Bloodthirsty Liberal

Portugal, Ireland, Greece, Spain

Much has been written about the EU debt bomb, cleverly called PIGS.

The inevitable “sovereign debt panic” finally struck last week, causing severe one-day drops in stock markets from New York to London to Toronto on Thursday.

Ostensibly, the epicentre of the crisis is Greece, in danger of defaulting on its debt payments to worldwide holders of its government bonds, or sovereign debt.

But the fear about state defaults quickly spread to Spain, Portugal and Ireland, fiscal train wrecks that together with Greece now go by the unfortunate acronym PIGS.

Even then, the scope of a potential second global financial crisis so soon after the credit crisis of 2008-09 goes far beyond the euro zone, the 16 nations sharing a common currency, the euro.

Last week’s dramatics could have been far worse. And they may yet manifest themselves in an ugly fashion in weeks to come if the euro-zone countries don’t rescue what Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou described last week as “the weakest link in the euro zone.”

Greece accounts for just 3 per cent of the euro-zone economy. The crisis in the cradle of Western civilization serves merely as proxy for government over-indebtedness everywhere.

Only a few months ago, a Dubai on the edge of default had to be bailed out by oil-rich neighbour Abu Dhabi. [hard to keep these guys straight, isn’t it? - Aggie] A debt-strapped Argentina recently tried and failed to pay debts by raiding its central-bank treasury.

Greece’s debt-to-GDP ratio is an eye-popping 95 per cent. But then, the U.S. isn’t far behind at 84 per cent. (The Canadian ratio is estimated at 35.5 per cent in the current fiscal year.) Greece’s deficit-to-GDP ratio is an alarming 13 per cent. But then, Britain isn’t far behind at 12.6 per cent.

And so on. Any thoughts? Maybe this is the End Of The Western World that the Iranians are drooling about? Then again, maybe it is just the usual nonsense.

Elections have consequences:

The U.S. looms largest. President Barack Obama just tabled a budget that projects a doubling in America’s national debt, to $28 trillion (U.S.), by decade’s end. That’s twice the size of the U.S. economy.

- Aggie

Young Americans and minorities put Obama into the White House. How will that decision affect their futures?

In a federal budget filled with mind-boggling statistics, two numbers stand out as particularly stunning, for the way they may change American politics and American power.

According to the 2011 budget, the projected deficit in the coming year is nearly 11 percent of the country’s entire economic output.

The first is the projected deficit in the coming year, nearly 11 percent of the country’s entire economic output. That is not unprecedented: During the Civil War, World War I and World War II, the United States ran soaring deficits, but usually with the expectation that they would come back down once peace was restored and war spending abated.

But the second number, buried deeper in the budget’s projections, is the one that really commands attention: By President Obama’s own optimistic projections, American deficits will not return to what are widely considered sustainable levels over the next 10 years. In fact, in 2019 and 2020 — years after Mr. Obama has left the political scene, even if he serves two terms — they start rising again sharply, to more than 5 percent of gross domestic product. His budget draws a picture of a nation that like many American homeowners simply cannot get above water.

For Mr. Obama and his successors, the effect of those projections is clear: Unless miraculous growth, or miraculous political compromises, creates some unforeseen change over the next decade, there is virtually no room for new domestic initiatives for Mr. Obama or his successors. Beyond that lies the possibility that the United States could begin to suffer the same disease that has afflicted Japan over the past decade. As debt grew more rapidly than income, that country’s influence around the world eroded.

Or, as Mr. Obama’s chief economic adviser, Lawrence H. Summers, used to ask before he entered government a year ago, “How long can the world’s biggest borrower remain the world’s biggest power?”

This is so sad.

The Chinese leadership, which is lending much of the money to finance the American government’s spending, and which asked pointed questions about Mr. Obama’s budget when members visited Washington last summer, says it thinks the long-term answer to Mr. Summers’s question is self-evident. The Europeans will also tell you that this is a big worry about the next decade.

The NY Times sticks a on the topic by the end of the article, claiming that things will turn around for unknown reasons.

Stein’s law has been recited in many different versions. But all have a common theme: If a trend cannot continue, it will stop.

What does that mean? It means: Things will get better. For unknown reasons.

Elections have consequences, but the young people that chose this path have also chosen it for their own children. Middle class American students have grown up in a world of almost endless possibility. They have traveled and studied to their heart’s content. They assumed that they would then go on to fulfilling careers. But most of that is based on a different economy than this President will bequeath his successors and the rest of us.

- Aggie

WE are in trouble…

At your computer, reading jokes.

Pictures here and here

Or maybe we’ll just post them here:

No nation does a better job of turning lemons into lemonade than Israel. Constant terror attacks have taught them how to do emergency medicine, arguably better than any nation in the world. We all benefit from this.

- Aggie

This has got to be a first

h/t Carol

He also has endorsements from the police, and I believe the firefighters. That isn’t surprising. This is.

America’s chickens are coming home to roost.

- Aggie

She doesn’t sound happy.

If Massachusetts was the Department of Homeland Security, the special election to fill Ted Kennedy’s senate seat would have the Democrats about four-fifths of the way up the terror alert code.

Green: Everything is fine, and who cares if we spelled “Massachusetts” wrong in one of the ads.

Blue: Don’t forget to vote. It’s next Tuesday. You’ll remember to vote, right?

Yellow: Bill Clinton is coming for a rally. John Kerry has got to show up, too. I don’t care if he just had hip-replacement surgery.

Orange: You know, it really doesn’t matter whether you win by a million votes or one vote, just so long as you win.

The campaign has not hit red yet, although, for the Democrats, the whole world has begun to look orange with dark tints. Like a decaying pumpkin. It cannot be a good sign when the Massachusetts secretary of state has to deny rumors that he plans to stall certification of the election results until after the health care bill is passed.

She includes a special rant about the rules in the Senate. If we spin the dial backwards, if this was first term Bush administration and something that she and her buddies didn’t like was about to be shoved down her throat, would she so hostile to our system of checks and balances? I kind of doubt it.

Another funny thing about Liberals and their selective ability to retain data - why is it that the columnist can know and report the fact that Scott Brown posed in a Cosmo ad as a 22 year old student, but can’t let her readers know that Martha Coakley kept an innocent family, the Amirault family, in prison in Massachusetts for years - Mother, son, daughter. The mother died shortly after release; the daughter’s marriage broke up during the decade or so that she was incarcerated; the son, who was held the longest, missed watching his three children grow up. I am going to repeat that: His three children grew up with their dad in jail. Every birthday. Cub scouts, Halloween, Christmas, best friends, pizza, movies, swimming, soccer, band practice, first date, good grades, bad grades… all of it. And everyone knew that they were innocent. Everyone.

Another annoying Martha trait: Despite putting innocents into prison on trumped-up child abuse prosecutions, she intentionally overlooks actual child abuse by certain Catholic priests. And more children were molested as a result of her need to win favor with certain powerful groups in the Commonwealth.

All of that is beyond the fact that many people don’t want higher taxes, health care “reform”, etc. Oh, another thing that the NY Times overlooked: Martha Coakley believes that there are no more terrorists in Afghanistan. Time to pull out. Conveniently, she said this on a televised debate and anyone who wishes to watch it can do so.

- Aggie

It might be Michael Meehan

If you scroll down, you will see both the video and photograph mentioned in this text.

Watch this astonishing video IMMEDIATELY. Send it to every friend in Massachusetts. The guy who gets shoved to the ground and repeatedly pushed is the guy who asked Martha Coakley if she still thinks there aren’t any terrorists in Afghanistan. He’s with The Weekly Standard.

The guy doing the pushing is with the Martha Coakley campaign. He doesn’t identify himself (“I’m work for me,” he says) but he’s almost certainly DNC hack Michael Meehan. If the name sounds familiar, it should. He’s also worked for John Kerry and Mike Dukakis.

Watch the video as he repeatedly pushes the reporter again and again, keeping him away from Coakley. And check out this photo, where Coakley watches it happen.

Here is the article from the Weekly Standard with the offending image and some shots of Meehan in better times

If this is correct, then this thug has been employed by Massachusetts (did I forget an “e”?) Democrats since the 1980’s!

I hate wasting bandwith, but for those that are too lazy to scroll down, I will re-post the original image plus the snapshots of Mr. Meehan.

The Weekly Standard believes that they will be able to confirm this later. There certainly is a strong resemblance.

We also know that Meehan works for Coakley

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee also dispatched Michael Meehan, a media consultant with ties to Massachusetts, to assist the Coakley camp with messaging.

We hear your message loud and clear, dems!

- Aggie

States are failing! We must help!

We didn’t pay attention to the housing bubble. We closed our eyes to warnings that the levees in New Orleans were inadequate. We gave short shrift to reports that bin Laden was determined to attack the U.S. And now we’re all but ignoring the fiscal train wreck that is coming from states with budget crises big enough to boggle the mind.

The states are in the worst fiscal shape since the Depression. The Great Recession has caused state tax revenues to fall off a cliff. Some states — New York and California come quickly to mind — are facing prolonged budget nightmares. Across the country, critical state services are being chopped like firewood. More cuts are coming. Taxes and fees are being raised. Yet the budgets in dozens and dozens of states remain drastically out of balance.

This is an arrow aimed straight at the heart of a robust national recovery. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has pointed out that if you add up the state budget gaps that have recently been plugged (in most cases, temporarily and haphazardly) and those that remain to be dealt with, you’ll likely reach a staggering $350 billion for the 2010 and 2011 fiscal years.

This is not a disaster waiting to happen. It’s under way.

Without substantial new federal help, state cuts that are now merely drastic will become draconian, and hundreds of thousands of additional jobs will be lost. The suffering is already widespread. Some states have laid off or furloughed employees. Tens of thousands of teachers have been let go as cuts have been made to public schools and critically important preschool programs. California has bludgeoned its public higher education system, one of the finest in the world.

I tried to read the rest of it, but my computer screen reverted to: blah, blah, blah, blah,blah, blah, blah, blah,blah, blah, blah, blah,blah…

He probably has some good points. The problem is that the Left sort of blew their wad with the ineffective stimulus, with the frightening plans for our medical system, and with the proposed cap and trade stuff. So I won’t listen to them about anything.

- Aggie

Nefesh B’Nefesh brought over 150 participants together on Ben Yehuda Street for the first ever Jerusalem flash mob in honor of Hanukkah. “Hanukkah Hey Ya!” by Eric Schwartz aka Smooth-E

Did Jimmy Carter apologize for scapegoating Israel?

Jimmy Carter asked the Jewish community for forgiveness for any stigma he may have caused Israel.

In a letter released exclusively to JTA, the former U.S. president sent a seasonal message wishing for peace between Israel and its neighbors, and concluded: “We must recognize Israel’s achievements under difficult circumstances, even as we strive in a positive way to help Israel continue to improve its relations with its Arab populations, but we must not permit criticisms for improvement to stigmatize Israel. As I would have noted at Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, but which is appropriate at any time of the year, I offer an Al Het for any words or deeds of mine that may have done so.”

“Al Het” refers to the Yom Kippur prayer asking God forgiveness for sins committed against Him. In modern Hebrew it refers to any plea for forgiveness.

Carter has angered some U.S. Jews in recent years with writings and statements that place the burden of peacemaking on Israel, that have likened Israel’s settlement policies to apartheid, and that have blamed the pro-Israel lobby for inhibiting an evenhanded U.S. foreign policy.

Abraham Foxman, the Anti-Defamation League’s national director, welcomed the statement, calling it the “beginning of reconciliation.”

“We welcome any statement from a significant individual such as a former president who asks for Al Het,” Foxman said. “To what extent it is an epiphany, time will tell. There certainly is hurt which needs to be repaired.”

I have a hard, hard, hard time believing anything he says, but maybe he has seen the light? That would be astounding since he published yet another anti-Israel screed in one of the major papers within recent memory. At a minimum, I’d like to see him own the words and deeds that caused pain and publicly apologize, take questions regarding how he could possibly have been so wrong-headed for so long, that kind of thing. But, I’m not holding my breath.

- Aggie