Right again

I called it at the beginning of the year. I said the Federal government would run up $2.3 trillion dollars of debt this year based on simple calculations. The government and the experts stuck with $1.3 trillion, which is still appalling. The other day the number was revealed, $2.1 trillion. Not exact, but I pretty much nailed it. The only reason to point that out is simply to ask, if I'm nearly always right and the "experts" are nearly always wrong, who should you listen to?

Obamacare Frankenstein

OBAMACARE REGULATORY FRANKENSTEIN chart. click on it to see it bigger, but believe me it's not better.

Need I say more? Somewhere in there is your medical care.

Quantitative Easing Explained in funny video

Brilliant economist gets it

Roubini Maps Out Nightmare Scenario of Domino Debt Collapse in Europe

Published: Friday, 19 Nov 2010 | 8:18 AM ET

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By: Ash Bennington
NetNet Writer, Special to CNBC.com

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"We have too much private debt in the case of Ireland," according to Nouriel Roubini.

Robert Harding | Getty Images Dublin, Ireland

But the nub of the crisis is this: "We have decided to socialize the private losses of the banking system. Now you have a huge increase in public debt—going from 7 percent to 100 percent of GDP. Soon it will be 120 percent."

And, turning more broadly to the rest of Europe, "Greece is already at 120 percent."

Roubini believes that further attempts at intervention have only increased the magnitude of the problems with sovereign debt. He says, "Now you have a bunch of super sovereigns— the IMF, the EU, the eurozone—bailing out these sovereigns."

Essentially, the super-sovereigns underwrite sovereign debt—increasing the scale and concentrating the problems.

Roubini characterizes super-sovereign intervention as merely kicking the can down the road.

He says wryly: "There's not going to be anyone coming from Mars or the moon to bail out the IMF or the Eurozone."

But, despite the paper shuffling of debt at the national level—and at the level of supranational entities—reality ultimately intervenes: "So at some point you need restructuring. At some point you need the creditors of the banks to take a hit —otherwise you put all this debt on the balance sheet of government. And then you break the back of government—and then government is insolvent."

And then there is the case of France. "Sarkozy came to power saying 'I'm going to do lots of reform.' He has not done it. Right now, he is weak. He might lose the election. And, therefore, they are going to delay fiscal austerity and reforms."

And that, according to Roubini, is a major problem for the fiscally challenged French.

The bond vigilantes may have woken up first in Greece, Ireland, and Portugal. "But France," Roubini says, "does not look much better than the periphery."

In Roubini's view, the probability of the right steps being taken in France soon is not great. "Politically they are constrained from making reforms." For example, after the French made relatively small changes in their social welfare system—raising the retirement age from 60 to 62 —"You had massive riots in the streets."

And that, in Roubini's view, was just the beginning of the necessary austerity.

"What's going to happen when you do more radical reform? That's an open question in the case of France."

Looking beyond France to the future trajectory of the crisis, Roubini says, "The next one in line is going to be Portugal. "Due to the severity of Portuguese debt problems, Portugal is going to lose market access—and that means they are going to require IMF support as well.

But the real nightmare domino is Spain. Roubini refers to the Spanish debt problems as "the elephant in the room".

"You can try to ring fence Spain. And you can essentially try to provide financing officially to Ireland, Portugal, and Greece for three years. Leave them out of the market. Maybe restructure their debt down the line."

"But if Spain falls off the cliff, there is not enough official money in this envelope of European resources to bail out Spain. Spain is too big to fail on one side—and also too big to be bailed out."

With Spain, the first problem is the size of its public debt: €1 trillion. (Greece, by contrast, has €300 of public debt.) Spain also has €1 trillion in private foreign liabilities.

And for problems of that magnitude, there simply are not enough resources—governmental or super-sovereign—to go around.

So the point is what I have been saying for a year or so: This idiotic plan of governments forcing banks to do high risk loans, then governments taking on the losses, then bigger entities taking on their losses is a dead end. It obviously can't work. It can work for the rest of this year or something, then what? What happens when the EU and IMF are bankrupt, as Roubini asks? Space aliens arrive with money or the entire world goes bankrupt at once?

Airline take over

Just for the record, I am putting this out there right off the bat. We will slowly see that what is happening now is the beginning of the government taking over the entire airline industry and severely restricting air travel. This is their MO. They create the circumstances for a crippling crisis. They sit back and watch it unfold. They swoop in to "fix" it, which ends up looking much worse than the problem.

In this case, they have recently tangled up all the airlines in new regulations that cause them to delay and cancel flights all the time because they are required to. The airlines lose large amounts of money. The TSA at the same time is suddenly required to naked scan or severely grope every person who wants to fly. The invasiveness rapidly escalates as 15 body scanners quickly turns into 5,000 and are absolutely required. Back-of-the-hand frisks become handsy boob and crotch squeezing and hands down the pants and more within two weeks. Immediately polls are done to see if people will start to refuse to fly at all.

After 9/11 airline travel declined by 5% and several major airlines went bankrupt. What do you think full body gropes or naked photos saved in government files will do. I think airlines will start to go under within a couple of months. We can't have that. The government will have to "help." I believe they can drop air travel by at least 10-20% and bankrupt every airline. Obama and the other sleazebags will have seized control of another whole industry.

Global Warming U turn

Borrowed from the UK Daily Mail

It may be that this unabashed high priest of global warming tomfoolery is getting a conscience.

Climategate U-turn as scientist at centre of row admits: There has been no global warming since 1995

By JONATHAN PETRE
Last updated at 5:12 PM on 14th February 2010

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• Data for vital 'hockey stick graph' has gone missing
• There has been no global warming since 1995
• Warming periods have happened before - but NOT due to man-made changes

Data: Professor Phil Jones admitted his record keeping is 'not as good as it should be'

The academic at the centre of the ‘Climategate’ affair, whose raw data is crucial to the theory of climate change, has admitted that he has trouble ‘keeping track’ of the information.

Colleagues say that the reason Professor Phil Jones has refused Freedom of Information requests is that he may have actually lost the relevant papers.

Professor Jones told the BBC yesterday there was truth in the observations of colleagues that he lacked organisational skills, that his office was swamped with piles of paper and that his record keeping is ‘not as good as it should be’.

The data is crucial to the famous ‘hockey stick graph’ used by climate change advocates to support the theory.

Professor Jones also conceded the possibility that the world was warmer in medieval times than now – suggesting global warming may not be a man-made phenomenon.

And he said that for the past 15 years there has been no ‘statistically significant’ warming.

The admissions will be seized on by sceptics as fresh evidence that there are serious flaws at the heart of the science of climate change and the orthodoxy that recent rises in temperature are largely man-made.

Professor Jones has been in the spotlight since he stepped down as director of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit after the leaking of emails that sceptics claim show scientists were manipulating data.

The raw data, collected from hundreds of weather stations around the world and analysed by his unit, has been used for years to bolster efforts by the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to press governments to cut carbon dioxide emissions.

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• MAIL ON SUNDAY COMMENT: The professor's amazing climate change retreat

Following the leak of the emails, Professor Jones has been accused of ‘scientific fraud’ for allegedly deliberately suppressing information and refusing to share vital data with critics.

Discussing the interview, the BBC’s environmental analyst Roger Harrabin said he had spoken to colleagues of Professor Jones who had told him that his strengths included integrity and doggedness but not record-keeping and office tidying.

Mr Harrabin, who conducted the interview for the BBC’s website, said the professor had been collating tens of thousands of pieces of data from around the world to produce a coherent record of temperature change.

That material has been used to produce the ‘hockey stick graph’ which is relatively flat for centuries before rising steeply in recent decades.

According to Mr Harrabin, colleagues of Professor Jones said ‘his office is piled high with paper, fragments from over the years, tens of thousands of pieces of paper, and they suspect what happened was he took in the raw data to a central database and then let the pieces of paper go because he never realised that 20 years later he would be held to account over them’.

Asked by Mr Harrabin about these issues, Professor Jones admitted the lack of organisation in the system had contributed to his reluctance to share data with critics, which he regretted.

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But he denied he had cheated over the data or unfairly influenced the scientific process, and said he still believed recent temperature rises were predominantly man-made.

Asked about whether he lost track of data, Professor Jones said: ‘There is some truth in that. We do have a trail of where the weather stations have come from but it’s probably not as good as it should be.

‘There’s a continual updating of the dataset. Keeping track of everything is difficult. Some countries will do lots of checking on their data then issue improved data, so it can be very difficult. We have improved but we have to improve more.’

He also agreed that there had been two periods which experienced similar warming, from 1910 to 1940 and from 1975 to 1998, but said these could be explained by natural phenomena whereas more recent warming could not.

He further admitted that in the last 15 years there had been no ‘statistically significant’ warming, although he argued this was a blip rather than the long-term trend.

And he said that the debate over whether the world could have been even warmer than now during the medieval period, when there is evidence of high temperatures in northern countries, was far from settled.

Sceptics believe there is strong evidence that the world was warmer between about 800 and 1300 AD than now because of evidence of high temperatures in northern countries.

But climate change advocates have dismissed this as false or only applying to the northern part of the world.

Professor Jones departed from this consensus when he said: ‘There is much debate over whether the Medieval Warm Period was global in extent or not. The MWP is most clearly expressed in parts of North America, the North Atlantic and Europe and parts of Asia.

‘For it to be global in extent, the MWP would need to be seen clearly in more records from the tropical regions and the Southern hemisphere. There are very few palaeoclimatic records for these latter two regions.

‘Of course, if the MWP was shown to be global in extent and as warm or warmer than today, then obviously the late 20th Century warmth would not be unprecedented. On the other hand, if the MWP was global, but was less warm than today, then the current warmth would be unprecedented.’

Sceptics said this was the first time a senior scientist working with the IPCC had admitted to the possibility that the Medieval Warming Period could have been global, and therefore the world could have been hotter then than now.

Professor Jones criticised those who complained he had not shared his data with them, saying they could always collate their own from publicly available material in the US. And he said the climate had not cooled ‘until recently – and then barely at all. The trend is a warming trend’.

Mr Harrabin told Radio 4’s Today programme that, despite the controversies, there still appeared to be no fundamental flaws in the majority scientific view that climate change was largely man-made.

But Dr Benny Pieser, director of the sceptical Global Warming Policy Foundation, said Professor Jones’s ‘excuses’ for his failure to share data were hollow as he had shared it with colleagues and ‘mates’.

He said that until all the data was released, sceptics could not test it to see if it supported the conclusions claimed by climate change advocates.

He added that the professor’s concessions over medieval warming were ‘significant’ because they were his first public admission that the science was not settled

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1250872/Climategate-U-turn-Astonishment-scientist-centre-global-warming-email-row-admits-data-organised.html?ITO=1490#ixzz14k6iF3Yl

Great video: What's wrong in America

Great video. Founder of the Home Depot and someone who really understands what's going on in America. Why is it we have that nitwit in the White House when there's guys like this around?

Heads up: they're coming for your money

"The Obama administration appears to be proceeding with a novel way of financing trillion-dollar budget deficits by forcing IRA and 401(k) holders to buy Treasury bonds by mandating the placement of government-structured annuities in their investment accounts.

The requirement to invest private retirement assets has been cleverly buried within plans to create "automatic IRAs" that would mandate employer groups enroll all employees in 401(k) or IRA plans.

The U.S. Department of Labor released yesterday an agenda for an upcoming joint hearing with the Department of the Treasury scheduled for Sept. 14 and 15 on whether government life-time annuity options funded by U.S. Treasury debt should be required for private retirement accounts, including IRAs and 401(k) plans.

WND reported in January that Assistant Labor Secretary Phyllis C. Borzi and Deputy Assistant Treasury Secretary Mark Iwry are planning to stage a public comment period before implementing regulations that would require private investors to structure IRA and 401(k) accounts into what could amount to a U.S. Treasury debt-backed government annuity.”

“Government wants your 401(k): Hearings set on plan to require Treasuries in 'automatic IRA'”
Jerome R. Corsi, WorldNetDaily, 8/26/10

A slap of truth

From www.biggovernment.com:

You’re a Bigot, Now Vote for Me! The Progressive’s Plan for November.

by Derek Hunter

Are you opposed to Obamacare or illegal immgration? You’re a racist. Are you opposed to gay marriage? You’re a homophobe. Did you oppose Elana Kagan’s appointment to the Supreme Court? You’re a sexist. After less than two years of complete Democrat control of government, there aren’t many Americas progressives haven’t accused of some sort of bigotry for simply having an opinion different from theirs. The politics of “hope” and “change” have devolved into exactly what those espousing them claimed they would end. Is this really Democrat’s plan to win votes in November?

Barack Obama campaigned under the banner of unity and ending the “politics of division.” But that banner was swiftly furled and the true banner of progressive politics began flying over our country. Progressivism leaves no room for debate or disagreement. To paraphrase former President Bush, to progressives you’re either with them or you’re with the enemy.

During the Obamacare debate, opponents were compared to opponents of civil rights legislation. The ethically challenged Congressman from New York, Charlie Rangel, said “The group that were in Washington fighting against the health bill and fighting against the President, [they] looked just like and sounded just like those groups that attacked the civil rights movement in the South.” Left-wing blogs ran with this mantra and agenda-driven media outlets like MSNBC dutifully followed. They still advance the lie that African-American Members of Congress were pelted with racial slurs as they walked to cast their vote, something even the New York Times has acknowledged there is zero evidence of.

The ends justify the means, no matter how sickening and divisive the means.

When a judge in California overturned Proposition 8, a ballot measure that defined marriage as being between one man and one woman which was passed by voters, these self-appointed champions of democracy cheered its undermining. Whatever your opinion on the issue, it was a rather ironic turn for people who use the word “democracy” as though they respect it.

When Elena Kagan was nominated to the Supreme Court without much of a record, opposition to this life-time appointment was called sexist all across the left-wing echo chamber. Blogs were replete with this unfounded charge, with headlines like “Not-So-Subtle Sexism at the Kagan Hearings” from the blog at Ms. Magazine.

The bigotry arrow has become the default weapon in the progressive’s quiver, only it’s lost its sting.

When Arizona passed a state law allowing police to enforce federal law on immigration, progressives cried racism. It couldn’t be that a majority of Arizonans, and Americans, simply support forcing immigrants to enter the country legally – opponents needed to be painted as bigots.

When 9/11 families expressed discomfort with building a Mosque two blocks from where Muslin extremists senselessly murdered their loved ones they were ignored by Progressives. Why? Because attacking them is a losing proposition. So they attacked those who sided with them, many of whom are Republicans, as bigots. They’ve basically ignored Democrats, including Howard Dean and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who’ve said the same things. Opponents are not trying to “block” the Mosque, Progressives claim, yet no law to stop it has been proposed. They’ve made appeals to sensitivity, nothing more.

Progressives, who act as sensitivity police for others, attack Republicans for standing with people who have every reason to be sensitive.

The difference between right and left on these issues is the right attempts to change hearts and minds; the left simply accused opponents of bigotry. This makes sense when you realize how unpopular their initiatives have been; if you can’t get people to vote for you, try to discourage them from voting at all. It’s a strategy – if you can’t win someone’s vote, convince them the alternative is a bigot, because who wants to vote for a racist, homophobe or sexist? They’re hoping people will stay home on November 2^nd.

Progressives show little concern for the will of the people. They have an agenda, and nothing is going to stand in the way of achieving it. They will lie, they will demonize, they will do anything to achieve it.

In their zeal to advance that agenda they’ve gone farther than they ever have before and thus exposed their true nature. Progressives have accused about 90 percent of the country of bigotry, in one form or another. On every one of the issues listed above polls show the American people are unambiguously not buying the spin and siding with their opponents. That’s a fact progressives will learn the hard way when it comes time for these “bigots” to vote

American rights versus Obama's purloined freebies

Here is a basic difference that runs really deep and explains a lot. It's the difference between how Obama and the far left New Age Marxists view rights and how we Americans view rights. Americans know that a person is born with the right to own him or herself and whatever he or she can produce.

Further, we understand that the only reason there is government is that individuals get together and decide that there are certain things they can't do by themselves (national defense, infrastructure, etc.) so they will have to organize and pool resources to do those few things that would otherwise not get done. But still, of course, individuals are the primary unit, though they choose to gather in groups for different purposes. Overall, we have the right to be left alone except for those few things that we delegated to government. So we have rights like the right to speak freely, move freely, defend ourselves, freedom of the press, freedom to congregate, etc. We have a Constitution to guarantee that we retain the right to act freely except for those few things we delegated to government. Everything else we keep for ourselves, as it should be. They were ours to start with.

Obama disdains these rights and calls them "negative liberties." That is, they say what government can't do, which then ensures our freedom from control and interference. What he has proposed for the past ten years or so are "positive rights." These are things that the government gives you, like the right to a job, the right to high speed internet (That's not a joke -- they think it's a basic human right!), the right to medical care, the right to a college education. Naturally, this includes seizing resources from no good people in order to dole out goodies to more "deserving" people. (Fortunately, often one only needs to have the correct skin color in order to "deserve" someone else's property.)

Notice, these are all things that the government needs to control and dole out. It is diametrically opposed to the American system of "natural rights" that are based on logic and nature. These are based on Friedrich Hegel's concept of Der Stadt. The State, or central government is everything. Without them you would have nothing. The individual has no reason to exist but to serve the government and be thankful for the crumbs they get back for giving the state all their rights, money, and freedoms.

A practical real-world look at what Hegel's ideas look like in practice would be to study the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany. The government is everything; the individual is nothing but a worm churning out as much as they can for the state.

Again, in the American system the individual is everything. We own ourselves and what we produce. We allow government to exist to fill in the cracks between the things we can do ourselves. Hegel's idea is that when you are born you belong to the state. Therefore, anything you produce belongs to the state. Anything they give back to you is a gift. This is the idea behind government being able to seize as much of what you have as they want and to "spread it around," as Obama likes to say. It's not his to spread. It's stolen from the rightful owner who produced it. If he wants to spread something around he could feel free to start being generous himself, and at the very least help his aunt in Boston and brother in Kenya who live in abject poverty. In actual fact he gives the tiniest percentage of his income to charity of any president -- he's a selfish miser. BUT, he will make damn sure that you are forced to help people that he wants to cozy up to.

This divide between American ideas and Hegel's idea that was part of the excuse for Marxism is huge and is being crammed down our throats daily. He wants us to believe we are born owing the government something, and are lucky that we have the government there to dole out absurd rights like high speed internet while denying us our most basic rights that he disdains as "negative liberties." No thanks, buddy, you can keep your command and controlled handouts and I'll keep my constitutionally guaranteed rights that I was born with.

Tony Robbins (mister positive) warns of "major, major" collapse

Tony Robbins, famous for decades for being unrelentingly positive, issues a warning of "painful" economic collapse towards the end of the year. Very interesting how he frames it.

Practical steps to take to protect yourself

Very good little article from this website.

10 Practical Steps That You Can Take To Insulate Yourself (At Least Somewhat) From The Coming Economic Collapse

Most Americans are still operating under the delusion that this "recession" will end and that the "good times" will return soon, but a growing minority of Americans are starting to realize that things are fundamentally changing and that they better start preparing for what is ahead. These "preppers" come from all over the political spectrum and from every age group. More than at any other time in modern history, the American people lack faith in the U.S. economic system. In dozens of previous columns, I have detailed the horrific economic problems that we are now facing in excruciating detail. Many readers have started to complain that all I do is "scare" people and that I don't provide any practical solutions. Well, not everyone can move to Montana and start a llama farm, but hopefully this article will give people some practical steps that they can take to insulate themselves (at least to an extent) from the coming economic collapse.

But before I get into what people need to do, let's take a minute to understand just how bad things are getting out there. The economic numbers in the headlines go up and down and it can all be very confusing to most Americans.

However, there are two long-term trends that are very clear and that anyone can understand....

#1) The United States is getting poorer and is bleeding jobs every single month.

#2) The United States is getting into more debt every single month.

When you mention the trade deficit, most Americans roll their eyes and stop listening. But that is a huge mistake, because the trade deficit is absolutely central to our problems.

Every single month, Americans buy far, far more from the rest of the world than they buy from us. Every single month tens of billions of dollars more goes out of the country than comes into it.

That means that every single month the United States is getting poorer.

The excess goods and services that we buy from the rest of the world get "consumed" and the rest of the world ends up with more money than when they started.

Each year, hundreds of billions of dollars leave the United States and don't return. The transfer of wealth that this represents is astounding.

But not only are we bleeding wealth, we are also bleeding jobs every single month.

The millions of jobs that the U.S. economy is losing to China, India and dozens of third world nations are not going to come back. Middle class Americans have been placed in direct competition for jobs with workers on the other side of the world who are more than happy to work for little more than slave labor wages. Until this changes the U.S. economy is going to continue to hemorrhage jobs.

The U.S. government has helped to mask much of this economic bleeding by unprecedented amounts of government spending and debt, but now the U.S. national debt exceeds 13 trillion dollars and is getting worse every single month. Not only that, but state and local governments all over America are getting into ridiculous amounts of debt.

So, what we have got is a country that gets poorer every single month and loses jobs to other countries every single month and that has accumulated the biggest mountain of debt in the history of the world which also gets worse every single month.

Needless to say, this cannot last indefinitely. Eventually the whole thing is just going to collapse like a house of cards.

So what can we each individually do to somewhat insulate ourselves from the economic problems that are coming?....

1 - Get Out Of Debt: The old saying, "the borrower is the servant of the lender", is so incredibly true. The key to insulating yourself from an economic meltdown is to become as independent as possible, and as long as you are in debt, you simply are not independent. You don't want a horde of creditors chasing after you when things really start to get bad out there.

2 - Find New Sources Of Income: In 2010, there simply is not such a thing as job security. If you are dependent on a job ("just over broke") for 100% of your income, you are in a very bad position. There are thousands of different ways to make extra money. What you don't want to do is to have all of your eggs in one basket. One day when the economy melts down and you are out of a job are you going to be destitute or are you going to be okay?

3 - Reduce Your Expenses: Many Americans have left the rat race and have found ways to live on half or even on a quarter of what they were making previously. It is possible - if you are willing to reduce your expenses. In the future times are going to be tougher, so learn to start living with less today.

4 - Learn To Grow Your Own Food: Today the vast majority of Americans are completely dependent on being able to run down to the supermarket or to the local Wal-Mart to buy food. But what happens when the U.S. dollar declines dramatically in value and it costs ten bucks to buy a loaf of bread? If you learn to grow your own food (even if is just a small garden) you will be insulating yourself against rising food prices.

5 - Make Sure You Have A Reliable Water Supply: Water shortagesare popping up all over the globe. Water is quickly becoming one of the "hottest" commodities out there. Even in the United States, water shortages have been making headline news recently. As we move into the future, it will be imperative for you and your family to have a reliable source of water. Some Americans have learned to collect rainwater and many others are using advanced technology such as atmospheric water generators to provide water for their families. But whatever you do, make sure that you are not caught without a decent source of water in the years ahead.

6 - Buy Land: This is a tough one, because prices are still quite high. However, as we have written previously, home prices are going to be declining over the coming months, and eventually there are going to be some really great deals out there. The truth is that you don't want to wait too long either, because once Helicopter Ben Bernanke's inflationary policies totally tank the value of the U.S. dollar, the price of everything (including land) is going to go sky high. If you are able to buy land when prices are low, that is going to insulate you a great deal from the rising housing costs that will occur when the U.S dollar does totally go into the tank.

7 - Get Off The Grid: An increasing number of Americans are going "off the grid". Essentially what that means is that they are attempting to operate independently of the utility companies. In particular, going "off the grid" will enable you to insulate yourself from the rapidly rising energy prices that we are going to see in the future. If you are able to produce energy for your own home, you won't be freaking out like your neighbors are when electricity prices triple someday.

8 - Store Non-Perishable Supplies: Non-perishable supplies are one investment that is sure to go up in value. Not that you would resell them. You store up non-perishable supplies because you are going to need them someday. So why not stock up on the things that you are going to need now before they double or triple in price in the future? Your money is not ever going to stretch any farther than it does right now.

9 - Develop Stronger Relationships: Americans have become very insular creatures. We act like we don't need anyone or anything. But the truth is that as the economy melts down we are going to need each other. It is those that are developing strong relationships with family and friends right now that will be able to depend on them when times get hard.

10 - Get Educated And Stay Flexible: When times are stable, it is not that important to be informed because things pretty much stay the same. However, when things are rapidly changing it is imperative to get educated and to stay informed so that you will know what to do. The times ahead are going to require us all to be very flexible, and it is those who are willing to adapt that will do the best when things get tough.

Apparently they get it in the UK

From the UK Daily Telegraph, today:

The stunning decline of Barack Obama: 10 key reasons why the Obama presidency is in meltdown

By Nile Gardiner World Last updated: August 12th, 2010

1319 Comments Comment on this article

President Obama: In decline? (Photo: AFP)

The last few weeks have been a nightmare for President Obama, in a summer of discontent in the United States which has deeply unsettled the ruling liberal elites, so much so that even the Left has begun to turn against the White House. While the anti-establishment Tea Party movement has gained significant ground and is now a rising and powerful political force to be reckoned with, many of the president’s own supporters as well as independents are rapidly losing faith in Barack Obama, with open warfare breaking out between the White House and the left-wing of the Democratic Party. While conservatism in America grows stronger by the day, the forces of liberalism are growing increasingly weaker and divided.

Against this backdrop, the president’s approval ratings have been sliding dramatically all summer, with the latest Rasmussen Daily Presidential Tracking Poll of US voters dropping to minus 22 points, the lowest point so far for Barack Obama since taking office. While just 24 per cent of American voters strongly approve of the president’s job performance, almost twice that number, 46 per cent, strongly disapprove. According to Rasmussen, 65 per cent of voters believe the United States is going down the wrong track, including 70 per cent of independents.

The RealClearPolitics average of polls now has President Obama at over 50 per cent disapproval, a remarkably high figure for a president just 18 months into his first term. Strikingly, the latest USA Today/Gallup surveyhas the President on just 41 per cent approval, with 53 per cent disapproving.

Related link: The Obama presidency increasingly resembles a modern-day Ancien Régime

There are an array of reasons behind the stunning decline and political fall of President Obama, chief among them fears over the current state of the US economy, with widespread concern over high levels of unemployment, the unstable housing market, and above all the towering budget deficit. Americans are increasingly rejecting President Obama’s big government solutions to America’s economic woes, which many fear will lead to the United States sharing the same fate as Greece.

Growing disillusionment with the Obama administration’s handling of the economy as well as health care and immigration has gone hand in hand with mounting unhappiness with the President’s aloof and imperial style of leadership, and a growing perception that he is out of touch with ordinary Americans, especially at a time of significant economic pain. Barack Obama’s striking absence of natural leadership ability (and blatant lack of experience) has played a big part in undermining his credibility with the US public, with his lacklustre handling of the Gulf oil spill coming under particularly intense fire.

On the national security and foreign policy front, President Obama has not fared any better. His leadership on the war in Afghanistan has been confused and at times lacking in conviction, and seemingly dictated by domestic political priorities rather than military and strategic goals. His overall foreign policy has been an appalling mess, with his flawed strategy of engagement of hostile regimes spectacularly backfiring. And as for the War on Terror, his administration has not even acknowledged it is fighting one.

Can it get any worse for President Obama? Undoubtedly yes. Here are 10 key reasons why the Obama presidency is in serious trouble, and why its prospects are unlikely to improve between now and the November mid-terms.

1. The Obama presidency is out of touch with the American people

In a previous post I noted how the Obama presidency increasingly resembles a modern-day Ancien Régime, extravagant, decaying and out of touch with ordinary Americans. The First Lady’s ill-conceived trip to Spain at a time of widespread economic hardship was symbolic of a White House that barely gives a second thought to public opinion on many issues, and frequently projects a distinctly elitist image. The “let them eat cake” approach didn’t play well over two centuries ago, and it won’t succeed today.

2. Most Americans don’t have confidence in the president’s leadership

This deficit of trust in Obama’s leadership is central to his decline. According to a recent Washington Post/ABC News poll, “nearly six in ten voters say they lack faith in the president to make the right decisions for the country”, and two thirds “say they are disillusioned with or angry about the way the federal government is working.” The poll showed that a staggering 58 per cent of Americans say they do not have confidence in the president’s decision-making, with just 42 per cent saying they do.

3. Obama fails to inspire

In contrast to the soaring rhetoric of his 2004 Convention speech in Boston which succeeded in impressing millions of television viewers at the time, America is no longer inspired by Barack Obama’s flat, monotonous and often dull presidential speeches and statements delivered via teleprompter. From his extraordinarily uninspiringAfghanistan speech at West Point to his flat State of the Union address, President Obama has failed to touch the heart of America. Even Jimmy Carter was more moving.

4. The United States is drowning in debt

The Congressional Budget Office Long-Term Budget Outlook offers a frightening picture of the scale of America’s national debt. Under its alternative fiscal scenario, the CBO projects that US debt could rise to 87 percent of GDP by 2020, 109 percent by 2025, and 185 percent in 2035. While much of Europe, led by Britain and Germany, are aggressively cutting their deficits, the Obama administration is actively growing America’s debt, and has no plan in place to avert a looming Greek-style financial crisis.

5. Obama’s Big Government message is falling flat

The relentless emphasis on bailouts and stimulus spending has done little to spur economic growth or create jobs, but has greatly advanced the power of the federal government in America. This is not an approach that is proving popular with the American public, and even most European governments have long ditched this tax and spend approach to saving their own economies.

6. Obama’s support for socialised health care is a huge political mistake

In an extraordinary act of political Harakiri, President Obama leant his full support to the hugely controversial, unpopular and divisive health care reform bill, with a monstrous price tag of $940 billion, whose repeal is now supported by 55 per cent of likely US voters. As I wrote at the time of its passing, the legislation is “a great leap forward by the United States towards a European-style vision of universal health care, which will only lead to soaring costs, higher taxes, and a surge in red tape for small businesses. This reckless legislation dramatically expands the power of the state over the lives of individuals, and could not be further from the vision of America’s founding fathers.”

7. Obama’s handling of the Gulf oil spill has been weak-kneed and indecisive

While much of the spilled oil in the Gulf has now been thankfully cleared up, the political damage for the White House will be long-lasting. Instead of showing real leadership on the matter by acing decisively and drawing upon offers of international support, the Obama administration settled on a more convenient strategy of relentlessly bashing an Anglo-American company while largely sitting on its hands. Significantly, a poll of Louisiana voters gave George W. Bush higher marks for his handling of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, with 62 percent disapproving of Obama’s performance on the Gulf oil spill.

8. US foreign policy is an embarrassing mess under the Obama administration

It is hard to think of a single foreign policy success for the Obama administration, but there have been plenty of missteps which have weakened American global power as well as the standing of the United States. The surrender to Moscow on Third Site missile defence, the failure to aggressively stand up to Iran’s nuclear programme, the decision to side with ousted Marxists in Honduras, the slap in the face for Great Britain over the Falklands, have all contributed to the image of a US administration completely out of its depth in international affairs. The Obama administration’s high risk strategy of appeasing America’s enemies while kicking traditional US allies has only succeeded in weakening the United States while strengthening her adversaries.

9. President Obama is muddled and confused on national security

From the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to the War on Terror, President Obama’s leadership has often been muddled and confused. On Afghanistan he rightly sent tens of thousands of additional troops to the battlefield. At the same time however he bizarrely announced a timetable for the withdrawal of US forces beginning in July 2011, handing the initiative to the Taliban. On Iraq he has announced an end to combat operations and the withdrawal of all but 50,000 troops despite a recent upsurge in terrorist violence and political instability, and without the Iraqi military and police ready to take over. In addition he has ditched the concept of a War on Terror, replacing it with an Overseas Contingency Operation, hardly the right message to send in the midst of a long-war against Al-Qaeda.

10. Obama doesn’t believe in American greatness

Barack Obama has made it clear that he doesn’t believe in American exceptionalism, and has made apologising for his country into an art form. In a speech to the United Nations last September he stated that “no one nation can or should try to dominate another nation. No world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will succeed. No balance of power among nations will hold.” It is difficult to see how a US president who holds these views and does not even accept America’s greatness in history can actually lead the world’s only superpower with force and conviction.

There is a distinctly Titanic-like feel to the Obama presidency and it’s not hard to see why. The most left-wing president in modern American history has tried to force a highly interventionist, government-driven agenda that runs counter to the principles of free enterprise, individual freedom, and limited government that have made the United States the greatest power in the world, and the freest nation on earth.

This, combined with weak leadership both at home and abroad against the backdrop of tremendous economic uncertainty in an increasingly dangerous world, has contributed to a spectacular political collapse for a president once thought to be invincible. America at its core remains a deeply conservative nation, which cherishes its traditions and founding principles. President Obama is increasingly out of step with the American people, by advancing policies that undermine the United States as a global power, while undercutting America’s deep-seated love for freedom.