whotmv

posted at 4:45 pm on August 9, 2011 by Allahpundit
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Two clips to usher in night four of Droogfest 2011. The common thread is that in both cases you’re watching rampaging cretins behave in a quasi-civilized manner. In the first, two giggly girls chat calmly with the BBC about the “mad fun” they’re having; in the second, rioters handle a wounded boy gingerly … before proceeding to rob him. Maybe we can let the lot of them off easy with a modified version of the Ludovico technique.

If you missed it in Headlines this morning, read Brendan O’Neill’s essay on the riots as a byproduct of welfare-state decay. At the Corner, Iain Murray elaborates:

    Another left-wing friend of mine in the UK has another interesting theory — that the particular targeting of electronics and clothes shops represents an explosion of consumerism. Stay with me, because I think he has a point and I’d like to explain why. Much of the British underclass has had easy access to credit over the past decade or so — and why not, when they are on a secure income stream of state benefits — and they have spent this for the most part on TVs, video games, and “chav” fashion. That easy credit — which I should emphasize was encouraged by the loose monetary policy of Gordon Brown and Tony Blair — has now dried up, so they are looking to take for free what they previously got for nominal sums. There is more evidence for that conclusion in this BBC recording of two girls saying that the riots were about taking what they wanted, for free…

    I think what we are seeing in Britain is a conflation of two liberal dreams — that of the 1960s, in which parenting and tradition went out the window, and that of the 2000s, in which self-help was replaced by easy credit, benefits, and an all-mighty “health and safety” bureaucracy — together with the unfinished nature of the Thatcher revolution. Mrs. T enabled economic Thatcherism but was unable to finish the project of what I termed social Thatcherism, whereby a free society recognized the importance of what once were called manners.

    The result is a feral underclass without any understanding of tradition from right or left.

O’Neill ends by laying into British cops for their paralysis, a ubiquitous critique in stories about the riots after three days of window-smashing. There are a lot of reasons for that. The police have in fact held back, only now considering water cannons and plastic bullets after millions in damage. The prime minister and the mayor of London were both on vacation when the riots began and Scotland Yard’s leadership recently resigned over the phone-hacking scandal, so for several days there’s been no one in charge. The Home Secretary, who was also on vacation, is prone to saying moronic things like, “The way we police in Britain is not through use of water cannon, the way we police in Britain is through consent of communities,” even as young degenerates ransack local communities without their consent. And of course it’s comforting in a moment of chaos to focus on the failings of the police, who are, unlike the rioters (oops, I mean “protesters”), accountable to the public. Build a better force and in theory you ensure this can’t happen again. In theory:

    Business owners accused police of adopting a softly-softly approach which left their shops and businesses vulnerable to attack by baying mobs.

    While police were criticised in some quarters for being far too slow to get to riot scenes, officers were accused by shopkeepers in Hackney of standing just yards away from looters as windows were smashed and armfuls of goods were scooped up…

    Firearms units trained to use the rubber bullets are braced in case they are needed. It would be the first time ever the baton rounds have been used in British disturbances.

    Mr Kavanagh said Scotland Yard was ‘not going to throw 180 years of policing with the community away’ as the prospect of using the ammunition for the first time at a British disturbance was raised.

Imagine how bad things could get if they did that. There might be riots.

There are many ways to measure the awfulness of what’s happening but chew on these two while you watch. According to residents in Birmingham, looters are literally stealing the clothes off of people’s backs, stopping them and forcing them to strip. The Daily Mail has a too-bad-to-check photo via Twitter. Beyond that, in the Middle East and elsewhere, there’s gloating going on both by authoritarian governments, who are mocking the Brits for not liquidating all of their troublemakers on the spot, and by the victims of those authoritarian governments, who are mocking the rioters for turning their “protests” into a pretext to steal DVD players. All of which is to say, this is a complete fiasco by any yardstick.

Onto the videos. I’ve included a third (audio) clip below as a little bonus; yes, that is indeed Hulk Hogan’s voice you’re hearing. Click the image to watch.

London rioter: “We’re just showing the rich people that we can do what we want”

posted at 10:05 am on August 9, 2011 by J.E. Dyer
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Few people in the public eye have said anything useful about the recent unpleasantness with the national debt and the national credit rating. The president hasn’t. The vice president hasn’t. Surprisingly few of the declared Republican candidates have. The MSM haven’t. They’re busy trying to make the expression “Tea Party downgrade” go viral.

Indeed, at this hour of reckoning, with the Dow plunging and markets in turmoil around the world, the MSM have achieved another playground-taunt triumph with the silly Newsweek cover featuring an unflattering photo of Michelle Bachmann. These people seem to have no sense of proportion, no judgment, no recognition that things have become serious and the time for sophomoric media jabs is past.

Who cares how they can make Bachmann look on a magazine cover? The tabloids demonstrate several times a year that they can make the world’s most beautiful women look like something from the back of the refrigerator, if they photograph them in bad light with a telephoto lens. The Bachmann cover is the equivalent of a slam-book entry, about as intelligent as holding your nose and chanting “You smell!” at a classmate. Ridicule is the cheapest thing there is – and in politics, it’s usually deployed to shift the focus from a needed debate to specious topics and emotion. I’d call it a reversion to high school, but it would be an insult even to middle-schoolers to pin it on their age group.

Meanwhile, Marco Rubio and Paul Ryan have had good, inspiring, on-target things to say about the US fiscal crisis. Michelle Bachmann has had good things to say. John Bolton had an important piece making the case that national security is inextricably linked with fiscal security, a much-needed point in the context of the recent debate.

But Sarah Palin came through today with a Facebook post that strikes the right tone and is at once simple, direct, and comprehensive. It doesn’t rail at past mistakes, nor does it come across as a raised-voice, you’ve-got-to-get-this-people communication. Palin takes it for granted – with refreshing common sense – that we are in a crisis, its features are obvious, and the task now is to deal with it, not continue to argue whether it’s really a crisis or how big it is or whose name we can pin on it.

She makes no bones about the significance of the problem we face. I am particularly impressed with her point that if we don’t square ourselves away, the specter hangs over us of IMF staffers showing up on our doorstep with China and France and Germany arrayed behind them, ready to throw folders on a desk and start telling us how much we can spend on cable TV and incidentals each month. Whether things would really play out for the US as they are playing out for Greece and Ireland is a valid question, but Palin is quite correct that the pitched confrontation is on the horizon now, as it was not six weeks ago – and she has the courage to face that possibility head-on. It’s not pleasant to mention it, but it’s the right thing to do.

The last third of Palin’s post is devoted to laying out what we need to do. Grow the economy by releasing the regulatory clamps on it, starting with the energy sector. Cut spending and reform entitlements. She doesn’t pretend the latter would be easy, but she faces head-on the fact that it is inescapably necessary. I urge you to read her post for the discussion of particulars. It is material and convincing without being in the weeds.

The piece is positive and encouraging for its forthrightness. There is nothing “clever” to be done in this situation; it’s all straightforward. The US federal government has to cut spending and let the economy grow, even if that means breaking the stranglehold of unions on the public trough and overruling advocacy groups and government bureaucrats who don’t want the economy to grow. Pretending that the federal budget is too complex to be governed by the ordinary rules of accounting – or that the US is too special to be limited by the ordinary definition of fiscal solvency – is a dodge, not a sign of insight or expertise.

Palin focuses like any good executive on the big picture. We have to cut spending and get government out of the economy’s way so it can start pumping out revenues again. These things are increasingly obvious to everyone, and moreover, they constitute a plan. Talking ourselves into corners about other, tangential things isn’t even interesting any more. It feels so wrong that it’s hard to watch anyone’s news program at the moment: no one seems to be talking about what matters.

What is interesting is how few in our national political life have put the case together, as Palin has, without temporizing or bloviating. I haven’t heard anyone else do what she does with this post. She acknowledges the actual, enormous scope of the problem, envisions a solution, and outlines what to do to achieve it, with encouragement that it can be done. It is sad and a little frightening that so many Americans have become unable to see this for what it is: leadership. Almost everyone else is focused more narrowly, on one aspect of the problem or another, and a good few commentators don’t seem to even have the vocabulary or the mental infrastructure to address the problem itself; they can only express opinions about the impossibility of the politics surrounding it.

It is the opposite of stupid to recognize the problem’s stark and simple outlines when all around you are swinging blindfolded at piñatas. We spend too much, and we suppress economic growth and revenues with regulation. Palin articulates that clearly. Her ability to reach out directly through social media, and put her case in her terms, is a net positive for our current political climate. She remains one of the best reasons to not let the MSM dictate our ideas and preferences to us.

J.E. Dyer’s articles have appeared at The Green Room, Commentary’s “contentions,” Patheos, The Weekly Standard online, and her own blog, The Optimistic Conservative.

This post was promoted from GreenRoom to HotAir.com.
To see the comments on the original post, look here.

Palin knocks it out of the park

Canadian DollarThe Canadian continued continued to fall against the majors today, along with the other “commodity” currencies, as the global growth perspectives remained dim.

The loonie, as the currency is often called, fell to the lowest level in two weeks against the US dollar, traded with a great volatility against the euro and demonstrated its 5th straight day of decline against the Japanese yen today.

Along with the general market sentiment that the global economic growth will have to scale down, following the US deficit-cutting measures, the Canadian dollar was also influenced by the today’s bad statistics from the United States. The personal income grew slower than expected in June (0.1 percent vs. 0.2 percent forecast), while the personal spending fell by 0.2 percent (with a 0.1 percent gain forecast).

USD/CAD rose from 0.9559 to 0.9600 as of 16:47 GMT today, with a daily high at 0.9618 — the lowest level since July 18. EUR/CAD rose only slightly — from 1.3626 to 1.3632. CAD/JPY declined from 80.91 to 80.34.

If you have any questions, comments or opinions regarding the Canadian Dollar, feel free to post them using the commentary form below.

Earlier News About the Canadian Dollar:

    Loonie Declines as Economy Contracts (2011-07-29)
    CAD Sets New Multi-Year Record on US Crisis Expectations (2011-07-26)
    Canadian Inflation Slows, Loonie Retreats (2011-07-22)
    CAD Reaches Three-Year High vs. USD (2011-07-22)
    BOC Rate Statement Invigorates Loonie (2011-07-19)

This entry was posted on TopForexNews on Tuesday, August 2nd, 2011 at 4:50 pm and is filed under Canadian Dollar. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

Canadian Dollar Falls Along with Other Commodity Currencies

Japanese yenThe Japanese yen dropped heavily against everything on the Forex market today, following the currency intervention by the country’s central bank.

The yen declined most notably against the US dollar, demonstrating the biggest daily drop since October 2008. It also fell to the lowest rate against the euro since July 11 and reached the price minimum against the Great Britain pound since July 5.

The Bank of Japan followed the footsteps of the Swiss National Bank and intervened the currency market today, increasing the amounts of yen it purchases in order to hold down the currency appreciation:

    …to enhance monetary easing by increasing the total size of the Asset Purchase Program by about 10 trillion yen2 from about 40 trillion yen to about 50 trillion yen.

The market analysts believe that the success of this measure will depend on how persistent the country’s central bank will be. To keep the yen down, they’ll have to continue with similar measures. One-time event just won’t do it for something as bullish as the Japanese yen.

USD/JPY rose from 76.97 to 79.78 as of 12:37 GMT today, reaching as high as 80.23 (the maximum since July 12) earlier. EUR/JPY went up from 110.54 to 113.09. GBP/JPY advanced from 126.54 to 130.21 today.

If you have any questions, comments or opinions regarding the Japanese Yen, feel free to post them using the commentary form below.

Earlier News About the Japanese Yen:

    Yen Gains on Greece & US Debt Problems (2011-07-28)
    EU Summit Eases Need for Safety, Yen Drops (2011-07-22)
    Second Week of Gains for Yen, Will BOJ Intervene? (2011-07-16)
    Yen Declines as Chinese Economy Grows (2011-07-13)
    Growing China's Economy Saps Demand for Safety of Yen (2011-06-14)

This entry was posted on TopForexNews on Thursday, August 4th, 2011 at 12:39 pm and is filed under Japanese Yen. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allo

Yen Slumps on BoJ Intervention

posted at 5:25 pm on August 3, 2011 by Allahpundit

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Two caveats to his otherwise strict support for the Tenth Amendment, both of which happen to serve the agenda of social conservatives whose votes he’s depending on. He backed away from his “states’ rights” defense of legalizing gay marriage last week; here’s the inevitable climbdown on abortion too, which he described as a states’ rights issue a few days ago. Follow that last link and re-read the post to see why it was predictable. I’m surprised he didn’t anticipate the tension his Tenther rhetoric on these issues would cause with his base, which he could have defused by mentioning his support for the amendments straightaway. There’s nothing necessarily inconsistent in that position: You can be a strong federalist and still condone federal solutions for exceptionally grave evils like slavery which the states, for various reasons, can’t be trusted to police as diligently as they should. That’s the core of the pro-life argument for an anti-abortion amendment — it’s a matter, literally, of life and death. What’s Perry’s argument, though, for why gay marriage qualifies as an “exceptionally grave evil” warranting a nationwide ban? Is smoking, say, an evil sufficiently grave to require a constitutional amendment outlawing it? (Don’t answer that, liberals.) He’s not in a legal trap here but he is in a philosophical one. And a political one, of course, as the press will use this to throw him off his economic message. Specify, please, which behaviors are so pernicious that we can’t risk letting parochial state legislatures deal with them.

Incidentally, as with Fred Thompson four years ago, the media’s “Perry as GOP savior?” hype is already being replaced by the “Perry as overhyped flop?” counter-narrative. Here’s Politico’s new piece wondering whether a tea-party-flavored Bush soundalike can get traction with the current conservative base. (One state Republican chairman compares Perry to “Will Ferrell doing a George W. Bush imitation.”) And here’s CNN noting that Perry’s upcoming prayer event, which can accommodate 71,000 people, has had just 8,000 registrants thus far. I doubt Perry cares — the real audience for that event is in Iowa, not Texas — but they’ll build that counter-narrative with any available brick. Exit question via Democratic pollster PPP: Does the GOP need Romney to win?

Rick Perry: I support constitutional amendments to ban gay marriage and abortion

posted at 2:05 pm on August 3, 2011 by Ed Morrissey
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Did anyone win in the recently concluded deal that reduced the upward trajectory of federal spending? In my column for The Week, I argue that Barack Obama certainly was the big loser, having blown an opportunity that he himself cultivated for months to demonstrate leadership. While the deal doesn’t feel like a win to Tea Party activists at the moment, I argue that they won an important opening skirmish:

    Reid gave up on tax hikes, not because he got tired of talking about them, but because there isn’t any appetite for tax hikes on Capitol Hill — thanks to the power and influence of the Tea Party. The cuts mandated in this compromise might be paltry, especially at first, but they represent a step in the right direction. For the first time in perhaps decades, Congress will approach budget shortfalls by looking at where spending can actually be reduced rather than where revenue can be raised.

    That is a remarkable paradigm shift, and one worthy of celebration after a decade of exploding deficits from Congresses controlled by both parties. Without the Tea Party, that paradigm shift would never have occurred. Indeed, without the Tea Party and their victorious candidates, the debt-ceiling increase would have been a routine vote noted only by a few bloggers and the back pages of most newspapers.

    Understandably, most Tea Party activists see this as business as usual and not the kind of transformative, instant change they envisioned. But just as Rome wasn’t built in a day, it will take much more than one vote or one budget to build the kind of limited, fiscally responsible America that these activists desire. The expansion of the federal government has gone on for decades, and it will take many battles and victories, small and large, to reverse it. This is a long journey, and the Tea Party helped push the nation into taking a step in the right direction.

There are two dangers in incremental victories, which are closely related to one another. The first is that they tend to discourage activists who want big, unmistakable, validating victories. However, those will only come with big, unmistakable majorities in Congress and a different President in the White House. Given the relative weight of the Tea Party caucus on Capitol Hill in this Congressional session makes the win here even more remarkable. It’s very important to remember that our political system is heavily weighted against radical change in the short term, and that lasting change takes patience and long-term planning.

The second danger is that the activists will turn on each other and on their nominal allies. If that happens, they will lose the ability to grow their standing in Congress. Worse, they will alienate those who want to work towards the same general goals but who may differ on tactics and time lines. That will bring incremental progress to a halt, while at the same time pushing activists into giving up altogether. We need to avoid a “Mission Accomplished” mentality, but more importantly recognize that incremental progress is not futile.

Meanwhile, on the other end of the ledger, Barack Obama comes out as the biggest loser in this fight. I give an explanation for that in my column, but two media reports today confirm this as a consensus position. First, The Hill takes us inside the negotiations, where John Boehner apparently ordered the President out of negotiations at one point:

    GOP aides and lawmakers, speaking on background, portrayed Boehner as the calm negotiator who repeatedly exasperated President Obama.

    Boehner last month asked the networks to televise his response to Obama’s address to the nation, a request which infuriated the White House, Republican sources said.

    On July 23, they claim, the White House called Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), telling her not to participate on a call with Boehner, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). Pelosi informed Reid, who declined to participate, and the call was canceled, the Republican sources said. (A Pelosi spokesman could not be reached for comment.)

    Later that day, the four leaders met with Obama at the White House. At one point, GOP officials said, the Democratic and Republican leaders asked Obama and his aides to leave the room to let them negotiate.

Reid reneged on the agreement that was reached at that point under pressure from the White House, according to the Hill’s account based on their GOP sources. Obama had to send Joe Biden into the final negotiations instead. But it’s not just Republicans who are painting Obama as a bumbling negotiator, as the LA Times reports:

    Moreover, many Democrats — including some ordinarily sympathetic to the president — feel part of the problem is of Obama’s own making. …

    Given the acrimony and the high-stakes deadline, the impasse posed a severe test of Obama’s negotiating skills. On the fly he sought to improve his relationship with Boehner, inviting the speaker to play a round of golf early in the talks. But White House officials believe that personalities aren’t at the root of congressional paralysis. …

    Others are more critical, comparing Obama unfavorably with presidents who made broad use of their executive powers in times of crisis: Harry Truman, who nationalized the steel industry in 1952 in the face of a steel strike, for example, or John F. Kennedy, who denounced steel executives for price increases and threatened them with an antitrust investigation.

    “I am just sorely upset that Obama doesn’t seize the moment,” Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) said as the final deal was coming together. “That’s what great presidents do in times of crisis. They exert executive leadership. He went wobbly in the knees.”

The White House apparently hopes that the deal will eventually be popular enough for Obama to benefit, but the problem with that idea is that Obama had nothing to do with the eventual deal. His only stated demand — higher taxes — got taken off the table more than a week before the compromise. At the end, Obama ended up accepting a Congressional diktat rather than leading the path to a solution. Obama ended up as little more than a spectator at his own leadership opportunity, and everyone knows it