Enjoy a Monday LinkSwarm to get your week started:
Police conduct anti-terrorism raids in Germany, Belgium and France. Could this be the start of a real effort to halt Islamic extremism in Europe? I rather doubt it. Too many leftist parties across Europe need Muslim votes, and European elites still seem implacably hostile to the Euroskeptic parties pushing for an end to unlimited Muslim immigration.
Old and Busted: Never again! The New Hotness: More dead Jews? Meh.
The late Anwar al-Awlaki was good at two things: drawing up plans to kill innocent people in the name of Islam, and banging skanky whores.
The Prime Minister of France: “I refuse to use this term ‘Islamophobia,’ because those who use this word are trying to invalidate any criticism at all of Islamist ideology.” (Hat tip: JihadWatch.)
“There is a new anti-Semitism in France,” he told me. “We have the old anti-Semitism, and I’m obviously not downplaying it, that comes from the extreme right, but this new anti-Semitism comes from the difficult neighborhoods, from immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa, who have turned anger about Gaza into something very dangerous. Israel and Palestine are just a pretext. There is something far more profound taking place now.”
In discussing the attacks on French synagogues and Jewish-owned businesses this summer, during the Gaza war, he said, “It is legitimate to criticize the politics of Israel. This criticism exists in Israel itself. But this is not what we are talking about in France. This is radical criticism of the very existence of Israel, which is anti-Semitic. There is an incontestable link between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. Behind anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism.”
Michael Totten quotes the late Christopher Hitchens. on the jihadist opinion of the current controversy: “Carving up grandfathers and granddaughters with an axe on New Year’s Eve can be okay if it’s done to protect the reputation of a seventh century Arabian man who heard voices.”
A majority of the GOP gains since then have come from the Democrats’ near-total collapse in one set of districts: the largely blue-collar places in which the white share of the population exceeds the national average, and the portion of whites with at least a four-year college degree is less that the national average. While Republicans held a 20-seat lead in the districts that fit that description in the 111th Congress, the party has swelled that advantage to a crushing 125 seats today. That 105-seat expansion of the GOP margin in these districts by itself accounts for about three-quarters of the 136-seat swing from the Democrats’ 77-seat majority in 2009 to the 59-seat majority Republicans enjoy in the Congress convening now.
There’s been a lot of talk of how low oil prices are screwing Russia, but Venezuela is, if anything, more screwed thanks to the Magic Power of Socialism™:
U.S. currency is vital to Venezuela, which imports as much as 80% of what it consumes; 96% of its exports are petroleum products…In effect, the one-third decline in the price of oil means that the state oil company must either raise or divert enough production because Venezuela effectively owes China 67 million barrels of oil, roughly 27 million more than it did before, for this loan alone. And there are billions of dollars in other loans to consider.
And the outlook for the immediate future is equally grim:
Venezuela’s economy is expected to contract in 2014 and 2015, and even though it’s already recognized as the 14th least competitive economy in the world (according to the World Economic Forum) and the eighth-worst economy for doing business (according to The World Bank), [President Nicolas] Maduro’s laws seem to discourage private investments even more. The new laws reinforce bureaucracy and the difficulty of doing business in the country, particularly in the area of taxes.
“Increasing numbers of low-income Venezuelans are souring on Maduro as they suffer a declining economy, the highest inflation in the Americas, chronic shortages of basic goods and one of the world’s highest murder rates.”
If Venezuela’s economy collapses, they might take Cuba down with them, since the Castro brothers are so heavily dependent on Venezuelan oil subsidies to prop up their own moribund economy.
Compounding Venezuela’s crises is the fact that it’s probably going to default on its bonds. So they’re finally reaching the point in socialism where the run out of other people’s money. Next to that singular problem, U.S. sanctions on government Venezuelan officials for killing protestors are a trivial irritation…
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).
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.
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.”
“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.
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.)
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…
Steyn on the shutdown. “The conventional wisdom of the U.S. media is that Republicans are being grossly irresponsible not just to wave through another couple trillion or so on Washington’s overdraft facility.”
Kent Hance to retire as Texas Tech Chancellor. Hance’s political career is in many ways emblematic of the evolution of Texas politics, starting out as a conservative Democrat, elected to the state Senate in 1974, defeating George W. Bush for a U.S. congressional seat in 1978, played key roll in backing the Kemp-Roth tax cuts in 1981, narrowly losing the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate to Lloyd Doggett (who would then get stomped by Phil Gramm in the general election) in 1984, followed Gramm by switching to the Republican Party in 1985, losing the GOP Gubernatorial nomination to an un-retired Bill Clements in 1986, getting appointed to the Railroad Commission in 1987, winning re-election to it in 1988, and losing to Clayton Williams in the 1990 Republican Gubernatorial primary. He had a long, long career as a bridesmaid…
“This 20 year old has discovered Sex Is Awesome!!! and just wants us all to know that. Yeah Sugar-Tits we sort of know. We’ve been enjoying it for years, but without quite as much Noob Squeeing about it.”
Monty, the guy who does the Daily Doom over at Ace of Spades, is taking a break, which means that I have to do my own damn research step into the breach, so here a roundup of European Debt Crises news:
And the Greeks, in turn, pass “tough spending cuts”. Presumably those “tough cuts” would be the ones reducing the annual budget deficit from 9% to 7.5% of GDP. They’re don’t even require Greece to stop digging, they just want them to dig slower. And even that assumes that such cuts will actually be implemented.
Among the austerity measures were a reduction in the minimum wage, including a 22% cut on the standard minimum monthly wage of 751 euros, and a 32% for those under 25. A good idea and necessary, but once again the sons are paying for the sins of the fathers.
Unions, realizing their role in helping bankrupt Greece, have meekly accepted the cuts. Ha, just kidding. They’re going on strike.
Following the downgrade, the European Central Bank announced that they would stop taking Greek debt as collateral, at least until the new Greek bailout package goes into effect.
Germany is thinking of sending German tax collectors to Athens. I’m sure it’s impossible that Greeks would take this in the wrong way.
Speaking of Germany, their high court has ruled yet again that a parliamentary panel set up to approve action by the euro zone bailout fund is unconstitutional.
Portugal is also digging more slowly, having cut its budget deficit from 5.9% of GDP last year to 4.5% this year. Meanwhile, it’s economy also contracted by 3.3%.
The Finns are in, supporting the Greek bailout to the tune of 2.3 billion Euros.
Ireland is actually allowing its citizens to vote on the European stability treaty. Of course, if they vote no, expect them to have to keep voting until they ratify the result the Eurocrats have already chosen for them.
Seeking Alpha makes the obvious point that you don’t want to hold any of the PIIGS sovereign debt. I would go further and suggest that you don’t want to hold any sovereign debt denominated in Euros…
So who, above all, wants to avoid a Euro default among the PIIGS? Would you believe Goldman Sachs? “At the end of 2011, Goldman Sachs had sold $142.4 billion of single-name swaps, contracts that pay out in the event of a default, on the five countries.” That’s an awful of of incentive to keep the game running until all the rubes taxpayers can be fleeced…
Even big-spending, welfare state cheerleader and all-around leftwing mouthpiece Paul Krugman thinks Greece will have to leave the Euro. So it only took two years for Krugman to come part of the way toward realizing what what Mark Steyn did two years ago. Of course, Krugman’s analysis is short term and technical, whereas Steyn saw the unsustainable nature of the welfare state a long time ago. Do you think Kurgman might want become a bit less of a cheerleader for big government? I wouldn’t hold your breath…
Spain balks at letting their government reduce spending by 4%of GDP. Problem: Their annual budget deficit is 8% of GDP. That’s the problem when you get that far down the hole to serfdom: Even slowing the digging becomes unacceptable, much less stopping…
“Decades of cradle-to-grave socialism, a short work week and long vacation periods for European Union workers have taken a toll on the treasuries of the nation states. The good life lived in Europe without a thought of tomorrow has brought on these days of reckoning. Greece is an example of the limits of a European welfare state.”
What would a real solution to Greece’s problems look like? “They must roll back bureaucracy, free up entrepreneurs and reduce the burden of the welfare state, so that the private sector can begin to grow….Regrettably, this is not the approach that has prevailed so far. Indeed, as things stand a whole host of European Union and European Central Bank policies are pushing things in precisely the opposite direction.”
American liberals love to talk about Northern Europe’s welfare states, but don’t like mentioning Southern Europe. “For all their fascination with Europe, southern Europe doesn’t loom large for the American Left. But France, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Portugal and Greece are more representative of European outcomes than Sweden, Denmark, and Finland, and have equally sized welfare states. Their failure should not be ignored in the American debate.”
Some links of potential interest to tide you over the weekend while I work on a more substantial post.
The 25 most dangerous neighborhoods in America. W. Lake St.
(60612) in Chicago tops the list, with two from Texas: E. Lancaster Ave. (76102, 76111, 76103) in Ft. Worth, and Church St. (77550) in Galveston. Las Vegas weighs in with three of the top 10. Biggest surprise for fans of David Simon: Not a single Baltimore neighborhood makes the list.
Speaking of police chiefs, he also had this follow-up on the city of Bell’s police chief and his $400,000-plus annual pension.
Another firsthand account of the One Nation rally, courtesy of one of Jerry Pournelle’s readers: “The rally was sparsely attended and quite small in comparison to the rally led by Glenn Beck. My wife and I both observed a few things such as the large pile of paper signs on the ground in a walk way right below a green party spokesman haranguing the crowd about being green. We also noticed just how overweight if not obese a lot of these people were. Most of the crowd were union members or supporters of some sort. The rest were 9-11 Truthers, communists, or socialists (well at least that’s what their signs said…). There were many signs saying those in my profession [military] are murderers.”
Golly, I didn’t know that “real America” was so enamored of the hammer and sickle.
No doubt many will say that those openly espousing socialism were a minority among the crowd, which is probably true. But ask yourself this: What would the MSM headlines be if even 1/100th of 1% of attendees at a similar size Tea Party rally showed up in Nazi regalia or carrying white supremacist signs? It would be the top story in just about every media outlet that day. But when actual communists show up at an ostensible liberal/progressive rally, no one blinks an eye. They’re just an accepted part of the landscape.
The phrase “fellow traveler” has been stigmatized to the point that anyone who utters it is automatically considered a far-right wacko. But what phrase should be used for liberals when self-avowed socialists and communists are marching quite literally at your side in every rally?
I’m sure that the average Democratic Party voter has nothing but disdain for communism. However, I’m equally sure that the people working at the heart of many liberal/progressive institutions, the people who stuff envelopes and make hiring decisions, the people at Soros-funded institutions, the people chummy with tenured radicals at Berkley and Yale, the people that fill out Democratic congressional and administrative posts, do not feel the same disdain. To them, the old adage of “No Enemies On The Left” still holds.
Bill Buckley kicked the Birchers out of the conservative movement in 1962. When are liberals going to tell members of CPUSA that they’re no longer welcome at progressive rallies?
You may have heard about how Greece is fuxored thanks to a combination of high taxes, stagnant economy, restrictive job rules, and widespread tax evasion. Indeed, the sins of the Greeks may be enough to bring the Euro crashing down. It may come down to that, or else getting a bailout from an already-resentful Germany.
Somewhat less reported is the fact that the other members of Europe’s PIGS (Portugal, Italy, Greece, Spain) aren’t doing a whole lot better.
Spain now has the highest unemployment rate in the European Union. Nearly 20 percent of working-age Spaniards (or 4.5 million people) were without a job at the beginning of 2010. That compares with an average rate of 10 percent among the 16 countries that use the euro currency.
Spain is also facing an exploding budget deficit. The collapse of the labor market, which has resulted in a steep drop in tax collections, and the Zapatero government’s haphazard (and spendthrift) policy response of increasing unproductive public sector spending skyrocketed the deficit to nearly 12 percent of GDP in 2009 (or five times higher than in 2008).
The combination of negative GDP growth, rising unemployment, and a high deficit has raised concerns about the sustainability of Spain’s finances.
In response to Spain’s economic crises, Zapatero has admitted that his socialist policies were a mistake, and set out a platform for lowering taxes, cutting the budget, an monetary reform.
At this point, I don’t it’s a question of if the Euro will crack, but rather when. Despite Obama’s mismanagement, the basic U.S. economy is still a lot more resilient and flexible than Europe’s. Europe has huge demographic problems combined with an unsustainable welfare state. Combine that with the the anti-democratic elites in Brussels, plus the fact that certain number of nations (the PIGS, certainly, but not limited to them) that are playing fast a loose with the EU’s deficit guidelines, and the chances are good that the Euro will crack sooner rather than later.
And the fallout from that isn’t going to be pretty for the U.S. economy either.