"Whats Wrong With Being Sexy?"

I'm sure you have heard of the recent class action law suit against Wal Mart for, in the words of Nigel Tufnel (lead guitarist of Spinal Tap), "being sexy". Wal Mart managers, alledgedly, made some edgy comments to female employees.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/03/27/court-huge-sex-bias-claim-vs-wal-mart/#

I read the article and I didn't see anything that would justify a billion dollar settlement. "Dust off your make up" was a good line. I remember trying to sell chip displays in to ceratin grocery chains and the manager wouldn't buy the display unless we send in Lisa (I changed the name). But basically, the Grocery Manager wanted to see our cute blonde manager come in and sell the product or he wouldn't buy it. Situations like this hurt men's ability to sell. So telling this woman to "dust off your make up" might have been a good selling point.

Another piece to the closing of the American mind.

An Establishment Republican Explains why Boehner's Dink & Dunk Approach on the Budget is the Right One

I'm unsure about the current approach of passing continuing resolutions that get the budget to match what the Republicans want rather than forcing a showdown.  I also admit that the $61M the Republicans are cutting is nowhere near enough but is literally an order of magnitude larger than the ridiculous budget proposed by Obama and the Democrats.  But, I think that it's possibly the best that we can expect at this time, while Republicans control only the House and not the Senate or Presidency.  Regardless of what I think, here is what long-time, respected, establishment Republican Fred Barnes thinks.  I'm not going to make the argument, I'll let Fred:

...The end zone is far away, however, and impatience won't get Republicans there. Impatience is not a strategy. It may lead to a government shutdown with unknown results. To enact the sweeping cuts they desire, Republicans must hold the House and capture the Senate and White House in the 2012 election. Then they'll control Washington. Now they don't.

In the meantime, the incremental strategy is working. Republicans have passed two short-term measures to keep the government in operation since early March while slashing $10 billion in spending. At this rate, they would achieve the target of GOP congressional leaders of lopping off $61 billion from President Obama's proposed budget in the final seven months of the 2011 fiscal year.

Barnes was around in 1995 when Republicans forced a government shutdown to bring Clinton around on the budget. It backfired for Republicans at the ballot box in 1996. Would it backfire for Republicans now? I think the battlefield is much different now, and it may not backfire, but it's certainly prudent to consider that possibility.

His summary:

The House speaker has been accused of playing a weak hand. "I think John Boehner has basically climbed into the Bob Dole suit," columnist Mark Steyn told talk radio host Hugh Hewitt. "Arguing over itsy-bitsy, half a billion here and half a billion there . . . is preposterous."

But it may not be if it's the most you can get under current circumstances. What's unsatisfying to many conservatives is most likely the best Republicans can achieve in 2011. "Public opinion seems to support Republican efforts to cut spending without shutting down the government," notes Keith Hennessey, former domestic policy adviser to President George W. Bush, and some recent polls back him up. Mr. Hennessey supports a gradualist strategy. "Don't change tactics," he says. "Just ratchet up your demands a little."

That makes sense. What doesn't is sacrificing spending cuts you can get on the altar of those you can't.

Of course, Read the whole thing. Not sure if he's right or wrong.

The Muslim Brotherhood Is Becoming A Major Political Force In Egypt

Those that stated that the uprisings in the Middle East and especially Egypt might not be a good thing were ridiculed and scoffed at, but now it seems as if the uprisings might not actually be leading to democracy and freedom. The fact that the Muslim Brotherhood is becoming a major player in the new Egypt is of interest because the Muslim Brotherhood is a terrorist organization unfriendly towards the West whose members included some of the 911 hijackers and a spiritual and intellectual leader that hates Israel, a big understatement. Israel's--our traditional ally and the only free nation is that region of the world--dependence on Egypt to maintain stability is an important factor to keep in mind as it appears they might be loosing an ally, if you could characterize Egypt's and Israel's relationship as such. The uprisings in Egypt were heralded with organismic praise by the media to include our President, who encouraged it, as an uprising comprised of the young and idealist that were seeking freedom, democracy, and "change" whose outcome would lead to democracy. If what is stated in this article is true, then this is a good indication of what the uprisings in the Middle East, at least Egypt, are possibly leading to: an outcome that is not good for freedom or world stability.

It looks like the Muslim Brotherhood is becoming a major player in the new Egypt. "In post-revolutionary Egypt, where hope and confusion collide in the daily struggle to build a new nation, religion has emerged as a powerful political force, following an uprising that was based on secular ideals. The Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist group once banned by the state, is at the forefront, transformed into a tacit partner with the military government that many fear will thwart fundamental changes. It is also clear that the young, educated secular activists who initially propelled the nonideological revolution are no longer the driving political force — at least not at the moment. [...] 'There is evidence the Brotherhood struck some kind of a deal with the military early on,' said Elijah Zarwan, a senior analyst with the International Crisis Group. 'It makes sense if you are the military — you want stability and people off the street. The Brotherhood is one address where you can go to get 100,000 people off the street.'[...]'We are all worried,' said Amr Koura, 55, a television producer, reflecting the opinions of the secular minority. “The young people have no control of the revolution anymore. It was evident in the last few weeks when you saw a lot of bearded people taking charge. The youth are gone'

As Thomas Sowell points out what history shows being over optimist about the youth rising up in the name of revolution,

What we have also heard, too many times before, is the assumption that getting rid of an undemocratic government means that it will be replaced by a freer and better government.

History says otherwise. After Russia's czars were replaced by the Communists, the government executed more people in a day than the czars had executed in half a century. It was much the same story in Cuba, when the Batista regime was replaced by Castro and in Iran when the Shah was replaced by the Ayatollahs.

It is not inevitable that bad regimes are replaced by worse regimes. But it has happened too often for us to blithely assume that overthrowing a dictator means a movement toward freedom and democracy.

It also looks like Yemen is about to fall,

Of all the uprisings and protests that have swept the Middle East this year, none is more likely than Yemen to have immediate damaging effects on U.S. counterterrorism efforts. Yemen is home to al-Qaida’s most active franchise, and as President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s government crumbles, so does Washington’s influence there.[...]Further complicating U.S. efforts to build a new partnership in Yemen is the fact that one of the driving forces behind the protests is the country’s fundamentalist Islamic opposition party, known as Islah. The party’s spiritual leader, Sheik Abdel-Majid al-Zindani, is on a U.S. list of terrorists and has been described as a loyalist of Osama bin Laden. Though experts caution that Islah today is held together by shared opposition to Saleh, the group’s ties to al-Zindani would make it harder for Washington to justify spending more money to arm or stabilize an Islah-led Yemen.

This is a short post that I might add to later. The point of this post is to show that the uprisings in the Middle East are looking like they will lead to an outcome that will not be good for Israel, America, the West, or the world especially considering that terrorist organizations seem to be the ones benefiting and getting a foothold in the new governments being formed as a result of the uprisings. Given the world's dependence on that region's supply of "black gold", there is a potential for some problems ahead for the world and definitely Israel. I am not going to try and predict or state what will happen as the result of recent events in the Middle East, although it is not hard to know. But I am willingly to bet the outcome will not be good. The events in the Middle East are definitely worth keeping up to date.

Obama - Bloodthirsty NeoCon Warmonger Thread

I'll bet we're all over that map on the rightness of the attacks Obama has ordered on Libya.  I think that a determined effort to support rebels to overthrow Kaddafi is a good idea.  He's been a thorn in our side for decades and no matter who takes over there after he is overthrown, it can't be any worse.  He should have been killed after he ordered the Pan Am Lockerbie bombing that killed I think over 200 Americans.  But, even our hero, Ronald Reagan, just did a light retaliation for that horrible act.  In my opinion, the most powerful nation in the world, if it wants to remain the most powerful nation in the world, smashes opponents who pick fights like that.  Kaddafi has needed eliminating for quite some time.  Saying "but he's one of many assholes in the world that need taking out, what has he done this time that sets him apart from the others?"  I say, past behavior for which he should have paid, and also, and this is something that it seems pundits on the left and right fail to account for in trying to be righteous for their side: it would be relatively easy to overthrow him.  This as opposed to say Ahmedinajad (sp?) or Communist China.  Yes, this asshole can be overthrown and held up as an example (like Saddam Hussein) for a relatively small amount of effort on our side.  So, I generally support the mission in Libya, so long as it includes overthrowing and killing Kaddafi.  If those are not goals, and they don't appear to be the publically stated goals of the French, British, or Obama, then I'm wondering what we're doing.

Regardless of how I feel about the action, the way Obama, the Boy King, has gone about this, and how he has arrived at the point where he felt justified sending American men and material in harm's way is greatly flawed, to the point of being disgusting.  And the path he has taken will greatly increase the dissention on both the right and the left for his war effort.  Ace has an outstanding article discussing this,  As always, a read the whole thing article, but here are a couple things: on the legitimacy of Obama charging ahead without Congressional authority (you know, the kind Bush actually got before Afghanistan and Iraq)-emphasis mine:

The Constitution does not merely enumerate the powers of office; it also enumerates the duties of office. Certainly politicians, being politicians, would occasionally enjoy ignoring their Constitutional duties. That does not give them license to do so, however.

There is and always has been argued an inherent presidential war-making power in cases where the situation is moving too quickly for formal Congressional debate, and thus, any debate would in fact resolve the issue by default -- if national interests are at risk within hours, the President (it has long been argued) can act on his own authority, temporarily, to preserve the status quo ante so that meaningful debate over options can be had (in the sense that there will still be options remaining, rather than a fait accompli), and that the president, as commander in chief, can always act in the defense of America itself.

Obviously that last part is inapplicable here; America is not directly threatened by anything that happens in Libya. American interests are indirectly threatened, depending on hypothethical future contingencies, and that means that there may be a reason to act, but this sort of indirect, hypothetical threat is not enough to give the president license to act purely on his own authority.

As to the "we must not tarry" argument -- that is disproven wholly by Obama's perfect willingness to debate this for weeks at the United Nations. He was perfectly willing to allow the rebellion to crumble to the very brink of defeat in order to secure United Nations authorization; obviously, then, this was not a "we must not tarry" situation, because the President tarried quite a bit. In fact, he tarried so much that the situation may now in fact comprise an unrecoverable loss.

What's most disgusting to me is that Obama seems to think getting permission from the UN and France is more important than getting it from Congress:

What is preposterous here, and offensive, is the apparent belief by Obama that an international Tyrant's Club created in 1945 is the true, genuine war-authority authority while the Congress specifically named in the Constitution as the war-approving authority is... what? Nothing, apparently. The international tribunal called the United Nations has, somehow, without a Constitutional amendment, displaced the Congress as the lawful tribunal for approving the injection of United States armed forces into war.

When did that happen? When, as United States citizens, did we all agree that we should no longer have the democratic power to decide when we would and would not go to war, and would instead leave the matter up to foreign powers, many (most) of whom are allied against us in one fashion or another?

Obama believes this did happen. He doesn't think we agreed on it, of course, as he knows, surely, that no such vote every took place. But he thinks that those International Representatives are much more competent to decide the fates of Americans and so, consistent with his left-liberal worldview, such responsibilities and powers are taken away from the American public and reposed instead in "better" people, either a small self-declared American elite or a foreign elite, better able to make decisions on behalf of ignorant, uneducated Americans.

Obama is following his beliefs; he is not being given sufficient credit for that: the military of the US should only be used for causes deemed important to the UN. Anything else, such as causes deemed important to the US, is evil.

Update On The Economy

(Warning, this post might make you sad and this article contains what might be considered hyperbole.) QE 3 is looking more like a possibility. (Remember that QE stands for quantitative easing and is basically the creation of new money and pumping it into the economy in hopes of giving it a boost or to keep it going.)This means that the government will continue to just print, or digitize money. This will lead to further inflationary pressures down the road. As you may know food, energy, and commodity prices are up in part due to QE 2. Food and commodities are traded in U.S. dollars and when the value of the dollar is reduced because of the creation of more dollars this tends to drive up those prices. Food prices are up in part because of bad weather that has impacted crop yields and because the developing economies of the world are getting wealthier and are demanding more meat products. Energy prices are up due to the unrest in the Middle East, which was caused in part by higher food prices which was due in part because of QE 2. So you can't blame the current spike in inflation solely on the Federal Reserve actions. Back to what QE 3 will mean, the continuation of printing money by our government is starting to look similar to the path of trying to inflate its way out of debt and economic malaise that the Wiemar Republic took, but America is different and is able to avoid basic laws of economics unlike past civilizations or nations that have been unable to do so. This is not a big deal and while it might be easy to make a comparison between Wiemar and America there are differences that make a simple analogy between the two not completely accurate. The Mises Institute does an opinion piece on the possibility of QE 3:

Austrian School economists have often explained the business cycle using the metaphor of liquor or drugs. The expansion of paper money and credit gives a sense of exuberance, an economic high that leads to excessive risk taking and balloons of production. But it can't be sustained. There is a morning after.[...]

Then there is the problem of price increases more generally. The producer price index for February has generated terrifying results, though you probably haven't heard about them. Predictions were for a 0.6 percent increase but the reality was 1.6 percent, which points to double digits on an annualized basis.

And that just the beginning. Food prices rose the most since November 1974. Prices of raw materials rose by 3.4 percent in February from the previous month. Intermediate prices climbed 2.0 percent, with diesel fuel up a monthly 12.6 percent in February[...]

History is littered with monetary mangers who believed they were in total control — until the disaster hit. It is hubris of the first order to believe oneself master of the universe — but hubris is endemic in Washington.

QE3 is playing with fire. Or with a third dose of meth. Or another bottle of Jack. Choose your metaphor. It is a bad and deeply dangerous policy, all built on the insane view that if you stimulate a zombie enough with fiat money, it will start to live and breath on its own.

Reducing this even more, consider this: If you drink enough, does your body start to generate its own liquor?

The Fed and the government have hooked the American economy on a wicked drug. Our job is to drive the dealers from their seats of power.

If the Federal Reserve is not able to detect the exact moment to pull the liquidity back in, inflation and possibly hyperinflation will be the outcome. This has not been done successfully by any central bank that has embarked on the path of inflating its way out of debt, I can't back that up any fact as I just heard that from my opinionated economics teacher who said inflation is coming so this fact should be taken lightly.

Some real spending cuts are actually being enacted by Congress, about six billion. That is a lot of money that will make a big impact on the debt,

The national debt jumped by $72 billion on Tuesday even as the Republican-led U.S. House of Representatives passed a continuing resolution to fund the government for just three weeks that will cut $6 billion from government spending.

If Congress were to cut $6 billion every three weeks for the next 36 weeks, it would manage to save between now and late November as much money as the Treasury added to the nation’s net debt during just the business hours of Tuesday, March 15.

At the close of business on Monday, according to the Treasury Department’s Bureau of the Public Debt, the total national debt stood at $14.166 trillion ($14,166,030,787,779.80). At the close of business Tuesday, the debt stood at $14.237 trillion ($14,237,952,276,898.69), an increase of $71.9 billion ($71,921,489,118.89).

Since the beginning of fiscal year 2011--which began on Oct. 1, 2010--the national debt has climbed from $13.5616 trillion ($13,561,623,030,891.79) to $14.2379 trillion ($14,237,952,276,898.69) an increase of $676.3 billion ($676,329,246,006.90).

Congress would need to cut spending by $6 billion every three weeks for approximately the next six and a half years (338 weeks) just to equal the $676.3 billion the debt has increased thus far this fiscal year.

At least some progress is being made. We just have to give the Republicans more time and a chance to make some real cuts, like reforming entitlement programs, that I am positive they will make. It now looks like Obama's proposed budget will actually add 9.5 trillion to the deficit instead of 7.2 trillion, just off by two trillion. This means that real cuts need to be made and not some phony, weak six billion.

Government money or welfare make up about a third of U.S. wages,

Government payouts—including Social Security, Medicare and unemployment insurance—make up more than a third of total wages and salaries of the U.S. population, a record figure that will only increase if action isn’t taken before the majority of Baby Boomers enter retirement. Even as the economy has recovered, social welfare benefits make up 35 percent of wages and salaries this year, up from 21 percent in 2000 and 10 percent in 1960, according to TrimTabs Investment Research using Bureau of Economic Analysis data.

'The U.S. economy has become alarmingly dependent on government stimulus,' said Madeline Schnapp, director of Macroeconomic Research at TrimTabs, in a note to clients. 'Consumption supported by wages and salaries is a much stronger foundation for economic growth than consumption based on social welfare benefits.'

The economist gives the country two stark choices. In order to get welfare back to its pre-recession ratio of 26 percent of pay, 'either wages and salaries would have to increase $2.3 trillion, or 35 percent, to $8.8 trillion, or social welfare benefits would have to decline $500 billion, or 23 percent, to $1.7 trillion,' she said.

According to this guy, America's economy has reached an important milestone.

We are borrowing more than $5 billion per day. That’s $35 billion per week to run our government, totaling more than $1.5 trillion in borrowed money just to run it this year.

Harvard’s great economic historian, Niall Ferguson, noted that the decline of a country can be marked when it pays its moneylenders more than its army. His classic case comes from the French monarchy of the 1780s that failed to make interest payments on their debt, causing the financial collapse that triggered the revolution. Recently, Carmen Reinhard and Kenneth Rogoff wrote a brilliant book titled 'This Time is Different, Eight Centuries of Financial Folly.' Their vast study revealed that most government officials always believe they are unique and different, causing them to make the same mistakes that crippled past nations and empires.

Admiral Mike Mullen did state that America's debt is the biggest threat to its national security so maybe Ferguson is on to something. I think America can pull through and overcome this financial crisis, even if it doesn't look like it at the moment. We are different from other nations of the past and have overcome similar level of debt after WW II, although under different conditions.

And a nice opinion piece that is full of emotive language and hyperbole,

A devastating debt crisis is coming; simple mathematics predict it. It is no longer a matter of if, but when. The time for hysterics, hyperbole, and finger-pointing is over. The time for political games, grand-standing, and partisan shenanigans is long past. This is no longer about Democrat, Republican, liberal, conservative, or progressive issues. This affects all of us. The looming danger crosses all party and ideological lines and jeopardizes all Americans, present and future generations. We're staring down a massive debt tsunami that threatens the US with a fiscal Armageddon the likes of which we've never seen.

I am sure that I am just looking at the sensational news that is hyping the economic situation up. There are several investors that have an optimistic outlook on the economy and the stock market has done very well the past two years even if it is a bubble, about to burst, that is being inflated by the actions of the Fed. I think the Rubicon is just in front of the world's economy and it is about to cross the Rubicon with a new economic system being on the other side. That sounds crazy so it must be inaccurate. Maybe the Republicans are just getting a slow start and they will make something happen in the next few years.

Shocking Scam Revealed!

Though it should come as no surprise to RTP&GGers, Reason.com has revealed a shocking scam to the nation!

The nation was left reeling yesterday by the revelation that the presidential election of 2008 was a hoax. The shocking announcement came when White House press secretary Jay Carney told reporters that Barack Obama has been working in secret with conservative provocateur James O'Keefe since 2007.

READ THE WHOLE SHOCKING ARTICLE!

One more quote:

"By combining empty, touchy-feely slogans like 'hope' and 'change' with far-left-wing policy planks and presenting them in the person of a racial minority from a major Midwest city with an Ivy League background, we thought we might be able to make a good showing in Iowa and New Hampshire, maybe even capture the Democratic nomination," Carney told reporters. "But the entire country? No. We never, ever for even a second imagined the American people would elect someone who had served only half a term in the U.S. Senate to be the leader of the entire free world."

Nuclear Meltdown - Status and Facts

I don't have anything pithy to say about the tragedy in Japan.  The tragedy being the tsunami that might have killed up to tens of thousands of people and probably destroyed more property/wealth/value than any previous disaster. 

I do want to present an article that explains in fairly easy terms what the status is of the damaged nuclear plants and also what could happen.  As usual, the press is having a meltdown (ha ha) over the issue.  Dwelling on the possible fallout (haha) of the problems with the nuclear plants rather than the real tragedy of thousands of dead.   Typical of the press (and liberals in general) to make a big deal about unimportant minor or imaginary issues (global warming) rather than focus on real problems that are painful to solve and that don't further their agendas (global debt). 

I shouldn't say that the problems with the reactors are unimportant.  Clearly they are, but they pale compared to the real disaster that has already happened to Japan.  Liberals will of course take the scare of a meltdown and radiation release as an opportunity to lock down any further nuclear development in the US.  Development that, prior to the tsunami, was getting very close to finally moving ahead after being shut down for decades after the phony (media-generated) scare over the Three Mile Island meltdown in 1979.  Interesting fact I heard the other day (though I don't have the reference): there hasn't been one case of cancer or death proven to be associated with the Three Mile Island disaster.  The cancer rates of the fallout zone show no anomolies compared to other parts of the country.

Be armed with some facts from this Wall Street Journal article.  The problems with the reactors in Japan are serious, but not nearly as bad as they are being blown up (haha) to be.

Here are a couple of quotes to get you going:

The Liberal Scare:

Rep. Ed Markey (D., Mass.), a longtime opponent of nuclear power, has warned of "another Chernobyl" and predicted "the same thing could happen here." In response, he has called for an immediate suspension of licensing procedures for the Westinghouse AP1000, a "Generation III" reactor that has been laboring through design review at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for seven years. 

The rational presentation of facts:

The core of a nuclear reactor operates at about 550 degrees Fahrenheit, well below the temperature of a coal furnace and only slightly hotter than a kitchen oven. If anything unusual occurs, the control rods immediately drop, shutting off the nuclear reaction. You can't have a "runaway reactor," nor can a reactor explode like a nuclear bomb. A commercial reactor is to a bomb what Vaseline is to napalm. Although both are made from petroleum jelly, only one of them has potentially explosive material.

Read the whole thing.

Some Good News and Some Bad News

A Florida Judge has ruled the recent health care reforms unconstitutional approximately two weeks ago. This means that it is now illegal to continue to implement the new health care law. So what is the White House's response to this ruling, " ‘implementation will proceed apace’ regardless of the ruling". The White House has decided to ignore the rule of law in this particular case. I do not know how many past Presidents have decided to ignore a court ruling, but I do know that President Obama wants to redistribute the wealth / spread the wealth around and this is exactly what his new health care law does--this is only one source that states this. The rule of law is always a hindrance to those that seek to redistribute the wealth. As Hayek states in his book "The Constitution Of Liberty" page 232,

This conflict between the ideal of freedom and the desire to 'correct' the distribution of incomes so as to make it more 'just' is usually not clearly recognized. But those who pursue distributive justice will in practice find themselves obstructed at every move by the rule of law. They must, from the very nature of their aim, favor discriminatory and discretionary action. But, as they are usually not aware that their aim and the rule of law are in principle incompatible, they begin by circumventing or disregarding in individual cases a principle which they often would wish to see preserved in general. But the ultimate result of their efforts will necessarily be, not a modification of the existing order, but its complete abandonment and its replacement by an altogether difference system--the command economy.

This is only one instance where President has decided to ignore the rule of law. Why should the rule of law get in his way of providing health care to the sick and poor? Hayek's book is a must read for those that want to defend the ideals freedom and to see where a country that decides to pursue socialism leads to.

What will be the end result of this Judge's ruling? Nothing. The case will go to the supreme court where its constitutionality will be upheld. The whole point of this post is to show that the President has decided to ignore the rule of law and to point out where this leads.

A Chart Showing Why America Will Face A Serious Financial Crisis

I got this chart from the Business Insider website.

We'll be breaking out some key sections in the next few days. In the meantime, here's the one chart you need to see to understand why the US is screwed.

This is the 'income statement' of the United States in 2010. 'Revenue' is on the left. 'Expenses' are on the right.

Note a few things...

First, 'Revenue' is tiny relative to 'Expenses.'

Second, most of the expense is entitlement programs, not defense, education, or any of the other line items that most budget crusaders normally howl about.

Third, as horrifying as these charts are, they don't even show the trends of these two pies: The 'expense' pie is growing like gangbusters, driven by the explosive growth of the entitlement programs that no one in government even has the balls to talk about. 'Revenue' is barely growing at all.

As we'll illustrate with more of Mary's charts next week, the US cannot grow its way out of this problem. It needs to cut spending, specifically entitlement spending. We hereby announce that we'll give a special gold star to the first "leader" with the guts to say that publicly.

You can view a clearer picture of the chart on the website. The revenue for the Federal government in 2007 was 2.4 trillion dollars before the worst part of the recession, some economist believe the recession began in 2007. I read from one source that double digit growth for a decade will not solve America's budget problems which this chart also shows. Serious cuts will have to be made to entitlements as noted by the IMF and by our Treasury Secretary who noted that the political will does not exist to make these cuts. No politician is even talking about this as it is politically impossible to do. No Tea Party rally is going to solve this budget problem. Even a majority of Tea Party followers do not support cutting entitlement spending. And note by 2020 the net interest payment will be around eight hundred billion dollars as noted by a Senator when question the Treasury Secretary and agree to by our Treasury Secretary. Either way things go, there will be a serious financial situation in the near future.

Will The Middle East Uprisings Lead To Democratic Governments?

According to Thomas Sowell, the answer is probably not. It does prick one's heart to see evil and tyrannical dictators being ousted by the people that they have been ruling. But as has been noted on this blog, the uprisings are not completely about a repressed people rising up demanding freedom. A major driving force behind these uprisings were "gut-level economics" and inflation that is in part the result of the recent actions know as QE 2 by the Federal Reserve. So what is likely to be the end result of these uprisings? Will it lead to free representative-democracies or the same repressive regimes? Sowell:

Those who see hope in the Middle East uprisings seem to assume that they will lead in the direction of freedom or democracy. There is already talk about the "liberation" of Egypt, even though the biggest change there has been that a one-man dictatorship has been replaced by a military dictatorship that has suspended the constitution.

Perhaps the military dictatorship will be temporary, as its leaders say, but we have heard that song before. What we have also heard, too many times before, is the assumption that getting rid of an undemocratic government means that it will be replaced by a freer and better government.

History says otherwise. After Russia's czars were replaced by the Communists, the government executed more people in a day than the czars had executed in half a century. It was much the same story in Cuba, when the Batista regime was replaced by Castro and in Iran when the Shah was replaced by the Ayatollahs.

It is not inevitable that bad regimes are replaced by worse regimes. But it has happened too often for us to blithely assume that overthrowing a dictator means a movement toward freedom and democracy.

The fact that Egyptians or others in the Middle East and elsewhere want freedom does not mean that they are ready for freedom. Everyone wants freedom for himself. Even the Nazis wanted to be free to be Nazis. They just didn't want anybody else to be free.

There is very little sign of tolerance in the Middle East, even among fellow Muslims with different political or religious views, and all too many signs of gross intolerance toward people who are not Muslims.

Freedom and democracy cannot be simply conferred on anyone. Both have preconditions, and even nations that are free and democratic today took centuries to get there. [[What are these preconditions? Basic fundamental philosophical beliefs held by the people of that nation.]]

If there was ever a time when people in Western democracies might be excused for thinking that Western institutions could simply be exported to other nations to create new free democracies, that time has long passed.

It is easy to export the outward symbols of democracy-- constitutions, elections, parliaments and the like-- but you cannot export the centuries of experience and development that made those institutions work. All too often, exported democratic institutions have meant "one man, one vote-- one time."

We should not assume that our own freedom and democratic form of government can be taken for granted. Those who created this country did not.

As the Constitution of the United States was being written, a lady asked Benjamin Franklin what he and the other writers were creating. He replied, "A republic, madam-- if you can keep it." Generations later, Abraham Lincoln also posed it as a question whether "government of the people, by the people and for the people" is one that "can long endure."

Just as there are nations who have not yet developed the preconditions for freedom and democracy, so there are some people within a nation who have not. The advance toward universal suffrage took place slowly and in stages.

Too many people, looking back today, see that as just being biased against some people.

But putting the fate of a nation in the hands of the illiterate masses of the past, many with no conception of the complexities of government, might have meant risking the same fate of "one man, one vote-- one time."

Today, we take universal literacy for granted. But literacy has not been universal, across all segments of the American population during all of the 20th century. Illiteracy was the norm in Albania as recently as the 1920s and in India in the second half of the 20th century.

Bare literacy is just one of the things needed to make democracy viable. Without a sense of responsible citizenship, voters can elect leaders who are not merely incompetent or corrupt, but even leaders with contempt for the Constitutional limitations on government power that preserve the people's freedom.

We already have such a leader in the White House-- and a succession of such leaders may demonstrate that the viability of freedom and democracy can by no means be taken for granted here.

If governments do emerge that are not friendly to America and the West, this could lead to higher oil prices and oil being used as a weapon by these new governments against their enemies. It seems that there is a lot going on under the surface and a lot of connections with other political groups here in America and around the world that are influencing these riots.