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Obama Presidential Library
I was reading an article the other day that showed pictures of the different Presidential Libraries and told how they contain all the pertinent information about the respective presidents. All of their history before their nominations, the campaign papers and memorabilia, all of the papers from their presidency, and so on. A wealth of information about the man and his life both private and public.
Which got me to thinking, what would Barack Hussein Obama's presidential library look like? And what would they archive in it? Just exactly what would the design parameters be? Here's what I came up with:
1) It wouldn't need to be very large because there are no records to archive from before he was president and much of what he does as president is either done in secret or so dumb few will admit to it or essentially artful doubletalk.
2) It would need to be mobile because by the time he is done as president, no city or state will acknowledge that he ever even visited let alone originally came from there.
3) Construction material would need to be easily maintained by minimal staff. Preferably something that could simply be hosed out occasionally and left to air dry.
4) It would be a good idea if it was a dual-use facility so that it could at least get some sort of appropriate use.
So here is what seems the appropriate answer for all of the above:
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Hell Yes.
 | Would you wear this t-shirt?dcgere | August 29, 2011 at 5:37 pm | Tags: Osama bin Laden | Categories: 9/11, Culture War, Islam, Terrorism | URL: http://wp.me/pKuKY-92L |
Osama bin Loggin' T-Shirt is "Controversial"
Via Seattle PI: A T-shirt featuring a musclebound logger and Osama bin Laden is proving controversial in Hoquiam, where the annual Loggers Playday festival is underway. The shirt, sold by Hoquiam businesses to promote the community event, features a shirtless, flag-tattooed lumberjack glowering over a log-tied bin Laden. If that doesn't make the message quite clear enough, the logger's red baseball cap features the letters "USA."
The Loggers Playday festival happens on Sept. 10, just one day before the 10-year anniversary of the terrorist attacks of 2001. Event organizers said they wanted to commemorate the anniversary and mark the death of bin Laden earlier this year.
Not everyone thinks the shirt is such a good idea. "I find your Osama shirt offensive," one critic wrote on the event's Facebook page. "It breeds racism and hate. Your shirt sends a poor message to your youth, and to the entire country."
Others don't seem to mind. "Don't like it don't buy it," another Facebook fan wrote. "If you like it buy one. Freedom works even if some folks hate it. Think some of you folks should find something actually useful to whine about, like 20 percent unemployment on the harbor. Loggers have nothing to be happy about the past 15 years or so."
The Facebook group's administrators are asking comments be directed to an email address and warning that "personal attacks against others on this page will not be tolerated and those comments will be removed."
But deleting comments has also proved controversial. From one critic on Facebook: "I find it so hard to believe that in the midst of an online community's debate circling around freedoms that the admin had the gall to delete not just any but nearly all of the comments about a controversial topic."
How is this shirt "breeding racism"? This is making fun of a terrorist that was the mastermind behind 9/11. Talk about offensive...
DCG
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The Broken-Window Fallacy
Monday, August 29, 2011
by Robert P. Murphy
Free-market economists have triumphantly cited the broken-window fallacy whenever someone opines that a destructive act, whether a natural disaster or man-made catastrophe, is paradoxically "good for the economy." The reference is to a classic lesson given by the economist Frédéric Bastiat in 1850.
Especially after Paul Krugman went on CNN and discussed the virtues of faking an alien invasion, libertarians were having a field day with the "broken-window" charge. The so-called progressive Left have been pushing back, claiming that Krugman's critics don't really understand what Bastiat was saying.
In the present article, we'll review Bastiat's original lesson and apply it to modern-day disputes over the possible benefits of destructive events.
Bastiat's Fable
Let's quote extensively from Bastiat's opening example in his classic work, That Which Is Seen, and That Which Is Not Seen:
- Have you ever witnessed the anger of the good shopkeeper, James B., when his careless son happened to break a square of glass? If you have been present at such a scene, you will most assuredly bear witness to the fact, that every one of the spectators, were there even thirty of them, by common consent apparently, offered the unfortunate owner this invariable consolation: "It is an ill wind that blows nobody good. Everybody must live, and what would become of the glaziers if panes of glass were never broken?"
- Now, this form of condolence contains an entire theory, which it will be well to show up in this simple case, seeing that it is precisely the same as that which, unhappily, regulates the greater part of our economical institutions.
- Suppose it cost six francs to repair the damage, and you say that the accident brings six francs to the glazier's trade that it encourages that trade to the amount of six francs I grant it; I have not a word to say against it; you reason justly. The glazier comes, performs his task, receives his six francs, rubs his hands, and, in his heart, blesses the careless child. All this is that which is seen.
- But if, on the other hand, you come to the conclusion, as is too often the case, that it is a good thing to break windows, that it causes money to circulate, and that the encouragement of industry in general will be the result of it, you will oblige me to call out, "Stop there! Your theory is confined to that which is seen; it takes no account of that which is not seen."
- It is not seen that as our shopkeeper has spent six francs upon one thing, he cannot spend them upon another. It is not seen that if he had not had a window to replace, he would, perhaps, have replaced his old shoes, or added another book to his library. In short, he would have employed his six francs in some way which this accident has prevented.
- Let us take a view of industry in general, as affected by this circumstance. The window being broken, the glazier's trade is encouraged to the amount of six francs: this is that which is seen.
- If the window had not been broken, the shoemaker's trade (or some other) would have been encouraged to the amount of six francs: this is that which is not seen.
- And if that which is not seen is taken into consideration, because it is a negative fact, as well as that which is seen, because it is a positive fact, it will be understood that neither industry in general, nor the sum total of national labor, is affected, whether windows are broken or not.
- Now, this form of condolence contains an entire theory, which it will be well to show up in this simple case, seeing that it is precisely the same as that which, unhappily, regulates the greater part of our economical institutions.
- an assumption about what we now call "crowding out" or, what is the same thing, denying that there are "idle resources", and
- the distinction between wealth and employment. Below we'll handle each in turn.
Bastiat Assumes "Full Employment," i.e., No "Idle Resources"
In reaching his conclusion that the hooligan boy has conferred no economic benefit on the community, Bastiat first establishes that there is no net stimulus to employment or income. It's true, the glazier's income is higher than it otherwise would have been. This is what is seen. However, Bastiat argues that this undeniable boon to the glazier is perfectly offset by a reduction in income to somebody else in the community, who is now earning less because of the hooligan.
Specifically, Bastiat assumes that the shopkeeper would have spent his six francs somehow, and that the boy has merely forced him to spend the money on repairing the broken window. It is wrong to view the employment of the glazier as a net gain to the economy, because the shopkeeper (in the absence of the broken window) might have spent that six francs getting his shoes repaired, for example. In that case, the glazier's gain is exactly counterbalanced by the cobbler's loss.
Thus, if we assume that the workers in the community would have been "fully employed" had the boy not broken the window, then it's clear that the boy isn't "creating jobs" or "boosting total income." All he's done is to give more work/income to the glazier, at the expense of work/income for some other people in the community.
Wealth versus Income/Employment
At this point, one might think that the whole episode is a wash. Sure, the boy's vandalism doesn't help, but how does it hurt things? Is Bastiat implicitly arguing that it's better to give business to the cobbler, rather than the glazier? Where does he get off making that judgment?
The answer involves the distinction between wealth versus income or employment. Just because "total income," or "total employment," or "total GDP" hasn't been changed by the boy's action it's just that the composition has been rearranged nonetheless the hooligan lad has objectively made the community poorer.
Specifically, by destroying the window, the boy has made it necessary for people in the community to devote their scarce labor time (and other materials) in order to merely restore the amount of tangible wealth back to its original state. Yet if the boy had not broken the window, then the labor and other materials would have been used (again, assuming full employment in both scenarios) in order to make the community's tangible wealth grow.
In summary, Bastiat is arguing that the boy hasn't stimulated total employment or income at all; he has merely shifted it from one sector to another. But when all is said and done, the community will have less wealth following the boy's vandalism than it otherwise would have had. Specifically, the gains and losses in the rest of the community wash out -- the glaziers will have more wealth while the cobbler has less -- but the shopkeeper is definitely poorer. Rather than having a window and a new pair of shoes, now he will only have a window.
Ironically, it has taken several paragraphs of economic analysis to come full circle back to what common sense told us all along: When a hooligan boy breaks a shopkeeper's window (and the shopkeeper is the one who has to pay for replacing it), the shopkeeper is made poorer by the amount it costs to replace it. The boy's action is destructive; it has made the community poorer; he should not be congratulated in any sense. Duh.
The Keynesians Flirt with Praising Disaster
Especially in light of the recent hoax conducted at Paul Krugman's expense, we should tread carefully here. In fairness, let me be clear: Paul Krugman has never actually pined for an alien invasion, nor has he said that he wants another world war.
However, he has indeed written things that understandably gave his critics that impression. This is why so many libertarians were going bonkers with references to the broken-window fallacy. Here are the two most damning quotes from Krugman (in addition to the alien invasion analysis discussed earlier):
- Life and business go on; so I guess we have to talk about the economic impact of the Fukushima nightmare.
- One set of impacts involves disruption of supply chains…
- But what I'm hearing a lot is worries about financial impacts. Japan will clearly have to spend hundreds of billions (dollars, not yen) on damage control and recovery, even as revenue falls thanks to the direct economic impact. So Japan will become less of a capital exporter, maybe even a capital importer, for a while. And this, so the story goes, will lead to soaring interest rates.
- What's going on? The story about rising interest rates would be right in normal times. But we're not in normal times: we're still in a liquidity trap, with short-term rates up against the zero lower bound. …
- So government borrowing doesn't have to come at the expense of private investment, driving up interest rates; instead, it just mobilizes some of those desired but unrealized savings.
- And yes, this does mean that the nuclear catastrophe could end up being expansionary, if not for Japan then at least for the world as a whole. If this sounds crazy, well, liquidity-trap economics is like that remember, World War II ended the Great Depression. (Paul Krugman, March 15, 2011; emphasis added)
- One set of impacts involves disruption of supply chains…
- It seems almost in bad taste to talk about dollars and cents after an act of mass murder. Nonetheless, we must ask about the economic aftershocks from Tuesday's horror.
- These aftershocks need not be major. Ghastly as it may seem to say this, the terror attack like the original day of infamy, which brought an end to the Great Depression could even do some economic good ….
- About the direct economic impact: The nation's productive base has not been seriously damaged. Our economy is so huge that the scenes of destruction, awesome as they are, are only a pinprick…. Nobody has a dollar figure for the damage yet, but I would be surprised if the loss is more than 0.1 percent of U.S. wealth comparable to the material effects of a major earthquake or hurricane.
- The wild card here is confidence …. For a few weeks horrified Americans may be in no mood to buy anything but necessities. But once the shock has passed it's hard to believe that consumer spending will be much affected.
- Will investors flee stocks and corporate bonds for safer assets? Such a reaction wouldn't make much sense after all, terrorists are not going to blow up the S.&P. 500 …. By the time the markets do reopen, the worst panic will probably be behind us.
- So the direct economic impact of the attacks will probably not be that bad. And there will, potentially, be two favorable effects.
- First, the driving force behind the economic slowdown has been a plunge in business investment. Now, all of a sudden, we need some new office buildings. As I've already indicated, the destruction isn't big compared with the economy, but rebuilding will generate at least some increase in business spending.
- Second, the attack opens the door to some sensible recession-fighting measures. For the last few weeks there has been a heated debate among liberals over whether to advocate the classic Keynesian response to economic slowdown, a temporary burst of public spending. … Now it seems that we will indeed get a quick burst of public spending, however tragic the reasons. (Paul Krugman, September 14, 2001; emphasis added)
- These aftershocks need not be major. Ghastly as it may seem to say this, the terror attack like the original day of infamy, which brought an end to the Great Depression could even do some economic good ….
What's the Point of Employment?
As I said earlier, the Keynesians lately have been launching a counterattack on the charge that they are committing the broken-window fallacy. One of their responses is to claim that the conservative/libertarian critics are ignoring the distinction between wealth and employment, and that they are unwittingly assuming that there is full employment (i.e., that there are no "idle resources").
Sympathetic onlookers have jumped into the debate, claiming that Bastiat could have been wrong. After all, suppose a hurricane came along and struck a community that initially had a large number of unemployed construction workers. Who would deny that the hurricane might (under the right circumstances) actually lead to more employment and a higher "gross domestic product" as it is currently measured?
At this stage of the argument, I think there are two main answers. In the first place, we have to inquire why are there so many "idle resources" lying around? If it turns out that destructive government and central-bank policies are to blame and not a sudden unwillingness for people to "spend enough" -- then forced expenditures (due to a natural disaster or terrorist attack) won't actually fix the labor market. Mysteriously, the economy will suddenly become "worse than we realized," so that even in light of the new spending, unemployment is still too high. (This is what happened with the Obama stimulus package.)
Second, we can take the critique on frontally. Suppose it really is the case that in the absence of a hurricane (terrorist strike, tsunami, alien invasion, etc.), that people in a community would work fewer hours, and that measured GDP would be lower. Does this mean that there is some "silver lining" to the disaster that might at least partially offset the undeniable loss of wealth?
For example, does it possibly make sense to say, "Sure, the aliens came and blew up a few buildings, and forced us to use up some of our cruise missiles and a lot of jet fuel in repelling them, but at least they stimulated our depressed economy; so we have to add up the loss in wealth on the one hand, and balance it against the gain in economic activity on the other, to see if overall the aliens were a net benefit"?
The standard free-market position on this question is no, it doesn't make sense to talk like this. The goal of economic activity is to produce consumption goods and services. Work is a necessary evil, not an end in itself. As Henry Hazlitt said in a similar context,
- It is no trick to employ everybody, even (or especially) in the most primitive economy. Full employment very full employment; long, weary, back-breaking employment is characteristic of precisely the nations that are most retarded industrially.
The same principle operates on a communal level, when it comes to hurricanes, terrorist strikes, and alien invasions. The only difference is that specific individuals might actually benefit -- yet the community as a whole is still poorer. For example, if an alien spaceship blows up a (deserted) factory and then leaves, it's possible that certain people (such as construction workers and their suppliers) will, on net, benefit. They will have gladly given up their leisure time in exchange for the wages they receive to rebuild the factory.
However, there are other people in the community who are clearly the losers. Not only are they "out" the wealth of their factory but they must then pay enough out of their remaining wealth to induce the construction workers and other people to rebuild it.
When reckoning costs and benefits on a societal level, the fact that hundreds of workers have to give up hours of their time, and that owners of scarce shingles, bricks, concrete, etc., have to give up some of their property, is a cost of the alien attack. Those are not benefits.
It's difficult to see this, because the people involved view it as an "increase in demand" for their services and products. The construction workers are happy to report to the site everyday at 8 a.m. rather than sleeping in, because now they "have a job."
Yet when we push the analysis further and ask why it's good to have a job, the answer isn't that they want to stay fit. The answer, of course, is that they get a paycheck with which they can buy other goods and services.
Conclusion
We have come full circle. The Keynesians assume that a market economy can get stuck in a "liquidity trap" in which mutually advantageous gains from trade are not occurring. The possible benefit of alien invasions and terrorist strikes, in this view, comes from their ability to jumpstart the private sector out of its funk.
Yet for those economists who reject such a notion and instead think that markets can use resources efficiently when they are left alone, there is no upside at all to destructive events. Even though we can imagine situations in which these events confer benefits to particular groups, on net society is always made poorer, because the necessity of applying more labor power just to return to the status quo in terms of tangible wealth is a cost of the episode, not a benefit. Other things equal, we are better off when people have to work less to achieve a given level of wealth or flow of consumption.
Robert Murphy is an adjunct scholar of the Mises Institute, where he teaches at the Mises Academy. He runs the blog Free Advice and is the author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Capitalism, the Study Guide to "Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market," the "Human Action" Study Guide, The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Great Depression and the New Deal, and his newest book, Lessons for the Young Economist.
http://mises.org/daily/5593/The-BrokenWindow-Fallacy
 | Senator, Obama Told Me Pass Amnesty or I'll Leave the Borders OpenHarold | August 29, 2011 at 6:11 am | Categories: Corruption, Criminal Activity, Executive, Illegal Aliens, Legislative, Mexican Government, Politics, Propaganda, Sovereignty, States Rights, U.S. Constitution | URL: http://wp.me/pmtmV-6tP |
Ben Johnson, Floyd Reports 8/28/2011 On June 18, 2010, Arizona Republican Senator Jon Kyl told the audience at a North Phoenix Tea Party town hall meeting that during a private, one-on-one meeting with President Obama in the Oval Office, the President told him, regarding securing the southern border with Mexico, "The problem is, . . [...]
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The world's 5 richest terrorist groups
August 29, 2011
http://moneyjihad.wordpress.com/2011/08/29/the-worlds-5-richest-terrorist-groups/
The world's 5 richest terrorist groups
August 29, 2011
In terms of their annual operating budgets to the best of our knowledge at this time, the Taliban, Hezbollah, the FARC, Hamas, and al-Shabaab may be the wealthiest terrorist organizations in the world today. Al Qaeda trails, but if all its affiliated organizations are included, Al Qaeda remains in the upper echelon of the world's terror budgets.
1. Taliban
Taliban nets between $70 and $400 million from drug activity (of which at least $15 to $25 million is collected as ushr, Islam's 10 percent tax on harvests) annually. In addition, the Taliban collects an estimated $150 to $200 million per year in zakat and sadaqa donations, mostly from the Arab nations of the Persian Gulf. These figures exclude extensive Taliban revenues from ransoms, extortion, and improperly diverted money from Western aid, U.N. contributions, defense contractors, and the Afghanistan government itself. My own estimate would place that subtotal of an additional $50 million per year.
Splitting the difference for the estimated range of revenues, that would bring the Taliban's total budget to an estimate of approximately $560 million annually.
2. Hezbollah
Rachel Ehrenfeld's Funding Evil documented that Hezbollah's annual operating budget is between $200 and $500 million. Iran provides at least $120 million of that, with the rest coming from khums, drug trafficking, and other criminal activity.
3. FARC
Columbia's Marxist guerrillas, the FARC, enjoy annual revenues that range from estimates of $80 to $350 million.
4. Hamas
For 2010, Gaza's budget adopted by Hamas was $540 million, but that's a larger amount than Hamas's own budget. The Council on Foreign Relations lists Hamas's budget as $70 million. However, the recent news that Iran is cutting or ending its aid to Hamas which would substantially diminish Hamas's treasury. Hamas receives significant funding through charitable front groups and from Saudi Arabia.
5. Al Shabaab
A recent report from the U.N. revealed that al-Shabaab's revenues are between $70 and $100 million per year, propelling it into the top tier of global jihadist funding.
DISHONORABLE MENTIONS
Al Qaeda
The CIA estimated that before 9/11, al Qaeda's annual budget was $30 million, which was almost exclusively from "donations" (zakat and sadaqa). By almost all accounts, al Qaeda's financial situation has deteriorated since then. Other estimates place their budget from $16 to $50 million, which still puts al Qaeda itself toward the bottom of the list. However, there are indications that revenue collections of al Qaeda offshoots such as Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), and al-Shabaab are flush with funds. With AQIM in particular, the evidence shows that funds are being transferred from the regional organization back to the parent al Qaeda organization itself.
Lashkar-e-Taiba
Reuters calls Lashkar-e-Taiba (whose revenues include hawala, the Gulf, and Pakistan's ISI) "one of the largest and best-funded Islamic militant organizations" in South Asia.
It bears repeating that much of the revenue listed above, with the exception of the FARC's drug money, originate from traditional Islamic revenue sources such as zakat, sadaqa, khums, and ushr, rather than from "secular," criminal activity.
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 | North American Super-Nation Advancessage_brush | August 29, 2011 at 12:16 pm | Tags: illegal drugs, Mexico, North American Union | Categories: 2012 Election, Bible, Constitution, Crazy Politicians, Culture War, Economy, God, Idiot Law Makers, Idiots In General, Insanity, Inspirational, Liberals, Media, New World Order, Religion, Tea Party, The Powers That Be, United Nations, United States | URL: http://wp.me/pKuKY-92n |
This article from the New York Times shows the government's real intentions for not enforcing the borders. Why should they - if they want the economies of the United States, Mexico and Canada to merge?
U.S. Widens Role in Mexican Fight
By MARK MAZZETTI and GINGER THOMPSON
Published: August 25, 2011
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration has expanded its role in Mexico's fight against organized crime by allowing the Mexican police to stage cross-border drug raids from inside the United States, according to senior administration and military officials.
Mexican commandos have discreetly traveled to the United States, assembled at designated areas and dispatched helicopter missions back across the border aimed at suspected drug traffickers. The Drug Enforcement Administration provides logistical support on the American side of the border, officials said, arranging staging areas and sharing intelligence that helps guide Mexico's decisions about targets and tactics.
Officials said these so-called boomerang operations were intended to evade the surveillance — and corrupting influences — of the criminal organizations that closely monitor the movements of security forces inside Mexico. And they said the efforts were meant to provide settings with tight security for American and Mexican law enforcement officers to collaborate in their pursuit of criminals who operate on both sides of the border.
Although the operations remain rare, they are part of a broadening American campaign aimed at blunting the power of Mexican cartels that have built criminal networks spanning the world and have started a wave of violence in Mexico that has left more than 35,000 people dead.
Many aspects of the campaign remain secret, because of legal and political sensitivities. But in recent months, details have begun to emerge, revealing efforts that would have been unthinkable five years ago. Mexico's president, Felipe Calderón, who was elected in 2006, has broken with his country's historic suspicion of the United States and has enlisted Washington's help in defeating the cartels, a central priority for his government.
American Predator and Global Hawk drones now fly deep over Mexico to capture video of drug production facilities and smuggling routes. Manned American aircraft fly over Mexican targets to eavesdrop on cellphone communications. And the D.E.A. has set up an intelligence outpost — staffed by Central Intelligence Agency operatives and retired American military personnel — on a Mexican military base.
"There has always been a willingness and desire on the part of the United States to play more of a role in Mexico's efforts," said Eric L. Olson, an expert on Mexico at the Woodrow Wilson Center. "But there have been some groundbreaking developments on the Mexican side where we're seeing officials who are willing to take some risks, even political risks, by working closely with the United States to carry out very sensitive missions."
Still, the cooperation remains a source of political tensions, especially in Mexico where the political classes have been leery of the United States dating from the Mexican-American War of 1846. Recent disclosures about the expanding United States' role in the country's main national security efforts have set off a storm of angry assertions that Mr. Calderón has put his own political interests ahead of Mexican sovereignty. Mr. Calderón's political party faces an election next year that is viewed in part as a referendum on his decision to roll out this campaign against drug traffickers.
Deputy Secretary of State William J. Burns walked into that storm during a visit to Mexico this month and strongly defended the partnership the two governments had developed.
"I'll simply repeat that there are clear limits to our role," Mr. Burns said. "Our role is not to conduct operations. It is not to engage in law enforcement activities. That is the role of the Mexican authorities. And that's the way it should be."
Officials said Mexico and the United States began discussing the possibility of cross-border missions two years ago, when Mexico's crime wave hit the important industrial corridor between Monterrey and Nuevo Laredo. To avoid being detected, the Mexican police traveled to the United States in plain clothes on commercial flights, two military officials said. Later the officers were transported back to Mexico on Mexican aircraft, which dropped the agents at or near their targets.
"The cartels don't expect Mexican police coming from the U.S.," said one senior military official. None of the officials interviewed about the boomerang operations would speak publicly about them, and refused to provide details about where they were conducted or what criminal organizations had been singled out.
They said that the operations had been carried out only a couple of times in the last 18 months, and that they had not resulted in any significant arrests.
The officials insisted that the Pentagon is not involved in the cross-border operations, and that no Americans take part in drug raids on Mexican territory.
"These are not joint operations," said one senior administration official. "They are self-contained Mexican operations where staging areas were provided by the United States."
Former American law enforcement officials who were once posted in Mexico described the boomerang operations as a new take on an old strategy that was briefly used in the late 1990s, when the D.E.A. helped Mexico crack down on the Tijuana Cartel.
To avoid the risks of the cartel being tipped off to police movements by lookouts or police officials themselves, the former officers said, the D.E.A. arranged for specially vetted Mexican police to stage operations out of Camp Pendleton in San Diego. The Mexican officers were not given the names of the targets of their operations until they were securely sequestered on the base. And they were not given the logistical details of the mission until shortly before it was under way.
"They were a kind of rapid-reaction force," said one former senior D.E.A. official. "It was an effective strategy at the time."
Another former D.E.A. official said that the older operations resulted in the arrests of a handful of midlevel cartel leaders. But, he said, it was ended in 2000 when cartel leaders struck back by kidnapping, torturing and killing a counternarcotics official in the Mexican attorney general's office, along with two fellow drug agents.
In recent months, Mexico agreed to post a team of D.E.A. agents, C.I.A. operatives and retired American military officials on a Mexican military base to help conduct intelligence operations, bolstering the work of a similar "fusion cell" already in Mexico City.
Meanwhile the Pentagon is steadily overhauling the parts of the military responsible for the drug fight, paying particular attention to some lessons of nearly a decade of counterterrorism operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. At Northern Command — the military's Colorado Springs headquarters responsible for North American operations — several top officers with years of experience in fighting Al Qaeda and affiliated groups are poring over intelligence about Mexican drug networks.
One officer said, "The military is trying to take what it did in Afghanistan and do the same in Mexico."
That's exactly what some Mexicans are afraid of, said a Mexican political scientist, Denise Dresser, who is an expert on that country's relations with the United States.
"I'm not necessarily opposed to greater American involvement," Ms. Dresser said. "But if that's the way the Mexican government wants to go, it needs to come clean about it. Just look at what we learned from Iraq. Secrecy led to malfeasance. It led to corrupt contracting. It led to torture. It led to instability. And who knows when those problems will be resolved."
Eric Schmitt contributed reporting, and Barclay Walsh contributed research.
This is more important than most conservatives realize. Only a handful of politicos recognize what is going on. I know for sure that Tom Tancredo, Michelle Bachman and Ron Paul are onto it. We see before our very eyes, the fulfillment of Daniel's prophecy of the successive world empires -
41 And whereas thou sawest the feet and toes, part of potters' clay, and part of iron, the kingdom shall be divided; but there shall be in it of the strength of the iron, forasmuch as thou sawest the iron mixed with miry clay. 42 And as the toes of the feet were part of iron, and part of clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong, and partly broken. 43 And whereas thou sawest iron mixed with miry clay, they shall mingle themselves with the seed of men: but they shall not cleave one to another, even as iron is not mixed with clay. 44 And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed: and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand for ever. Daniel 2: 41-44
Ten toes = ten global super nations
sage
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 | Obama's E.P.A. rule will shut down 8% of U.S. Power Generation...equivalent to wiping out all power generation for Florida and MississippiScotty Starnes | August 29, 2011 at 12:18 PM | Tags: coal-fired power plants, E.P.A., electricity industry, Environmental Protection Agency, Lisa Jackson | Categories: Political Issues | URL: http://wp.me/pvnFC-5L2 |
Well, Obama did say his energy policy would cause energy prices toskyrocket. This looks to be the only promise Obama will keep before 2012.
From WSJ:
Since everyone has a suggestion or three about what President Obama can do to get the economy cooking again, here's one of ours: Immediately suspend the Environmental Protection Agency's bid to reorganize the U.S. electricity industry, and impose a moratorium on EPA rules at least until hiring and investment rebound for an extended period.
The EPA is currently pushing an unprecedented rewrite of air-pollution rules in an attempt to shut down a large portion of the coal-fired power fleet. Though these regulations are among the most expensive in the agency's history, none were demanded by the late Pelosi Congress. They're all the result of purely bureaucratic discretion under the Clean Air Act, last revised in 1990.
Well, Obama said he wanted to bankrupt the coal industry and has attempted to do it via his radical appointee, Lisa Jackson, who he put in to lead the E.P.A. attack.
As it happens, those 1990 amendments contain an overlooked proviso that would let Mr. Obama overrule EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson's agenda. With an executive order, he could exempt all power plants "from compliance with any standard or limitation" for two years, or even longer using rolling two-year periods. All he has to declare is "that the technology to implement such standard is not available and that it is in the national security interests of the United States to do so."
Obama will never do this because he wants to bankrupt America in order to bring "fundamental transformation." Stopping his plan isn't an option.
Both criteria are easily met. Most important, the EPA's regulatory cascade is a clear and present danger to the reliability and stability of the U.S. power system and grid. The spree affects plants that provide 40% of U.S. baseload capacity in the U.S., and almost half of U.S. net generation. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC, which is charged with ensuring the integrity of the power supply, reported this month in a letter to the Senate that 81 gigawatts of generating capacity is "very likely" or "likely" to be subtracted by 2018 amid coal plant retirements and downgrades.
That's about 8% of all U.S. generating capacity. Merely losing 56 gigawatts—a midrange scenario in line with FERC and industry estimates—is the equivalent of wiping out all power generation for Florida and Mississippi.
In practice, this will mean blackouts and rolling brownouts, as well as spiking rates for consumers. If a foreign power or terrorists wiped out 8% of U.S. capacity, such as through a cyber attack, it would rightly be considered an act of war. The EPA is in effect undermining the national security concept of "critical infrastructure"—assets essential to the functioning of society and the economy that Mr. Obama has an obligation to protect.
He would also be well within the law to declare that the EPA's rules are technologically infeasible. Later this year, for example, the EPA will release regulations requiring utilities to further limit mercury and other hazardous pollutants. Full compliance will be required by 2015, merely 36 months after the final rule is public, and plants that can't be upgraded in time will be required to shut down.
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