Ron Paul on Bill Mayer. I wonder if all those aristocrats who dissed Paul are rethinking that. Probably not.
So President Obama is committing 17,000 more US troops to Afghanistan, but he hasn't learned the lessons of the past because he has no coherent strategy to employ those new troops effectively. The surge in Iraq didn't work just because of more troops. It worked because those troops came with a new mission - a change in strategy. At the same time, NATO is reluctant to commit more troops.
Cato has convince me that the war in Afghanistan is already won. We went to Afghanistan to deny al Qaeda a safe haven there. We succeeded. Now the Taliban is resurgent, but so what? That's not a national security issue for the US. If different tribes in Afghanistan embrace the Taliban, so be it.
It's a very different situation than Iraq. In Iraq, after we toppled Saddam, al Qaeda became a force. Since we're at war with al Qaeda, we had to stay and defeat them. Now that that's been basically achieved, we're drawing down troops end getting out of Iraq. That's as it should be. But al Qaeda isn't a force in Afghanistan, so I don't know why we need to stay there in force.
Apparently the US government is considering something similar in Afghanistan, based on the model Pakistan just used to reach an agreement with the Taliban to take control and implement Sharia law in the Swat valley. This is a terrible turn of events in Pakistan - a nuclear power that has neither the will nor ability to control its own territory. But in Afghanistan, a region that has never really been a nation but only a collection of tribes, it makes sense. I would heartily applaud Obama if he could pull this off.
Tom Woods reports in Meltdown that the securities and investment industry had contributed $53 million to congressional and presidential candidates in 2008 - second only to lawyers. Congressmen who voted for the TARP bailout received 54 percent more money in campaign contributions than those who voted against it. As always, congressmen sold their votes, and that's how we ended up with TARP even though over 95 percent of calls and emails to congressmen were against it. This is the inevitable result of giving such tremendous power to a few individuals.
Interesting fact from Meltdown - the Fed created more money between 2000 and 2007 than in the rest of the history of the country. That gives me a perspective on the scale of the problem that I didn't have before.
Too low of interest rates is what created the housing crisis, which led to the credit crisis and recession. Why would anybody want to repeat that? We should demand Bernanke, Geithner, Dodd, and Frank resign.
Every president says they have a plan to cut the deficit. Then every president signs tons of irresponsible spending bills and the deficits grow. Obama's plan is no different. Raising taxes on the rich is going to damage the economy and reduce revenues.
Mexico's drug gangs not only threaten Mexico, they threaten America.
Mexico's cartels already have tentacles that stretch across the border. The U.S. Justice Department said recently that Mexican gangs are the "biggest organized crime threat to the United States," operating in at least 230 cities and towns. Crimes connected to Mexican cartels are spreading across the Southwest. Phoenix had more than 370 kidnapping cases last year, turning it into the kidnapping capital of the U.S. Most of the victims were illegal aliens or linked to the drugs trade.
The prohibitionists, our representatives and anybody who voted for them have done this to Mexico and to us. You can count on them to ask for more money to fight the drug war, but that money will just end up in the hands of the drug gangs and be used against us. The war on drugs is really war on Americans, and we can't win a war against ourselves. By definition, it's self-destructive. The way to fix all this over night is to end the war on drugs.
Reason previews a devastating report showing that prosecutors use bad science and bad experts to gain convictions. I see this all the time. It's especially true in the soft sciences, where government paid professional experts will say anything to get convictions, and poor defendants have limited or no access to honest experts to refute the claims.
Obama hasn't responded to a series of foreign policy provocations since he took office. While the Russians are creating fast response teams to intimidate their neighbors, including shutting the air base that supplies US troops in Afghanistan, the Iranians are launching satellites, showing they can hit any place on earth with a missile which could be nuclear since they've enriched enough raw material to make a bomb, and Pakistan is turning over a rich region of territory to radicals who are implementing Sharia law, Hillary Clinton is in China talking about global warming. I feel safer.
How Chavez manipulated the vote to remove term limits in Venezuela.
Thanks to his rapport with many poorer Venezuelans and to oil-financed social programmes, Mr Chávez remains popular. But Mr León adds that there was “an explicit threat” in the president’s message to the electorate: “without Chávez there will be war”. In belligerent speeches, he accused his opponents of seeking violence, ordered the police to disperse student demonstrations with tear-gas and said anyone who did not vote for him was guilty of treason. That seemed to apply especially to the more than 3m Venezuelans on the government payroll. On one occasion he held up a list on television and said he would be checking who voted and who did not.
Obama's socialist policies are waking up the sleeping giant that would rather just be left alone - the great mainstream of America.
Pat Buchanan quotes, the "size of an economy relative to potential rivals ultimately determines the limits of power in international politics" as if that wasn't obvious to any thinking person. Doesn't everybody realize that? Obviously Republicans and Democrats don't. Maybe that's why liberals and conservatives are so wrong about most everything. This has always seemed self-evident to me. It's why I keep saying America is on the decline. It's why I keep saying that to return America to a trajectory of greatness we need to cut the size and scope of government in half so our economy will once again become the envy of the world. It's why I adamantly support the FairTax, free markets in energy, health care and education, ending the war on drugs and dramatically reducing welfare domestically and overseas including security welfare - because the terrible big-government of both parties is rapidly accelerating America's decline. Freedom is always the right answer.
European official says Europe has to accept Guantanamo detainees. It's about time. If Europe had taken responsibility for its role in world, Gitmo wouldn't be an issue. If Europeans held terrorists, American-hating, European-living liberals would suddenly decide it was OK.
Desperate for more money to harm America, US sues Swiss bank for names of tax dodgers. I'm all for catching tax dodgers, but I don't think anything good could come from forcing a Swiss bank to give up its anonymity policy.
Nice quote from an article based on an interview with Treasury Sec. Paulson on Aug. 10 2008. "But Paulson repeated his belief that the nation's economy remains fundamentally sound despite the mounting losses on bad mortgage loans that have shaken Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac." One month later, he told Congress they had to give him $700 billion or our entire financial industry would collapse. How was this man not forced to resign? I never read anybody other than me call for his resignation. How is Bernanke not forced to resign? I haven't read anybody other than me call for his resignation. We've reached a point where aristocrats are completely and totally unaccountable for the consequences of their actions - unless they get caught with a hooker.
We don't have to look to France or the Soviet Union to see what Obama's and liberals' policies will do the US. We can look at California. It's stunning to me that we have such an example of how liberals, when unchecked, destroy everything that made a place great, and the people don't seem to notice. And the people of California keep voting for Democrats who dominate both houses of the legislature. It's insane.
This essay highlights irresponsible policy after irresponsible policy supported by Obama and Democrats this year, explaining why the stock market continues to tumble. The author is obviously a Republican so Republicans get off scott free, but in the context of this essay - why the market drops every time Obama or Geithner open their mouths - it's tremendously accurate.
Newt Gingrich offers an alternative plan to stimulate the US economy. The tax cuts are great, and some of his items expand freedom, but others are more spending proposals that interfere and make our economy less efficient just like any others. Still, this plan is head, shoulders, torso, hips, and thighs over Obama's plan. Why didn't McCain come up with something like this? Rhetorical question.
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