Things Are About To Get Really, Really Ugly in Venezuela

November 26th, 2013

The Venezuelan Parliament just passed an “enabling law” to give Socialist President Nicolas Maduro dictatorial powers.

Gee, you know what other Socialist President had his country pass an “Enabling Law” to give him dictatorial powers?

Go ahead.

Guess.

Maduro’s opponents? Not happy.

Earlier this month, Maduro sent the army to seize electronics store and force them to sell goods below cost, i.e. at the laughable “official exchange rate” of 6.3 bolivars per dollar rather than the real black market rate, which is some eight times higher. (They even tried to get Twitter to block unofficial exchange rates.) And Maduro is looking to loot more stores ahead of the December 8 elections. Given that Hugo Chavez has been hollowing out the country since 1999, I’m not even sure it’s possible for the opposition to win a large enough victory to escape the margin of voter fraud anymore.

Inflation is running at 54%. Oil prices are at 16 month lows, and the country’s oil production has been declining for a while. That, and the crazy Socialist looting, have sent Venezuela bond prices into a tailspin and sent their interest rates to an all-time high. Crime is also high, with Caracas being the murder capital of the world (yes, even worse than Chicago).

Maybe that’s why Goldman Sachs has a scheme to help Venezuela swap gold for dollars.

It’s almost as if Maduro read Atlas Shrugged and saw it as a blueprint rather than a cautionary tale. Imagine Greece, if hyperinflation was just getting started and they didn’t have German taxpayers to bail them out.

You can decree imaginary exchange rates the same way you can decree that π be set to exactly 3, and the reality will ignore and punish your delusion. Watch inflation skyrocket and business collapse as sellers are unable to buy goods and unwilling to sell at a loss, guaranteeing that a far-from rich country is about to get a whole lot poorer.

The only question now is whether Venezuela’s economic collapse will bee Argentina bad, or Weimar Germany bad.

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Posted in Crime, Economics | No Comments »

LinkSwarm for November 25, 2013

November 25th, 2013

This was supposed to go up Friday, but Stuff and Things interfered once again.

Obama’s “deal” with Iran drops sanctions and lets them enrich uranium to their heart’s content. I guess Obama needs the Iran agreement as a disastrous fake achievement to distract from ObamaCare, his last disastrous fake achievement. I haven’t read all the details, so I can’t tell if it’s Madeleine Albright bad, or Neville Chamberlain bad, but it doesn’t appear to address Iran’s continued support of Assad, Hezbollah, or their other terrorist activities. Still to be decided: whether Obama personally plants the knife in Benjamin Netanyahu’s back, or has aide do it. (If Hillary Clinton wanted to put distance between herself and the Obama Administration, now would be a great time to denounce the Iran deal.)

  • Mother forced into Medicaid. “There was just one option—at the very affordable monthly rate of zero. The exchange had determined that my mother was not eligible to choose to pay for a plan, and so she was slated immediately for Medicaid.”
  • The real rationale behind ObamaCare was the redistribution of wealth. “The redistribution of wealth has always been a central feature of [ObamaCare].”
  • “Insurance is complex to buy”? Really, Mr. President? I’m pretty sure Forest Gump could have figured that out in less than 3 years…
  • The real reason behind Obama’s laughable deal with Iran is to shore up his shrinking liberal base, the only group that still supports him after the ObamaCare debacle.
  • John Bolton calls the deal “abject surrender”.
  • End result of the Iran deal? “War has now become a much more likely prospect.”
  • Given all that, Harry Reid nuking the Senate’s filibuster gets pushed further down the Stack of Perfidy. What it tells us is that Democrats believe they’re going to lose the Senate. “They think it’s very likely that they will lose their Senate majority in 2014. They are essentially writing off the last two years of Obama’s presidency, which means getting as much done as possible right now. They are going to spend the next year packing as many liberal justices and appointees onto the courts and various bureaucracies as they can.”
  • Democratic Rep mugged in DC. Does this mean she’ll turn Republican? (Hat tip: Ace of Spades.)
  • 16 things people couldn’t believe about America until moving here. (Hat tip: Michael Totten.)
  • I wonder how John Carter feels about being labeled part of “the House’s own pro-amnesty gang”?
  • Related: How Amnesty dies: Part 1, Part 2.
  • Syrian Kurds declare autonomy.
  • Crystal Mangum, the central accuser in the Duke Lacrosse “rape” case (which wasn’t) has been convicted of murder. Somehow I managed to miss Nancy Grace’s wall-to-wall coverage of her trial…

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    Posted in Border Control, Crime, Democrats, Foreign Policy, ObamaCare | 1 Comment »

    California to People Losing Their Policies: Drop Dead

    November 21st, 2013

    California rejects Obama’s ObamaCare “fix” of extending non-compliant policies:

    Also includes Charles Krauthammer (yet again) bringng the smackdown. “It was a fraud and a sham from the very beginning.”

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    Posted in ObamaCare, video | No Comments »

    Gun & Crime LinkSwarm for November 20, 2013

    November 20th, 2013

    We interrupt our continuing series on the failures of ObamaCare to bring you a dollop of gun- and crime-related news:

  • It takes a special kind of super-genius to threaten to shoot gun-rights activists.
  • Though that does give me a chance to bring up the Recall Hudak Too campaign, to recall another gun-grabbing Colorado state senator.
  • San Francisco magazine ban challanged in court. (Hat tip: Alphecca.)
  • Requiring liability insurance for gun owners appears to be dead for now.
  • World’s first 3D printed metal gun. And they’re in Austin!
  • Meet Monticello, NY Mayor Gordon Jenkins. He’s a member of Mayors Against Illegal Guns. He’s also been arrested for DWI and hitting a cop. Funny how so many people in favor of “gun control” can’t seem to practice self-control.
  • Another dead goblin.
  • Speaking of dead goblins: Armed homeowner gets the drop on intruder by pretending to be deaf and blind. Only problem with the story is that some details don’t match up: “The intruder lowered his weapon for a moment — long enough for Carlson to grab his own loaded Glock 9mm handgun.” Then: “‘I’ve never had my revolver out of my pocket in 50-some odd years,’ Carlson said by phone Friday evening.” To the best of my knowledge, Glock doesn’t make any revolvers, much less a 9mm. (There are 9mm revolvers, but they’re not particularly common.) Possibly the owner was speaking with colloquial inaccuracy, or was misquoted.
  • In Pierce County, Washington, an armed homeowner killed an intruder who drove his car through a metal gate, then broke into his house. Not exactly the perfect stealthy crime…
  • “Drunk Florida Man Tries to Use Taco as ID After His Car Catches Fire.”
  • Uh…noted without comment:

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    Posted in Austin, Crime, Guns, video | No Comments »

    ObamaCare LinkSwarm for November 19, 2013

    November 19th, 2013

    I actually forgot to add a bunch of ObamaCare links to yesterday’s LinkSwarm, so here they are along with some of newer vintage. Every day, the disaster get’s worse for Democrats (and the nation). It’s like a Hindenburg that never stops exploding.

  • More now think Obama bungled ObamaCare (63%) than now think Bush bungled Iraq (44%), or even at the Iraq war’s nadir of unpopularity (57%)
  • Why ObamaCare is on life-support.
  • How unpopular is #ObamaCare? Try “Fugitive Slave Act in Boston in 1858” unpopular.
  • Speaking of unpopular, Obama’s ratings are off the chart bad. (Hat tip: Moe Lane.)
  • It took Obama to turn the American public libertarian. “Majority in U.S. Say Healthcare Not Gov’t Responsibility”.
  • Ace explains the difference between the Upton and Landrieu bills.
  • D.C. insurance commissioner fired 24 hours after questioning ObamaCare “fix.” (Also via Ace.)
  • The New Republic develops a case of the vapors over ObamaCare dooming big government.
  • Does Obama’s latest “ObamaCare means what I say it means” open him up for a Supreme Court challenge?
  • Number of successful #ObamaCare enrollees in NC: 1. Wait, they haven’t paid yet. 0.
  • Not even Obama is saying the ObamaCare website will be fixed by the December 1st deadline. Now it will be “improved”. I guess they’re changing the clip-art…

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    Posted in Crime, Democrats, Guns, ObamaCare | No Comments »

    LinkSwarm for November 18, 2013

    November 18th, 2013

    Some links to start your week with, ObamaCare still looming as topic one:

  • Chao before Congress: ObamaCare is hunky dory! Chao in internal memo the day before: we are so farked!
  • Over four million Americans have their policies cancelled thanks to ObamaCare.
  • Less than 50,000 sign up for ObamaCare.
  • One of the Democratic Senators running as hard as she can away from ObamaCare is Louisiana’s Mary Landrieu. Too bad she already embraced 100% accountability for it.
  • Race-baiting provided a shield that allowed Obama to fail.
  • And remember that calling Obama’s critics racist was a deliberate strategy by MSM members wanting to boost and protect Obama.
  • Don’t expect Obama to bounce back.
  • So is Politico actually covering the dysfunction within the Obama cabinet, or are they trying to shield a favorite from the stink of failure engulfing same?
  • A look back at Communist genocide in Ukraine.
  • Fitch gives Chicago bonds three steps, yes they gave them a three step cut toward the floor.
  • Michael Totten: “The case for walking away from Egypt and dusting our hands off is sound.”
  • Antisemitism getting worse in Europe says notorious Zionist shill, the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights.
  • Islamists in Nigeria doing what they do best: murder children.
  • Sex crime investigator arrested for sex crime with a minor. That’s really cutting out the middleman…
  • How the holy hell can Amtrack lose one BILLION dollars on food service? You could feed Ethiopia on that!
  • Dwight has an EarthQuest update.
  • Julian Castro to force streetcars down the throats of San Antonians despite votes against them.
  • Another super-genus criminal. Just click the link and look at the pics.

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    Posted in Communism, Crime, Democrats, Foreign Policy, Guns, Jihad, Media Watch, ObamaCare, Texas | No Comments »

    Meet the New Obama Navigators: Same As the Old ACORN

    November 15th, 2013

    James O’Keefe is exposing the “ObamaCare Navigators” the same way he exposed ACORN. Indeed, I strongly suspect they;’re the same people.

    And both those videos were filmed in Texas.

    Once again, both the Obama Administration and the Democratic Party seem remarkably comfortable aiding and abetting the willful defrauding of the American taxpayer. Just as they were for the Pigford scandal:

    It’s obvious that more than just ObamaCare needs to be repealed…

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    Posted in Crime, Obama Scandals, ObamaCare, video, Waste and Fraud, Welfare State | No Comments »

    Another Roundup of the ObamaCare Festival of Fail

    November 14th, 2013

    I keep trying to cover other things, and ObamaCare keeps being such a wondrous disaster for Democrats (and the nation) that I keep getting more than enough links of interest to keep throwingthem up here.

  • You need to read this Jonah Goldberg piece on the schadenfreude of watching ObamaCare fail all the way through. It’s one of those “I can’t start quoting or I’ll have to quote all of it” pieces.
  • The 17 Lies of Obama’s ObamaCare address.
  • “Obama’s Health Care Press Conference Gets Trashed In The Media.” (Via Ace of SpadesHQ.) When you’ve lost the media…
  • Also via Ace: “Obamacare plans will cost MORE ‘in many cases’ even with government subsidies, officials admit for the first time.”
  • This is wondrous on a number of levels:

    When you’ve lost Howard Dean…

  • House Dems “about to go crazy” over how badly they’re getting beaten up on ObamaCare.
  • So why are the blocking Republican attempts to fix the problem? Don’t answer that: They don’t want to fix the problem. Forcing people with insurance to pay for those who don’t isn’t a bug to them, it’s a feature. They just don’t want to get blamed for it.
  • ObamaCare is splitting an American political party, but it’s not Republicans.
  • Remember how the shutdown was going to destroy Republican chances for all time? Yeah, not so much.
  • Ted Cruz on Fox News:

    Obama’s promise that if you liked your health care, you could keep it “was willfully, knowingly false.”

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    Dear Undergraduates: Communism Doesn’t Work In the Real World

    November 13th, 2013

    Because our great nation is constantly producing new crops of naive undergraduates, it occurs to me that it might be time to explicate what is painfully obvious to even the most casual observers outside the self-delusional circles of college bull sessions, academic Marxists and Occupy Wall Street. Namely:

  • Communism does not work.
  • Communism has never worked at any point in the past.
  • Communism will never work at any point in the future as long as human beings are involved.
  • Attempts to implement communism in the real world inevitably lead to failure, misery, and death. (Indeed, some 100 million deaths.)

    • The theory of communism goes something like this:

    Communism + Imagination of True Believer = Magical Working Utopia

    You know what tiny piece of evidence refutes this theory? It’s called “The 20th Century.”

    The actual practice of communism works more like this:

    Theory of Communism + Human Beings = Totalitarianism

    Don’t place trust in human beings. Human beings are not reliable things.

    When capitalism falls short of the platonic libertarian ideal, the result is Switzerland.

    When communism falls short of the wondrous utopia existing in true believers’ heads, the result is Pol Pot’s Cambodia.

    These two failure modes are not identical.

    Capitalism

    Communism

    The persistent belief that communism can work is sort of like the “No True Scotsman” fallacy, only worse. At least you can find Scotsmen that actually fit the definition. The “No True Communism” fallacy substitutes an idealized successful communist state that only exists in people’s heads for dozens of catastrophic real-world examples.

    No dictatorship of the proletariat is possible, because the heady violence of revolution always brings the strongest and most ruthless revolutionaries to the top of the new social order. And these are the precise individuals who entrench and extend their power by means of purging their potential rivals (see also: purge of the Mensheviks), suppression of dissenting opinions (see: Kronstadt rebellion) and establishment of a ruling elite nomenklatura with personal loyalty to the dictatorial leader.

    (Hint: If you didn’t know the words Menshevik, Kronstadt rebellion and nomenklatura before you stumbled on this page, you shouldn’t be arguing about communism over the Internet. Actually, the last nine words of that preceding sentence probably apply universally as well…)

    Thinking communism might work in the 21st century is like thinking that this time, spraying gasoline over it will finally put out that fire. If a surgical procedure is inevitably 100% fatal to the person being operated on, doctors stop performing it. And no, the magical cash free utopia some time in the distant past you have vague anecdotal evidence of doesn’t count.

    You can no more separate communism from totalitarianism that you can separate your own shadow from your body. The two always go together.

    Give it up.

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    Posted in Communism, video | 1 Comment »

    Abbott Comes Out For Stronger Privacy Laws, Open Carry, Property Rights to Your Own DNA

    November 12th, 2013

    Texas Attorney General and 2014 Gubernatorial candidate Greg Abbott unveiled a number of “We the People” policy initiatives last night at the Northeast Tarrant Tea Party geared toward strengthening the rights of individuals against the power of the state. I was on a teleconference with Abbott Sunday in which he previewed the policies to bloggers with the caveat we’d wait until after the speech to talk about them.

    The in-depth document is here.

    Taken individually, some may seem like welcome, small-ball approaches to protecting individuals from various avenues of government overreach. Taken together, they constitute an interesting, possibly far-reaching template for guaranteeing individual rights, and give Abbott a serious claim to being not only a small government conservative, but one favoring individual rights over the convenience of big business as well.

    The brief overview of Abbott’s proposals:

    1. Recognize a property right in one’s own DNA.
    2. Make state agencies, before selling database information, acquire the consent of any individual whose data is to be released.
    3. Prohibit data resale and anonymous purchasing by third parties.
    4. Prohibit the use of cross-referencing techniques to identify individuals whose data is used as a larger set of information in an online database.
    5. Require disclosure by all legislators, statewide elected officials, and gubernatorial appointees of any contract, subcontract, or paid relationship with a public entity, including the state and political subdivisions, held by those individuals or their spouses. Violation of this requirement would be a Class A Misdemeanor.
    6. Prohibit legislators from voting on legislation from which they may financially benefit by closing loopholes in the Texas Government Code, and providing options for both criminal and civil suit to ensure the enforcement of these provisions.
    7. Prohibit the use of tax dollars for the purpose of engaging a registered lobbyist to lobby on the behalf of a school district or the board or association thereof.
    8. Prohibit legislators and statewide elected officials who are licensed by the State Bar of Texas from earning referral fees or receiving any benefit from legal referral. Violation of this requirement would be a Class A Misdemeanor.
    9. Amend the Texas Election Code to require quarterly reporting of campaign financial data by legislators, statewide elected officials, and political action committees.
    10. Within the last 30 days before an election, impose a requirement that no funds received from a single person or entity above $5,000 may be expended by a campaign or political action committee until those funds have been reported to the Texas Ethics Commission and posted on the campaign or political action committee website.
    11. Allow voters in counties and municipalities the option to repeal red light camera ordinances and operations by voter-initiated referendum.
    12. Allow CHL holders to openly carry handguns.
    13. Allow CHL holders to carry weapons on campus at institutions of higher education, subject to appropriate limits, at the option of the boards of regents of public institutions of higher education, and the internal decision-making of private institutions of higher education.
    14. Texas should prohibit the state government from enacting a “healthcare exchange” under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA).
      ​

    15. Pass a state law providing that state resources shall not be expended and state personnel shall not be employed in enforcing or implementing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

    No Republican is going to object to the anti-ObamaCare plank.

    I predict that the red light camera plank will be profoundly popular across party lines.

    The Open Carry plank is a bold Second Amendment statement on Abbott’s part, considering he’s not facing any serious primary opposition. It might also lure Wendy Davis into pumping up the volume on her opposition to gun control, which will no doubt endear her to no Texas outside he far left-wing base.

    Abbott’s plank on property rights to your own DNA is the plank with the last immediate effect and possibly the most profound long-term consequences.

    This is just a few preliminary impressions. I want to give the document another going-over and contemplate the implications.

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    Posted in Elections, Guns, ObamaCare, Texas | No Comments »

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