewable Energy)

Eschewing cheap and bountiful gas and coal for green pipe dreams is suicidal, but suicide is California's specialty.  The only thing that keeps such governmental action from being criminal is the fact that people can escape, and they are.  The ones that are still there voted for higher energy bills, so I don't feel sorry for them.

Meanwhile, in China, a Boom Goes Bust...

Jersey (I think it was Jersey, if not, it was one of the statists that comment here) was complaining last week about China subsidizing it's solar industry.  I told him we should thank the government of China for chipping in to make solar panels we buy cheaper.  Our government would be stupid to do the same.

Now comes news that China's solar industry is collapsing...

Nov. 22 (Bloomberg) -- Losses for China’s largest solar manufacturers, including Suntech Power Holdings Co. and JA Solar Holdings Co. may continue through next year as declining shipments prompt them to slash prices and liquidate inventory.

“Liquidation is leading to suicidal pricing.” Polavarapu said in an interview today. "There are too many solar companies in China, he said, and they are cutting prices to maintain share."

Once freed from government intervention (bad money always chases out good), solar will make technological gains and perhaps be economically viable someday.  For now, it remains the energy of the future.

Meanwhile, as Obama's venture socialists still talk of stimulus multipliers and lust for the opportunity to dump even more money down green job sinkholes, the gas and oil industry is creating real jobs and providing cheap energy to an America mired in high-unemployment Obamanomics.

The petroleum industry has done more for this country than Obama could ever dream of.

WRM - Chinese Solar Industry Goes Belly Up
The Fraying of China's Guilded Age

China Declared War on Us Years Ago

China has committed multiple acts of war against the United States

According to a January report from the Commerce Department, counterfeit electronics in the defense industry are on the rise. In 2005, there were 3,868 incidents detected, compared with 9,356 in 2008, according to the report. (Navy Times)

Those inscrutable Chinese have managed to slip unreliable counterfeit electronics into equipment critical to our national defense. This is an act of sabotage that nations used to only dream of being able to pull off back in the old days. Now, China has done it to "the most powerful nation on earth."

Poisoned food, toxic drywall, and now shoddy fake electronic components that go into our national defense hardware. Cyber spying, cyber warfare, suborning LORAL to turn over advanced missile technology during the Clinton administration. They forced down one of our USAF surveillance planes in 2001 when Bush was president, and we stood by powerless, a hapless nation with a hapless president.

In an earlier age, any one of these deliberate actions would be considered an act of war.

Why don’t we tell China to back off and shove their toxic crap where the sun don't shine? Why are we taking this from them?   Oh yeah... we’re in hock to them to the tune of trillions… And we don’t make stuff in this country anymore.  We need them.

Our profligacy has put us in mortal danger, and our government has done its damnedest to make the USA a terrible place to do business. Because we’ve lost control of ourselves, our spending and our jobs, we’ve also lost control of our destiny. We are a pauper nation at the whim of our creditors. We are Greece without all the naps and the smoking.

We are a walking brain dead zombie nation, more concerned about millionaire men who play with balls and their billionaire owners than we are about national defense and fiscal sanity. We are reaping what we have sown.

"In every democracy, the people get the government they deserve"  -- Alexis de Tocqueville

The Lyin' King, Starring Barack Obama

Anyone who believes a plumber pays more in taxes than a billionaire is probably also dumb enough to vote for Barack Obama. 






It's going to get worse before it gets better...

Even Obama's people are saying unemployment will not go down before the 2012 election, and I believe them. Removing $1.5 trillion from the economy is not the way to grow jobs.  That's according to Reaganomics as well as John Maynard Keynes.  The president is economically illiterate and his policies are an incoherent clash of careening desperation and overheated class warfare populism, all fueled by crony crapitalism.

Obama Will Run in 2012

Don't believe the speculation that Obama may go quietly into that good night and make way for another Dem candidate.  He's young and America is not yet completely broken.

President Obama is an effete liberal metrosexual who's "down with the struggle" community organizer persona is just a pose.  He's never been in a fight in his entire life, other than the time he and  his gay Muslim "porn 'stash" roomate both discovered a roach under the sofa cushion, and the room broke out into a cocaine-frenzied pillow fight.

Regardless, he ain't giving up his current gig without a global-billionaire-funded fight (where others do the dirty work.)

But anyway...  Greece will default, and who's in and who's out of the Eurozone won't really matter; Germany will end up on top...  It's gonna be ugly.

We here in the US will continue sliding sideways, but I think we'll come out OK, even after the ten years or so of misery and chaos we are facing.  For the most part, we still know how to take care of ourselves, our kinfolk and our neighbors; Those who do not should probably partner up with that Spanish-speaking family down the street.  Where they came from, you had to have some basic survival skills or you'd end up dead.

Our fundamentals are better than Europe's, and I really do remain optimistic that no matter how bad it gets, riots and all the rest, we will make it through, if only because North America (thanks in no small part to Canada) will remain fertile ground for capital, especially when compared to the rest of the world.  

China?

Are you kidding?  Their one-child policy has made China a dead man walking.  And the men not dying will not be able to find a woman, because the poor little commies aborted way more little girls than little boys.

Their environment is a nightmarish catastrophe bubbling just below the surface.  Hundreds of millions are still mired in poverty.  Smaller countries chafe at their role as The Middle Kingdom's slave state, while other nations find ways to undercut them with cheaper labor, just as China did to the developed world.  China will get old before it gets rich.

The Collapse Won't be Pretty
 
The Chinese Communist Politburo still nurtures the illusion that they can ride the beast, doling out freedom with an eyedropper.  Good luck with that.  Gorbachev thought he could just crack the door open, and next thing he knew, freedom's hordes were storming the breach.  His Eastern European clients were hanging from lamp posts while Boris Yeltsen was blasting the walls of Parliament with hijacked tanks.  It's folly.  Once human beings get a whiff of liberty, it's all over.

China's Totalitarian-Capitalism chemistry set will blow up.  And it won't be a little ka-boom, it will be a roaring fireball seen and heard around the world.

Forget investing in the stock market.  Put your faith in God and your money in gold and lead.

Democrats and GE: They Bring Good Jobs to China

Unemployment Explained

Obama's Jobs Czar, GE CEO Jeffrey HeMelts has thrown thousands of Americans out of work even as he pockets rich tax exemptions from his buddy Barack Obama.

When the president named him Jobs Czar, he failed to mention that he was making him China's jobs czar.

China's Raising Prices, US Prints More Money

Anyone who supports Obama has no right to cry about Reagan's deficits

“The President's own budget documents project as well that by next year more debt will be run up in one term under President Obama than under all other Presidents in history -- from George Washington to George Bush -- combined.” (Peter Ferrara – A Big Question)

Pimco, the largest bond fund in the world, announced it will no longer buy US debt.  Pimco founder William H. Gross explains why...

Unless entitlements are substantially reformed, the U.S. will likely default on its debt; not in conventional ways, but via inflation, currency devaluation and low to negative real interest rates. (Pimco – Skunked)

That 70's Show:  Stagflation!

This was not America's worst recession, but it is the worst recovery.  Following closely on the heels of economic stagnation comes inflation.

Communist China can’t rely on slave labor forever.  The peasants have caught a whiff of prosperity and they want more. China's Communist Politburo is raising wages, and we're printing more money.  This is a silent tax, we all pay more for everything.

Even worse, our government allows China to blatantly manipulate its currency, putting our domestic manufacturers at a competitive disadvantage. This would be much harder for them to do if we did not need to borrow money from them.

Anyone who frequents local shops and restaurants already knows that mom and pop can no longer hold the line.  Prices are going up...

Still reeling from the recession, most mom-and-pop shops have held off on raising prices for fear of losing more customers. But business is finally starting to pick up, and after years of being squeezed by cost increases, a growing number of small businesses are hiking their prices.

"They've been squeezed so badly for the last two years, any uptick in demand means they're going to try to raise prices a bit," said William Dennis, senior research fellow with the National Federation of Independent Business. (CNN – Inflation Pressures Grow on Mainstreet)

Walmart to the Rescue

In the face of this economic misery, retail giant Walmart will fight heroically to continue to bring us low-priced goods. Imagine if there were no Walmart or other big box giants, and instead our nation was dotted with scattered and sundry mom and pops. They could not marshal the bargaining power of a Walmart or Target, nor the supply chain efficiencies. We’d be paying frightfully more for everything!

Just as John D. Rockerfeller brought cheap kerosene to the masses, big chain retailers help shield us from the stupid policies of our government.  We should outsource the federal government to Walmart.