I Was Wrong, I Apologize

For those of you have followed my blog for a while, I started it in May of 2007, I have been suggesting that the Euro was likely to supplant the US as the world's reserve currency.

Well, I missed a couple of things:

• The fact that the Euro was drawn up by a bunch of neoliberal (which means conservative) economists who has been railing against regulation and the welfare state, which, as the past few years have shown to be an unmitigated disaster.
• That the Germans, would be … well … Germans.

Now, I'm inclined to believe that, absent a German exit from the Euro, that the unified currency is doomed, and the EU may be as well.

Unlike my hairier brother,^* I do not think that another war in Europe is inevitable, though I think that an EU breakup has a potential of leading to some shooting, or, more likely, some sort of a "Cold Peace."

^*The Indians call him "Carpet who walks".

It's Jobless Thursday

And the news is actually pretty good, with initial claims falling to the lowest level since February, 381,000, with the less volatile 4-week moving average falling to 393,250, and the continuing and extended claims fell as well.

Definitely good news. If we maintain this for the next 4 weeks or so, I'll believe that this is neither an outlier or an artifact of misused correction factors.
.
Yeah, I'm a glass half full kind of guy

Just When I Thought that I Could Not Get Any More Cynical………

I read this analysis, which makes the very convincing case that Barack Obama does not object to the detention provisions of the defense authorization bill because he supports the rule of law, but because it classifies these detainees as prisoners of war, and so subject to the strictures of the Geneva Conventions:

However, on further reflection I conclude that the Obama regime’s objection to military detention is not rooted in concern for the constitutional rights of American citizens.  The regime objects to military detention because the implication of military detention is that detainees are prisoners of war. As Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin put it:  Should somebody determined “to be a member of an enemy force who has come to this nation or is in this nation to attack us as a member of a foreign enemy, should that person be treated according to the laws of war? The answer is yes.”

Detainees treated according to the laws of war have the protections of the Geneva Conventions. They cannot be tortured. The Obama regime opposes military detention, because detainees would have some rights.  These rights would interfere with the regime’s ability to send detainees to CIA torture prisons overseas.  This is what the Obama regime means when it says that the requirement of military detention denies the regime “flexibility.”

The Bush/Obama regimes have evaded the Geneva Conventions by declaring that detainees are not POWs, but “enemy combatants,” “terrorists,” or some other designation that removes all accountability from the US government for their treatment.

By requiring military detention of the captured, Congress is undoing all the maneuvering that two regimes have accomplished in removing POW status from detainees.
A careful reading of the Obama regime’s objections to military detention supports this conclusion.(See http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/legislative/sap/112/saps1867s_20111117.pdf)


The November 17 letter to the Senate from the Executive Office of the President says that the Obama regime does not want the authority it has under the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), Public Law 107-40, to be codified. Codification is risky, the regime says. “After a decade of settled jurisprudence on detention authority, Congress must be careful not to open a whole new series of legal questions that will distract from our efforts to protect the country.”

In other words, the regime is saying that under AUMF the executive branch has total discretion as to who it detains and how it treats detainees. Moreover, as the executive branch has total discretion, no one can find out what the executive branch is doing, who detainees are, or what is being done to them. Codification brings accountability, and the executive branch does not want accountability.

Those who see hope in Obama’s threatened veto have jumped to conclusions if they think the veto is based on constitutional scruples.

(emphasis original)

Read the White House PDF.  They flat out  say that the reason that they object is because they want more "flexibility" (to torture, etc).

It's not for nothing that I call Obama the "The Worst Constitutional Law Professor Ever".

H/t Washington's Blog.

That's Guilty, Guilty, Guilty, Guilty!!!

This referring to the conviction of "Bad Hair Bob" Erhlich's 2010 gubernatorial campaign manager of attempted vote fraud:

Paul E. Schurick, the 2010 campaign manager for former Maryland governor Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., was convicted Tuesday by a Baltimore jury of four counts stemming from a robocall that prosecutors said was intended to suppress the black vote.

The call, which Schurick acknowledged authorizing, was placed on Election Day to 112,000 voters in Baltimore and Prince George’s County, the state’s two largest majority-African American jurisdictions. Recipients were told by an unidentified woman that they could “relax” because Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) had been successful.

The guilty verdict not only sullied the three-decade career of one of Maryland’s best-known political operatives, it also served as a major embarrassment for Ehrlich, the state’s only Republican governor in a generation.

Although prosecutors have never suggested that Ehrlich approved the calls, he is pushing a new book that draws anecdotes from his four years in Annapolis and contends his failed comeback bid last year was “swamped” by the black vote.

The jury convicted Schurick — who got his start in politics working for Democrats — of trying to influence votes through fraud, failing to identify the source of the call as required by law and two counts of conspiracy to commit those crimes.

Schurick’s defense argued during the week-long trial that he relied on the judgment of a campaign consultant hired to reach out to black voters, who said the calls would make use of “reverse psychology” and motivate potential Ehrlich supporters to go to the polls.

This is where it gets interesting, because now that prosecutors have gotten a conviction, people are going to start thinking about rolling over.

While I think that prosecutors are probably right when they say that, "prosecutors have never suggested that Ehrlich approved the calls," after all, when you break the law, you make sure that the candidate has no direct knowledge of it.

That being said, I think that he had to know that the central pillar of his campaign was suppressing the black vote, and he had to know that, and I'm hoping that this come out at trial.

Obama Sides with the 99%, and Goes After ……… Food Stamp Fraud

No seriously, on the same day that Barack Obama gives a speech declaring his populist cred, we read this story about how his administration is going full Jihad over food stamp fraud.

So we have this:

Laying out a populist argument for his re-election next year, President Obama ventured into the conservative heartland on Tuesday to deliver his most pointed appeal yet for a strong governmental role through tax and regulation to level the economic playing field.

“This country succeeds when everyone gets a fair shot, when everyone does their fair share and when everyone plays by the same rules,” Mr. Obama said in an address that sought to tie his economic differences with Republicans into an overarching message.

Juxtaposed with this:

The nation’s struggling economy and an uptick in major natural disasters in recent months mean more Americans than ever are using federal money to buy food.

More than 46.2 million people received a total of $75.3 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps, in fiscal 2011, according to Agriculture Department statistics released Monday. Officials said participation spiked in the closing days of the fiscal year as Hurricane Irene caused destruction across a dozen East Coast states.

Year-to-year, the program gained more than 6 million new participants and distributed $7 billion in additional funds, officials said.

With more Americans relying on the program, the Obama administration on Tuesday plans to announce new steps to crack down on SNAP fraud amid estimates suggesting as much as $753 million in federal food aid is spent fraudulently each year.

Some "populist".

It's campaign time.  If you want to know who Barack Obama really is, don't look at what he says, look at what he does.

And what he does, while talking about the 99% is that he goes after poor people who might be selling food stamps so that they can buy shoes for their kids, while allowing rich people who did steal trillions skate.

And our alternative will be Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich.

I think that I am writing in Angela Merkel in 2012.

I'm With Amnesty International…

They are calling for George W. Bush's arrest for war crimes while he is doing his foreign tour:

Amnesty International is calling for the arrest of former President George W. Bush while he is traveling overseas in Africa.

The human rights group issued a statement Thursday calling for the governments of Ethiopia, Tanzania or Zambia to take the former president into custody. According to Amnesty, the 43rd president is complicit in torture conducted by the United States during his administration and should be held pending an international investigation.

"International law requires that there be no safe haven for those responsible for torture; Ethiopia, Tanzania and Zambia must seize this opportunity to fulfill their obligations and end the impunity George W. Bush has so far enjoyed," said Amnesty senior legal adviser Matt Pollard in a statement.

Bush is traveling overseas in Africa to raise awareness for HIV/AIDS, cervical and breast cancer across the continent. He participated today via satellite in a Worlds AIDS Day event put on by the ONE Campaign and (RED) where he was joined by President Barack Obama and former President Bill Clinton.

Amnesty commended the philanthropic nature of the president’s trip but said in a statement that does not excuse what they believe are breaches of international law.

Or US law for that matter, but Barack Obama has publicly stated that he intends to cover it all up, which, BTW, does put this under the purview of the ICC.

Let's get his ass into the Hague.

Despicable

Last night, I posted about what I though was a seriously cheeky and inventive way of tweaking the cops at Occupy Melbourne.

People wore tent costumes as a protest on the ban on tents.

What was the police response?

They stripped down a woman to her underwear in public, cutting her clothes off.



There are any number of people who give good justification to be called pigs.

You have, politicians (Newt, I mean you), sports figures (too many to name), reality TV stars (I try not to know their names), actors, musicians, the guy who cut me off in traffic today, overly aggressive telemarketers, etc.

This does not make all of these people pigs, it just makes the pigs who have those jobs pigs.

Well, these, "4 Melbourne City Council officers and 8 Victorian police officers," are pigs.

I would not piss on them if they were on fire.

I hope Karma is real for these folks.