Laugh at Liberals

Laugh at Liberals Archive for October, 2005

WAS MIERS’ NOMINATION STUPID OR BRILLIANT?

I have to begin this by saying I love conspiracy theories, or rather the idea of conspiracies. Reading to much Tom Clancy will do that to you.

With that being said, I’d like to offer a theory of my own for your debate. Harriet Miers’ nomination and subsequent withdrawl was a calculated political ploy that will allow Bush to nominate a very conservative judge to the court with little or no opposition and will help the Republican Party in the coming election cycle.

Fact #1: The Bush team had to know, HAD TO KNOW, that the Miers nomination would not be very well received by certain members of the conservative movement. They were told as much prior to the announcement. They also had to know that the Democrats and the anit-judiciary machine behind them would go nuts over someone so obviously lacking in experience. So why do it?

Fact #2: If you take the Harriet Miers story out of the news cycle, the only thing left is “The Leak”. As it is now, Miers’ nomination beat that story to the back page, her backing out is going to be the talk for days and then the next nominee (the real one) will be the next big story.

Fact #3: Up until the Miers nomination one of the big cards liberals played against Republicans was that the party was being steered by the religious right/ulta-conservative base. I can’t tell you how many stories I’ve seen talking about how Bush has abonded his base.

Fact #4: Whoever the new nominee is ( I think Janice Rogers Brown) the Democrats are going to look like nattering nabobs of negativism when they oppose that nominee. All Americans are going to say, “Come on already!”

What has the Miers nomination done?
A. Created some cover for Rove and company during the Plame name leak investigation.
B. Forced the left’s “anti-judiciary machine” to expend time and energy chasing a red herring.
C. Set up the next nominee, if they have any qualifications at all, to look like a superstar.
D. Sets up the Democrats who will oppose the next nominee, and they will, as whiners.
E. Allows Bush to play hardball on a “real” choice for the bench.
F. Helps Republicans in the next election in a number of ways such as; Allowing Republicans who opposed the nomination to say, “See, I’m not a Bush rubber stamper”, Let’s swing voters know that the Republican party is not run by the radical right, and there are more advantages.

It’s amazing to consider how many real advantages there are to the Miers nomination. If it was part of a master plan, it would be akin to what the German army did in World War II. Young, inexperience soldiers would be sent by the thousands to a particular front with no real hope of victory. The real purpose was to draw attention away from the real battle plans, force the enemy to expend manpower, time and energy, while allowing the experienced German soldiers to prepare for the real battle.

The Miers nomination may not have been a calculated move. It may have been a stupid blunder. But it’s a blunder with no real down side and a lot of advantages. What do you think?

Global Super Powers And The World of Tommarow

This post shall be divided into three sections. The First Part shall discuss the threat of Economic take over of China, and the second shall deal with a revived Russian Super Power, and the third shall discuss the United States. This will be an extremely LONG Post. Not for those who skim, I recommend if one wishes to comment on it that they read the entire article so that they do not miss anything.

I. China

1. Introduction:

China is of course, a Communist nation and has been since Mao Zedong proclaimed the People’s Republic of China (PRC) on October 1, 1949 in Beijing. From the beginning, the Peoples Republic of China has been a dictatorial one-party state under the Communist Party. However, post-1978 reforms have led to the relaxation, in varying degrees, of party control over many areas of society. Nonetheless, the Communist Party still has absolute control over political aspects of society, and it continuously seeks to eradicate threats to its rule. Examples of this include the jailing of political opponents and journalists, general control of the press, regulation of religions and other non-party organizations, censorship of the press, literature and film, and suppression of independence/secessionist movements. Look into the incident in Tiananmen Square for more information on just how far the Chinese government is willing to go to suppress any threat to its regime.

China is naturally a Nationalist state meaning they love their country enough to destroy all foreigners, and even themselves to protect it. Political propaganda has pervaded many aspects of daily life in China. The history of communist propaganda in China predates the establishment of the PRC, and it has since manifested itself in various forms, such as songs, paintings, posters, and films. Propaganda produced by the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been disseminated through state-controlled print and electronic media, and the CCP has made prolific use of the Internet as a means of distributing propaganda to both Chinese citizens and foreigners in the modern age.

2. Conquest of The Global Market.

Right Now, I’d like the reader to take a moment to read a previous post of mine from this site, as it will help tie this all together. It will be re-posted here for the reader’s convenience.

The Issue at hand is Mortgage rates, and why this conundrum of rising interest rates, but low mortgage rates exists.

First off before I start rambling on, lets look at some background information.
The Federal Reserve sets period rates: literally, the “overnight‿ cost of money. This rate is the rate one bank pays another for have a loan of money overnight. The rationale of banks borrowing from one another is to maintain what are called minimum reserve requirements. If You’re a bank and you have, say, $ 350 million in loans outstanding, you’re required to keep a minimum percentage of those loans, in cash, at all times. So if one day Bank A lends out a little more than it can cover with reserves, it borrows from it’s buddy Bank B, which happens to have a little spare cash on it’s hands.

Long-term interest rates (which include mortgage rates) are an entirely different story. These rates are “set‿ by the bond market, just the way the stock market “sets‿ stock prices. Banks, brokerage firms, pension funds, foreign countries, mutual funds, insurance companies and individual investors bid for bonds when the Treasury sells them every three months. The more demand there is the higher the “bid‿ the less the Treasury has to pay in interest rates to sell them. The Federal government can, and does, try to tinker with long-term rates by buying and selling bonds that it holds. But as big as it is, the Federal government can’t control the global market. These bonds are then bought and sold all day long, fine-tuning long-term rates between Treasury auctions. And because the market is so large and liquid, other long-term loan rates — like mortgages — tend to follow suit.

So, why the conundrum? Several economists have come up with a theory that goes a little something like this.

Say you buy a new pair of sneakers at Wal-Mart that were made outside the U.S. A few of your dollars end up at Wal-Mart headquarters where they’re booked as profit in the company’s next quarterly earnings report. A few more dollars wind up in the hands of the American company that imported your new sneakers. A few more go to the truckers and owners of cargo ships that brought them to you. But a significant chunk of your dollars end up in the country where the products were made.

Last year, around $650 billion ended up outside the U.S. The country with the most, China, took in over $162 billion in 04. Oil producers, lead by Saudi Arabia, received $164 billion from American purchases of gasoline, heating oil and other products made from crude oil.

So what would you do if you were one of those countries with a piece of that $650 billion? You can’t spend it on goods and services: your country has already bought all the stuff from the U.S. that it needs, wants or can afford. You could put it in a bank, but for many countries holding surplus trade dollars, especially those with shaky banking systems, that’s not necessarily a very good Idea

Eventually, those U.S. dollars come back home in return for I.O.U.’s from The Federal Government called U.S. Treasury securities, still one of the safest places in the world to stash cash. As long as our Congress continues to spend more than it rises in taxes, we’ll have plenty of that Treasury debt to sell. All that demand helps keep interest rates low.

One reason China is getting so much attention, aside from the huge chunk of the trade deficit it creates, is that it has kept its own exchange, the Yuan, artificially low by pegging it to the dollar. No one knows just how much it would rise if it were allowed to “Float‿ but the strength of the Chinese economy indicates that the Yuan should be valued considerably higher relative to the dollar.

The US dollar is at the center of a series of processes that are contributing to global financial imbalances. On the one hand, the growing US balance of payments gap threatens to bring about a collapse in the dollar’s value. On the other hand, action to close the balance of payments gap would almost certainly set off a global recession as the US is the chief market for the export industries of China and East Asia, many of them US-based firms.

So far intervention by the Asian central banks, which have sold their own currencies in order to purchase US financial assets, including a growing amount of government debt, has prevented a precipitous decline in the dollar’s value. But they need to keep the money flowing in and with the US needing around $2 billion a day the amounts are not small. In 2003 dollar purchases by foreign central banks were $616.6 billion, compared to $351.9 billion the year before. The total reserves of the countries of so-called “emerging Asia‿ rose by more than $350 billion in the year to March 2004, with the central bank of China the biggest buyer of US dollar assets.

Sustained by an incredible $403 billion in foreign reserves, Chinese companies are going on a shopping spree, with a menagerie of elite mainland brands establishing footholds abroad. Leading state enterprises are scouting for overseas partners or takeover targets that offer technology, raw materials and inroads into new markets. Capital is flowing out at record levels—China claimed overseas assets of $35 billion as of the end of 2002. And with a string of new deals either landed or on the horizon, “China will become a visible player not just in the markets for toys and TVs this year,” says Dong Tao, chief regional economist for Credit Suisse First Boston in Hong Kong, “but in mergers and acquisitions around the globe.”

3. Military strength.

One Looks to the future, and can see an obvious Chinese Domination of the entire Global economy, meanwhile the U.S slides further and further and further into debt, so far in fact, that it may not be able to defend itself against a possible upcoming threat posed militarily by not only China itself, but also the reemergence of Russia as a world superpower. (For more information on that, see previous post “The Biggest Issue No One Is Talking About”)

China’s Military might is becoming a rapid problem for the U.S. If War is ever declared on China it will be for one reason and one reason only, Taiwan. Taiwan has been separated from China when it became communist in 1949, But the Peoples Republic of China still considers it a part of Chinese domain, and has decreed a policy of war if Taiwan is to declare their Independence. Naturally The U.S will want to protect Taiwan, after all we are profiting off of it as many of our goods are produced there for cheap wages. This future conflict could spell not only disaster, but also humiliation for The U.S, as Chinese Military might stands at almost twice our own, with peacetime army of over 2.5 Million. Add that to the increased spending in defense that has produced missiles capable of penetrating the defense grid of many U.S naval forces.

3.1 Nuclear Arms

China does have a reasonable nuclear arsenal, but it’s current policy is to never use them unless nuked first. Therefore it is not likely that any nuclear conflict with china will ever happen.

II. Russia

1. Introduction

Russia is a very interesting topic right now, President Vladimir Puten, the leader of The Russian Federation, seems to be taking steps to Re-Birth the former Soviet Union There are sections of a previous Post her that I’d like to quote.

“The Biggest Issue Nobody is Talking About”.

President Putin, a former KGB heavy back in the days of the original USSR, has forged world alliances, formed his own party, rebuilt Russia’s economy, and now has won such a solid majority for his party in the elections yesterday that he likely has the power to rewrite the constitution at his will and get any law passed he chooses.

He now has four more years to take advantage of Bush’s bankrupting, naive foreign policy and absolute spinelessness. He knows the difference between a bully and someone truly strong. The bully is bold in attacking the weak but cowardly when confronted by anyone who truly is a match. Putin knows Bush loved acting tough by launching a massive attack against Iraq, a nation that had been rendered defenseless by a decade of UN sanctions, but that he doesn’t dare stand up to any real threat: not to Pakistan, not to North Korea, and certainly not to Russia.

2. Rebuilt Economy

In 2004, Russia’s real gross domestic product (GDP) grew by approximately 7.1%, surpassing average growth rates in all other G8 countries, and marking the country’s sixth consecutive year of economic expansion. Russia’s economic growth over the last five years has been fueled primarily by energy exports, particularly given the boom in Russian oil production and relatively high world oil prices during the period. This Economic growth is Fueled Mainly by Oil and Natural Gas prices. As it stands, Russia is one of the largest exporters of oil in the world, second only to Saudi Arabia. Over 70% of Russian crude oil production is sent directly abroad for export, while the remaining 30% is refined locally. It also holds the world’s largest natural gas reserves, with 1,680 trillion cubic feet, nearly twice the reserves in the next largest country, Iran.

3. Military

Russia currently has 1,520,000 military personnel serving in their combined military force, which at the moment is about the same as ours. The Russian military equipment is out dated and far inferior to our own, how ever mass build up of arms and equipment has begun recently wit profits from the Russian oil trade. It’s fair to saw that Russian military might is being significantly upgraded. Russia has the ability to produce and manufacture vehicles and materials to become the most powerful nation in the world. However, because of the economic decline they suffered from Communist rule it will take a very long time for them to even consider getting back on track.

III. The United States

1. Introduction

The United States already has had super power status in the world since the end of the Second World War. Threw careful manipulation of the world around it, it even managed to survive the cold war. Currently it is using this power in a global conflict against terrorism, and Iraq. There are also a great many situations that the United States is involved in on a global scale such as negotiations in North Korea and Iran over Nuclear arms. While the majority of it’s focus is in the middle east the United States is still a very major player on the world scale.

2. Economy

There can be no doubt about it, compared to the immense growth by the other two future super powers, the United States seems to be declining. Don’t get me wrong, The U.S is extreamly strong economicly RIGHT NOW, being the top in forign trade, etc… what I’m about to talk about is the decline in GROWTH of our economy, and how we’re endanger of having our economy out produced by the other two future superpowers. As stated above, China owns a massive chunk of Trade deficit as well as Saudi Arabia and other countries. Production has moved over seas to countries like South Korea and Taiwan where labor is cheaper. Major corporations have also taken advantage of tax looph0oles and have moved corporate HQ over seas to avoid paying taxes.

Now, as you’ve guessed I’d like to put in yet another quote from a previous post Thoughts on the Economy

Our deficit ceiling just got raised to $8 trillion. Our annual deficit is running over $450 billion.

This is why you no longer hear the President or conservatives talk about balancing the budget through spending cuts. That old rhetoric about how just by cutting programs for those poor, lazy minorities you could balance things out is replaced by the reality that even entirely eliminating such programs doesn’t even come close to making a dent in things – you could entirely eliminate programs for the poor and still have about $400 billion of deficit, or about 20% of all the rest, much of which is uncuttable.

3. Military

Military is the U.S specialty. The United States currently spends $370.7 billion on defense, that’s more than the next 5 countries combined. Our Current Military strategy is to be prepared to fight 2 wars at the same time, so you can see why such a massive military is required. As it stands the U.S Army has military troops all over the world, From South Korea, to Germany, to Saudi Arabia and of course Iraq and Afghanistan. We have the most high tech equipment available, and currently have a great many contractors working on development of “Next Gen” technology. There can be no doubt about it the military of the United states is, and will continue to be a dominant force in the world so long as we have the man power to maintain it.

IV. Conclusion:

As you can see the Future will be very interesting. No more will things like abortion seem important as we may have 3 superpowers battling each other for supremacy, which brings to mind a question, have we, the human race, learned our lessons from the Cold War when two Super powers fighting for supremacy nearly destroyed each other and the world with them?

Jack Antilla.

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Foot Notes

1. New Yorker.Com “IN YUAN WE TRUST” Oct 7, 2005
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/articles/050418ta_talk_surowiecki

2. Frank W Moore, IDDS Research Analyst, ComW.Org “China’s Military Capabilities ”
Oct 7, 2005
http://www.comw.org/cmp/fulltext/iddschina.html

3. Wikipedia.org “CHINA” Oct 7, 2005
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China

4. Wikipedia.org “Economy of the People’s Republic of China” Oct 7, 2005
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_People’s_Republic_of_China

5. The Economist Intelligence Unit, “China” (Economic Structure) Oct 7,2005
http://www.economist.com/countries/China/profile.cfm?folder=Profile-Economic%20Structure

6. Bigpicture.typepad.com “Subsidizing U.S. Borrowing & Spending” Oct 7, 2005
http://bigpicture.typepad.com/comments/2005/10/subsidizing_us_.html

7. Jonathan Weisman The Washington Post “Foreign Investment Aids Cleanup, Despite Adding to U.S. Deficit” Oct 7, 2005
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/20/AR2005092001650.html

8. George Wehrfritz MSNBC “Flush with billions in foreign reserves, China is embarking on a buying spree” (China: Going Global) Oct 7, 2005
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4432131/site/newsweek/

9. EIA.Gov “Russia” Oct 8 2005,
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/russia.html

10. RML “Russian Military links” Oct. 14th, 2005
http://www.edu.uni-klu.ac.at/~kkehraus/

11. Nationmaster.com “Russian Profile‿ Oct. 18th, 2005
http://www.nationmaster.com/country/rs/Military

12. CIA.Gov “United States” Oct 18th, 2005
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/us.html

13. BLS.Gov “United States Economy” Oct 18th, 2005
http://www.bls.gov/eag/eag.us.htm

I Recommend reference #5 for a visual look at many Charts on Chinese Economics, It may help, it may not.

Stem Cells

Speaking of stem cells…
It seems that the main problem with those pesky blastocyst cells are that they generate tumors.
But, guess what?
Stem cells harvested from a ‘little one’ (fetus) at 16 weeks gestation and onward do not have this problem! Isn’t that great? The older the little one in the womb, the more value their cells hold for the bigger people outside the womb who are battling diseases. Eureka!
Break out the party poppers and champagne! Roll the giant cake out with the dancing girls! It’s party time for those stem cell researchers who’ve been fighting for the ‘good of humanity’ for so long. Prestige, money, power…these have nothing to do with this.
Now, if they can only convince the majority of people that this fetus isn’t really fully human…
(Do the modern history books still address this mindset in our slavery days? The Holocaust?)