Why They Hate Our Guts

Here's a headline and the first paragraph from a September 16, 2012, article on the CBS News web site:

Officials: 8 women killed in NATO airstrike

(AP) KABUL, Afghanistan - Afghan officials said a NATO airstrike killed eight women and girls who were out gathering firewood before dawn Sunday in a remote region on the east of the country.
The coalition said it believes only insurgents were hit.

Does anybody need any more reasons why the Afghans--and the Iraqis and the Yemenis and the Somalis and the Pakistanis--hate our guts?

If Obama would issue an executive order calling for an immediate cession of his assasination drone attacks on innocent Muslim men, women and children--including at least two American citizens who were murdered in Yemen with no due process whatsoever--Muslims might be throwing flowers at our embassies instead of Molotov cocktails.

Jagor

Here's How Mitt Got out of Paying His Taxes

In a recent "High and Low Finance" column in the "New York Times" entitled "A Tax Tactic That's Open to Question", Floyd Norris explains exactly how Mitt Romney and other plutocrats like him were able to finangle the law and pay such low taxes--unlike you and me.

It's a technique called "carried interest."

Read more to understand why little guys like you and me can't get away with this.

"The principal means [Romney] used to pay low taxes on his hundreds of millions of dollars in income was the technique known as carried interest, which allows managers of private equity funds [not little guys like you and me--Jagor] to treat most of the fees they receive for running the funds as capital gains rather than ordinary income.

"The technique strikes some — including President Obama — as outrageous, but it is legal under current law. Unless and until the Congress changes the law, Mr. Romney has every right to take advantage of the technique."

But there may be trouble in store for Romney and other plutocrats like him who have getting away with fiscal murder and cheating Uncle Sam. Norris concludes:

"Mr. Romney’s former colleagues in private equity may come to regret his candidacy, whether or not he wins. Few in the public understood this particular maneuver before the Bain reports were disclosed. Now many do. If and when Congress decides to reform the tax law, this area is likely to be a prime target."

Jagor

Romney Trashes "Politics Stops at the Water's Edge" Doctrine

According to an article in The Hill, Wall Street Journal columnist and former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan on Wednesday said Romney struck the wrong note by calling Obama’s response to the deadly attack on American diplomats in Libya “disgraceful.”

“I don’t think in his statement on what happened in Libya last night and in his remarks today I don’t think he did himself any favor.  At a moment of crisis like this, I think it’s kind of a water’s edge moment,” she said during an interview on WSJ Live.

I remember--and I think Peggy Noonan does too--that not so long ago, when elected officials were patriotic, when they paid their fair share of taxes and when they didn't stash their millions in offshore tax havens, the unwritten but universally-acknowledged rule was:

Politics stops at the water's edge.

This policy was first enunciated by Republican Senator Arthur Vandenberg in 1947.

Vandenburg believed--rightly--that American politicians should always present a united front to other countries, despite political disagreements on their own turf. To air these disagreements weakened America’s show of strength.

Clearly, Mitt Romney--with his sleazy attack on the President--has thrown that doctrine into the garbage can.

I think at the same time Mitt Romney threw his chances of winning the election into the garbage can, too.

Jagor

Paper Money and Hyperinflation

Paper currency [i.e. fiat money] always fails any country that adopts it--without exception.  It is true now as it has been since the first paper money was issued by the Song Dynasty of China in the 10th cnetury AD:

The Song Dynasty in China was the first to issue paper money, jiaozi, around the 10th century AD. Although the notes were valued at a certain exchange rate for gold, silver, or silk, conversion was never allowed in practice. The notes were initially to be redeemed after three years' service, to be replaced by new notes for a 3% service charge, but, as more of them were printed without notes being retired, inflation became evident. The government made several attempts to support the paper by demanding taxes partly in currency and making other laws, but the damage had been done, and the notes fell out of favor.

The successive Yuan Dynasty was the first dynasty in China to use paper currency as the predominant circulating medium. The founder of the Yuan Dynasty, Kublai Khan, issued paper money known as Chao in his reign. The original notes during the Yuan Dynasty were restricted in area and duration as in the Song Dynasty.

However, in the later course of the dynasty, facing massive shortages of specie to fund their ruling in China, the Yuan Dynasty began printing paper money without restrictions on duration. This eventually caused hyperinflation. By 1455, in an effort to rein in economic expansion and end hyperinflation, the new Ming Dynasty ended the use of paper money.
Source; Fiat Money

Sound familiar?  All you need to do is change a few dates and replace a few names with "Alan Grenspan" and "Ben Shalom Bernancke" and the text would pretty accurately describe the dollar.

Then let's look at America's first attempt at paper money, Continental Currency, issued in 1775:
American colonists issued paper currency for the Continental Congress to finance the Revolutionary War. The notes were backed by the "anticipation" of tax revenues. Without solid backing and easily counterfeited, the notes quickly became devalued, giving rise to the phrase "Not worth a Continenteal."

The French were not far behind, issuing their paper assignats in the 1790's.  The idea was sound: the revolutionary government had confiscated all Church lands and would issue certificates worth no more than the total value of that real estate. Brilliant--paper money that was actually backed with more than promises!  But before long the revolutionaries began to run the printing presses 24/7 and the assignats rapidly hyperinflated into worthlessness.

The whole sorry saga is documented in a fascinating treatise that I had the good luck to read in high school. Its title is Fiat Money Inflation in France by Andrew Dixon White.  Read a summary of it.

The worst example of paper money failing a country in recent times was the Zimbabwean hyperinflation. In June 2008 the rate of price growth was 11.2 million percent per year and the country was issuing banknotes in the denomination of one hundred trillion dollars!

Source: Hyperinflation in Zimbabwe.

So, insofar as the U.S. dollar--or the euro or the Swiss franc or any other fiat money--is concerned, it's not a question of if the death knell will toll, but when it will toll.  And when it tolls, it will toll for thee...and me...

Jagor

Dinesh d'Souza: A Vicious, Mendacious Fascist

A friend of mine saw the anti-Obama propaganda film "2016: Obama's America" and wrote me the following:  "At the end of the movie...the 800 or so attendees [gave the film] a 10 minute standing ovation."

I looked up Dinesh d'Souza on the Wikipedia and found this: 

At the conclusion of a September, 2010, commentary article in Forbes about President Barack Obama titled "How Obama Thinks", D'Souza wrote: "...[O]ur President is trapped in his father's time machine. Incredibly, the U.S. is being ruled according to the dreams of a Luo tribesman of the 1950s. This philandering, inebriated African socialist, who raged against the world for denying him the realization of hisanticolonial ambitions, is now setting the nation's agenda through the reincarnation of his dreams in his son. The son makes it happen, but he candidly admits he is only living out his father's dream. The invisible father provides the inspiration, and the son dutifully gets the job done. America today is governed by a ghost."

[Not only did progressive publications including Media Matters for America and the Columbia Journalism Review dispute d'Souza's claims regarding Barack Obama, but] "Conservative publications also criticized D'Souza's theory. Daniel Larison of The American Conservative states, "Dinesh D’Souza has authored what may possibly be the most ridiculous piece of Obama analysis yet written. ... All in all, D’Souza’s article reads like a bad conspiracy theory." Andrew Ferguson of The Weekly Standard writes, "D’Souza always sees absence of evidence as evidence of something or other. ... There is, indeed, a name for the beliefs that motivate President Obama, but it’s not anticolonialism; it’s not even socialism. It’s liberalism! Source: Dinesh d'Souza

Here's the response I sent to my friend:

Your newest hero, Dinesh d'Souza, appears to be is a sophist that even conservatives dismiss as a ridiculous conspiracy theorist. My own analysis of de Souza is that he's a vicious, mendacious fascist in the pure tradition of Hitler--and I choose my words carefully. Both Hitler and d'Souza were crackpots, yet they both attracted the cheering masses of adoring True Believers who allowed themselves to be brainwashed by a litany of lies and fantastical conspiracy theories. [Hitler: blame the Jews; d'Souza: blame the "philandering, inebriated Luo tribesman."]

All that was mising from the showing of the film was for the 800 attendes to chant a vigorious Orwellian "Two Minute Hate" to accompany their "standing ovation."

Go back and reread George Orwell [1984] and Eric Hoffer [The True Believer]: Dinesh d'Souza is between the lines of every page.

Jagor