Headlines

Bernie breaks out of the pack

Iran’s foreign minister blames US and Saudi Arabia for rising tensions in the Gulf

Locust plague reaches China after wreaking havoc across Africa ...

Dershowitz shock claim: Obama requested FBI investigation on behalf of Soros

Trump attends wedding of Stephen Miller

Coronavirus could impact 5 million companies worldwide, new research shows

Campaigns warned of chaos ahead of Nevada caucuses ...

NASCAR fans cheer loudly as Air Force 1 touches down at Daytona

NIH official confirms 40 Americans on cruise ship have coronavirus

General Motors is retreating from Australia, New Zealand and Thailand

Dems weigh whether to pursue new investigations on Trump ...

Dick Morris: Dem party could split if Bloomberg uses super delegates to win

Headlines

White House intervenes in General Motors strike

Pelosi tells Cramer: Dems are hopeful they’re on ‘path to yes’ on Trump’s North American trade deal

New York Fed steps into market to move interest rates ...

Week two: More empty NFL seats

Cokie Roberts, longtime political journalist, dies at 75

Oil drops 5% on report Saudi oil output to return to normal faster than initially anticipated

USA sues Snowden over new memoir ...

Week two: More empty NFL seats

Pentagon puts breaks on 3 border barrier projects because of cost

Blackstone’s Schwarzman: China’s economic ‘miracle’ came at the expense of US and the West

NYC says 1 million kids can skip school for climate strike!

... U.S. carbon emissions at lowest level since 1992

Headlines

Moderate Democrats warn Pelosi of impeachment obsession

Apple is becoming a camera company

Iran says ready for war with USA after attack allegations ...

New old hysteria: NYT tries to destroy Kavanaugh again

Tony Blair: All Brits are sick of Brexit

UAW calls a strike against General Motors for first time since financial crisis

White House expected to reveal gun control legislation this week ...

Mitt Romney says he’s not planning to endorse Trump in 2020

David Cameron: Boris Johnson didn’t believe in Brexit

Kamala Harris and Julian Castro call for impeachment of Brett Kavanaugh

Idle mines portend dark days for US coal ...

New leftist Italian gov’t ‘invites’ migrants in ...

Headlines

Trump threatens to shut down the border if Mexico doesn't remove the migrants

'Corporate greed at its worst' Ohio official slam GM's move out of an area Trump pledged to revive

President Trump on govt climate warning: 'I don't believe it'

Illegal immigration under Trump on track to hit highest level in a decade

6 months in: Europe's 'privacy revolution' favors Google, Facebook

Elon Musk should just admit it when his companies are in trouble -- supporters would love hum more

Aging America: Old will outnumber children first time in HISTORY ...

Report: Jerome Corsi rejects plea deal, plans to sue Mueller

White House lacks lawyers to deal with empowered Democrats

President Trump: General Motors better get back in Ohio soon

Ocasio-Cortez  compares caravan to Jews fleeing holocaust ...

Hispanic babies aborted in U.S. outnumber caravan migrants 7 to 1

Headlines

'That was not the deal': McCarthy, Ryan renege on immigration vow

Trump turns up the heat on trade: 'Tariffs are the greatest!'

Israel downs Syrian warplane ...

Gallup: Trump hits his highest approval ever

Will Trump pull a North Korea on Iran?

General Motors jumps into peer-to-peer car sharing

The fires of Athens ... Raging inferno ..'Biblical disaster' ...

... Rand Paul: We shouldn't reveal secrets to people who call our president 'treasonous'

When public transportation infrastructure earns a D-, the economy suffers

Iran threatens 'countermeasures' if the US blocks its oil exports

Long, slow, painful death of the NY Daily News ...

Toronto shooting suspect identifies as Faisal Hussain

The Bug's Bug

I have a certain empathy for what Volkswagen did in order to get around the stringent nitrogen oxide emission regulations in the United States (mostly inspired by California where it was a causative of the once-choking smog). In 2005, the engineers at VW concluded that there was no possible way that they could meet these emission standards within the cost and time constraints that they then faced ... so they took the low road and developed a software override that made it appear that their diesel beetles passed this nitrogen oxide  test ... see: Earthlink News.

Don't get me wrong ... I am not encouraging such civil disobedience, but, then again, if our obsessive tree-huggers in government impose regulations that are beyond the limits of the then-current science, should they not expect such shenanigans as Volkswagen tried? And it's not like this VW nitrogen oxide misfeasance was like General Motors' malfeasance with its ignition switches which actually killed people. The evidence for this car's level of nitrogen oxide pollution causing serious short-term health problems seems quite tenuous. And in the long-term we all get felled by who knows what ... perhaps some other stupid government jack-booted regulation.

Total Recall

Do-good legislators all too often get ahead of the applied science ... possibly for personal financial gain? The bureaucratic bozos here in Massachusetts have recently decreed that any new home or re-construction requires a house-full of hard-wired interconnected smoke/carbon monoxide alarms. This means that if one goes off ... for whatever reason ... they all go off. Now I don't know if many of you have been woken up in the middle of the night with an ear-splitting FIRE! FIRE!, but our household has experienced it twice in the last three months ... and once during the day about five months ago. Of course the fire department is called and they find nothing irregular ... and you ... feeling like a real put-upon doofus ... have to remove all the suspected smoke detectors until you can figure out what really went wrong.

In our case the manufacturer, Kidde, first sent us two replacement detectors free of charge ... one of which then was the culprit in our most recent bout of sleeplessness. We now are awaiting the second round of free fixes. This replacement cycle also means that you are substantially without full fire-alarm coverage for some period of time ... unnerving to say the least.

Searching for solutions on the Internet, it appears our situation is not uncommon and is equally frustrating for quite a few new-construction homeowners. Talking to Kidde's customer service today, I was asked a number of questions by a skeptical agent and was then required to insert the battery so that she could hear the alarm go off. I was also told that small spiders or dust could upset the delicate mechanisms inside the detectors (made in China) and that they should be vacuumed or blown-out at least once a month. This is quite an inconvenience for a house with over ten smoke alarms. And what happens to those poor schlubs that have some detectors twenty feet up on vaulted ceilings? I think that a justified remedy would be for our Massachusetts state legislators to be assigned the task of doing this for us ... because they passed this silly law without any idea of the true consequences.

One last point, I have talked to our local fire department and they are, at the moment, unwilling to take the lead in fixing this issue ... either through technology, education, or pressure on the legislators and/or manufacturers. To me, this is feeling more and more like that famous General Motors ignition-switch recall that never happened ... until much serious damage and gnashing of teeth had already occurred. I think Kidde ... and possibly other makers ... need to step up and fix this problem before their liabilities soar out of sight.

Mo-or-Less-Town

Mitt Romney's campaign prediction has come true.  Detroit, Michigan has declared bankruptcy ... the largest city to ever do so in the United States (see: Detroit News Story).  What a shame! I've only been to Detroit once or twice ... to visit the General Motors headquarters ... so I have not seen the central-city decay there cause by decades of irresponsible fiscal management. But there might be plenty of pain to go around once the courts have divvied up the few remaining assets.

Yes, pensioners there may suffer but, I suspect that the Obama administration will find a sub rosa way of easing their pain.  (There is something called the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation which will probably dump tons of taxpayers money into this financial chasm ... see: Wikipedia Entry.  Yes, this quasi-governmental company is privately-funded now ... but it is running such a huge deficit that we all know that taxpayers will eventually be forced to close this gap.)  The other real sufferers will more likely be all the IRA owners around the country who either are directly or indirectly invested in Detroit municipal bonds.  They, like the previous investors in General Motors debt, will take it in the shorts.

And many other major mismanaged cities around the country are going to find their municipal bond financing costs go up ... possibly dramatically.  So we see that Detroit's pain will likely be shared by all of us ... even though we had no hand in the corruption and fiscal naivete that caused this catastrophe.

I do have a simple suggestion that might allow Detroit to make lemonade out of the bushel of lemons that it now has on hand (a thought I also had for the South Bronx when it was in rampant decay.)  I think that tens if not hundreds of blocks of contiguous abandoned homes and businesses in downtown Detroit should be bulldozed and a gigantic verdant municipal park should be created ... as a centerpiece of an eventually revitalized city.  It might even get Mitt Romney to donate the millions of dollars it will cost ... then name it for his father, George.

Afterward: For another interesting take on Detroit, see: The Diplomad Blog.

GuM

I have written skeptically about the future of General Motors in the past … see: Government Motors.  Now we see that the U.S. taxpayers are about to take a $10 billion haircut on their General Motors bailout … whereas the United Auto Workers (UAW) will make out like the bandits that they truly are … see: Detroit News Story.

Actually, if it were not for the popularity of GM products in China (a baffling development, see: Bloomberg Story), there would be a considerably larger gum-up of taxpayer accounts.  To put things in perspective, the 1979 government bailout loan to Chrysler under Lee Iaccoca totaled $1.5 billion … which was repaid in full … see:  Washington Times Story.

I still strongly believe that, at some point, the fact that the UAW is part of the management structure at GM will eventually spell its downfall.  It was the short-sighted concessions that GM management gave to its unions in days past that spelled its previous financial collapse.  And, I predict, future labor contracts will be even more tainted by this current union self-dealing.  It’s inevitable.

2016

The Presidential election is over and Barack Obama has won.  So, what does this mean for the United States over the next four years?  Let me offer a few of my own personal prognostications:

- Iran will have 20+ nuclear weapons. The Unites States (with Israel’s reluctant agreement) will institute a policy of “containment” relative to this threat … much like we did with the USSR during the cold war. Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Egypt will either have nukes or be well on their way toward same.

- Joe Biden will take a shot at getting the Democrat nomination for President. This nation’s main-stream media will kill his chances by implying that he is non compos mentis. The Democrat nod will go either to Rahm Emanuel, Chris Christie, or Bill Clinton.

- Two new Supreme Court justices will be confirmed (replacing two other liberal justices), namely Hillary Clinton (with a new hairdo) and Eric Holder.

- The Republicans will nominate an Hispanic for President … and a woman (other than Sarah Palin) for Vice President.

- The U.S. national debt will have topped $20 trillion despite numerous income tax rate increases and all the new taxes imposed under Obamacare.

- The rate of government spending increases will continue apace ... contrary to the early 2013 agreement fashioned under the fiscal-cliff threat.

- Fox News (on cable) will have far outpaced any network news program in terms of audience size and ratings.

- The expansion of Obamacare policies and edicts will have forced all health-care insurance companies out of business.

- An illegal-immigrant amnesty program will have been instituted in 2013. Illegal immigration will commensurately expand dramatically.

- Our nation’s entitlement programs (Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, Food Stamps, etc.) will not have been reformed.

- The real national unemployment rate will remain stubbornly high ... independent of the reporting-process manipulation at the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

- Two new industries will have been nationalized by the Obama regime – the Airline industry and the Health-care Insurance industry (see above).

- General Motors will receive another government bailout of $40 billion +. As a result, Ford Motor will be in an untenable competitive position and may be also forced to take a government bailout.


Sooo ... once again, elections do have consequences ... a lesson still unlearned by the naive U.S. electorate.

Government Motors

President Obama has attacked Mitt Romney for his saying that General Motors (GM) should have gone through the normal bankruptcy process and, if this were to have happened Obama claims, this country would have lost hundreds of thousand jobs. I've got a news update for The Barry ... GM did go bankrupt (see: GM Chapter 11 Reorganization) and tens of thousand jobs were indeed lost both at the company itself and at the hundreds of GM dealerships that were disenfranchised. The difference is that this bankruptcy was not arbitrated by the courts who best know how bankruptcies work. It was the autocratic Obama administration that decided most of the terms of this bankruptcy while, at the same time, throwing 50 billion dollars into this once great (but geriatric) company. Here are the details of the bankruptcy filings from Wikipedia:

The purchase was supported by $50 billion in U.S. Treasury loans, giving the U.S. government a 60.8% stake. The Queen of Canada, in right of both Canada and Ontario, holds 11.7% and the United Auto Workers, through its health-care trust (VEBA), holds a further 17.5%. The remaining 10% is held by unsecured creditors. On July 10, 2009, GM reported 88,000 U.S. employees, and announced plans to reduce its U.S. workforce to 68,000 by the end of 2009 after filing for bankruptcy.

Now this is just part of this sad story … a great American company becoming a piglet sucking on the government’s teat. To see more of these sordid details go to: Michelle Malkin Article and Subprime Auto Loans. The totality of the General Motors reorganization is extremely complex, but suffice it to say that the shedding of something like $90 billion of liabilities from its balance sheet is bound to make its financial health look much better than in times past. Yet still, the new General Motors stock is down 30% from it offering price of $33. Clearly sophisticated investors are not taken in by the Democrat political hype. Since I am of the opinion that any company that is majority owned by the government (U.S. and Canada) and its employees (the UAW) cannot survive for an extended period, I suggest that you think twice before you buy a Government Motors auto with a long warrantee.

Unfortunately, the Democrat demagoguery that the auto bailout offers Obama probably works for him over the short term. While Romney’s critique of this reorganization process, although likely correct, does not buy him many votes in Ohio and Michigan.

Money Laundering

The U.S. federal deficit in 2008 (G.W. Bush’s last year in office) was $407 billion (see Bush's Last Deficit). This includes substantial spending ($246 billion) to stop our slide into recession. This year, 2011, the federal deficit is projected at $1.65 trillion … over four times as large! And this year’s deficit does not include the 2009's Stimulus Bill spending, is after the 2008/2009 TARP spending, and includes the spending wind-down on the IRAQ war. The question is why?

I think the unfortunate answer is that the Obama administration has done lots of squirrely things … often extra-legal things that throw government (read “taxpayer”) money at favored groups who, most often turn around and help fill the DNC’s coffers (a sophisticated form of money laundering.) Shall we use here that favored liberal pejorative, "corporate welfare"? (See: Obama's Corporate Welfare) The Democrats have, for decades, decried this supposed corporate favoritism by Republicans. Yet, when they control things, it’s as though the elephant has suddenly morphed into a donkey … only this time it’s not just corporations but now most unions are added to the line of those with their hands out.

Why is it that so little of this payola makes it into most newspaper's front page … or the broadcast network's evening news? Because of this sickening yet predictable media oversight, I will attempt to here list a few of these payoffs that have recently bloated or will bloat our federal spending, devalue the U.S. dollar, and threaten this country with eventual bankruptcy.

$4 billion in current General Motors’ tax breaks: See, GM Tax Breaks

$27+ billion in UAW pension fund bail out: See, UAW Pension Bailout.

Zilch in 2010 federal taxes paid by GE: See, General Electric Largess

$500 million Obama gift to "community organizers": See Get Out The Vote Money

Multi-multi-billion dollars of foreign bank bailouts: See, Bernanke's Secret

$363 billion in the Fannie/Freddie honey pot: See, Fannie/Freddie Bailouts

Over 1000 Obamacare waivers to companies and unions: See, Obamacare Wavers

$3.27 trillion = the true cost of the “job stimulus” program: See,  Job Stimulus Spending

At least $5.5 billion in “green” subsidies: See,  Better Building Initiative

$180 billion of new corporate tax breaks: See, Corporate Tax Breaks

$5 billion of early-retirement health care subsidies under Obamacare: See, Obamacare Subsidies
  
$53 billion of high-speed rail subsidies:  See, High-Speed Rail Subsidies

etc., etc.

If you are not now sick to your stomach, you have not clicked on enough of the above links.  Is it any wonder that Obama expects to raise one billion dollars for his re-election campaign in 2012?  Certainly not ... in fact, I believe he will easily surpass that number ... and buy himself another 4 years of White House festivities, family vacations ... and money laundering.