Obama achieves Reagan's dream

Back in the 1980's  one of President Reagan's great hopes was for the USA and the Soviet Union to jointly build a missile defense shield. Well, it looks like it may finally happen thanks to President Obama:

LISBON - Russia agreed Saturday to cooperate with NATO on building a U.S.-planned anti-missile network in Europe as part of what was described as a new era in security relations between the former Cold War enemies.

The accord, announced at a NATO summit in Lisbon, symbolized a conclusion by the United States and its main European allies that Russia is not a threat to be protected from but a potential ally in girding the continent against possible ballistic missile attacks from Iran or elsewhere.

I hope he follows the Gipper more often.

Obama, Bush, Monkeys and Chimps

A Young Liberal has gotten himself into a spot of bother by referring to President Obama as a monkey on twitter. Now, I regard such comments as completely inappropriate but I do remember there  was no shortage of people comparing President Bush to a chimpanzee.  I'm unaware anyone ever got reprimanded for doing so. 

President Obama is entitled to the same level of insults as any other President. To spare him such insults because of his color amounts to racism. If Bush could put up with it so can Obama.

Safer to lend to Buffett than Barack Obama

The United States, a nation already suffering from huge budgetary deficits has just passed a Health Care bill that will cost them billions. The result- Warren Buffett is a safer investment then Obama's government:

March 22 (Bloomberg) -- The bond market is saying that it’s safer to lend to Warren Buffett than Barack Obama.
Two-year notes sold by the billionaire’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. in February yield 3.5 basis points less than Treasuries of similar maturity, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Procter & Gamble Co., Johnson & Johnson and Lowe’s Cos. debt also traded at lower yields in recent weeks, a situation former Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. chief fixed-income strategist Jack Malvey calls an “exceedingly rare” event in the history of the bond market.

Global Financial Crisis? That was just the warm up act to the coming Global Financial Catastrophe. 

Also this has been around for some time but I only saw it today:

Obama likes nukes

President Obama has become a big supporter of nuclear power:

US President Barack Obama has taken a major bet on nuclear power, announcing $US8 billion ($9 billion) in loan guarantees to build the first new plant on US soil in nearly 30 years.

Mr Obama said nuclear power, despite concerns among some environmentalists over safety, must play a key role in an energy policy designed to cut greenhouse gas emissions and wean the United States off foreign oil from volatile regions.

"On an issue which affects our economy, our security, and the future of our planet, we cannot continue to be mired in the same old debates between left and right, between environmentalists and entrepreneurs," Mr Obama said today.

"We'll have to build a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants in America," he said on a visit to a training centre focusing on clean energy and low carbon energy technologies outside Washington.

I'm not sure why loan guarantees are required but promoting the only emission free baseload power source sounds good to me. Perhaps he can tell Kevin Rudd about the benefits when he visits Australia next month.

Obama: the European view

It seems that many in Europe are increasing forming a negative view of President Obama. First their's French President who basically told him to get real:

: “President Obama dreams of a world without weapons … but right in front of us two countries are doing the exact opposite. Iran since 2005 has flouted five security council resolutions. North Korea has been defying council resolutions since 1993. I support the extended hand of the Americans, but what good has proposals for dialogue brought the international community? More uranium enrichment and declarations by the leaders of Iran to wipe a UN member state off the map.”

An then theres his relation ship with Russia:

His latest achievement has been to restore the former satellite states to dependency on Moscow, by wimping out of the missile defence shield plan. This follows on his surrender last July when he voluntarily sacrificed around a third of America’s nuclear capability for no perceptible benefit beyond a grim smile from Putin. If there is one thing that fans the fires of aggression it is appeasement.

Despite propaganda to the contrary, 58 per cent of Poles were in favour of the missile shield. But small nations must assess the political will of larger powers. Thanks to President Pantywaist’s supine policies, the former satellite states can see that they are fast returning to their former status. The American umbrella cannot be relied upon on a rainy day. They have been here before. Poles remember how a leftist US president sold them out to Russia at Tehran and Yalta. The former Czechoslovakia was betrayed twice: in 1938 and1945.

Its sounding more and more like a Carter re-run every day.

PETA loves flies

Is there a more silly organisation than PETA? Here's their latest stunt:

PEOPLE for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is upset with Barack Obama killing a fly during a televised interview - and are sending him a parcel to prove it.

PETA is sending President Barack Obama a Katcha Bug Humane Bug Catcher, a device that allows users to trap a house fly and then release it outside.

"We support compassion even for the most curious, smallest and least sympathetic animals," PETA spokesman Bruce Friedrich said Wednesday. "

We believe that people, where they can be compassionate, should be, for all animals."

The USA really is in decline

At least parts of it are. They are thinking of bulldozing entire city districts. :

Dozens of US cities may have entire neighbourhoods bulldozed as part of drastic "shrink to survive" proposals being considered by the Obama administration to tackle economic decline.

The government looking at expanding a pioneering scheme in Flint, one of the poorest US cities, which involves razing entire districts and returning the land to nature.

Local politicians believe the city must contract by as much as 40 per cent, concentrating the dwindling population and local services into a more viable area.

The radical experiment is the brainchild of Dan Kildee, treasurer of Genesee County, which includes Flint.

Having outlined his strategy to Barack Obama during the election campaign, Mr Kildee has now been approached by the US government and a group of charities who want him to apply what he has learnt to the rest of the country.

"Shrink to Survive". Hmmmm... Perhaps California could try that.

Good one Mr President

Its good to see that President Obama took decisive action to free the American captain from his pirate captors. :

MOMBASA, Kenya - U.S. Navy snipers opened fire and killed three pirates holding an American captain at gunpoint, delivering the skipper unharmed and ending a five-day high-seas hostage drama on Easter Sunday.

The pirates were pointing AK-47s at Capt. Richard Phillips and he was in "imminent danger" of being killed when the commander of the nearby USS Bainbridge made the split-second decision to order his men to shoot, Vice Adm. Bill Gortney said.

Somalia is a failed state that is a haven for pirates and other criminals. A good place for a terrorist base. The only long term solution I can think off is imperialism but thats out of fashion at the moment.

Obama bows

I'm just disgusted by this. Remember slavery was still legal in Saudi Arabia until 1962 and is regarded by the US as a Tier 3 country in respect to human trafficking- "countries whose governments do not fully comply with the minimum standards and are not making significant efforts to do so."

Paul Keating and Tim Geithner

Tim Geithner, the US Secretary of the Treasury is well know to former Prime Minister Paul Keating:

In a speech to a closed gathering at the Lowy Institute in Sydney on Thursday, Paul Keating gave a starkly different account of Geithner's record in handling the Asian crisis: "Tim Geithner was the Treasury line officer who wrote the IMF [International Monetary Fund] program for Indonesia in 1997-98, which was to apply current account solutions to a capital account crisis."

In other words, Geithner fundamentally misdiagnosed the problem. And his misdiagnosis led to a dreadfully wrong prescription.

Geithner thought Asia's problem was the same as the ones that had shattered Latin America in the 1980s and Mexico in 1994, a classic current account crisis. In this kind of crisis, the central cause is that the government has run impossibly big debts.

The solution? The IMF, the Washington-based emergency lender of last resort, will make loans to keep the country solvent, but on condition the government hacks back its spending. The cure addresses the ailment.

But the Asian crisis was completely different. The Asian governments that went to the IMF for emergency loans - Thailand, South Korea and Indonesia - all had sound public finances.

The problem was not government debt. It was great tsunamis of hot money in the private capital markets. When the wave rushed out, it left a credit drought behind.

But Geithner, through his influence on the IMF, imposed the same cure the IMF had imposed on Latin America and Mexico. It was the wrong cure. Indeed, it only aggravated the problem.

Keating continued: "Soeharto's government delivered 21 years of 7 per cent compound growth. It takes a gigantic fool to mess that up. But the IMF messed it up. The end result was the biggest fall in GDP in the 20th century. That dubious distinction went to Indonesia. And, of course, Soeharto lost power."

Remember this is the bloke Obama appointed to solve the financial crisis.

Big, Big Deficits

Gateway Pundit points out the graph below. The Obama budget will lead to a deficit four times larger the Bush's:




Meanwhile Mr Rudd has left us with an extra $4500 of spending per head, Andrew Bolt asks:

How on earth are we going to pay all that back, with unemployment rising and growth falling?

Easy answer, with inflation and higher taxes.

America getting out of Iraq

President Obama has set August 2010 as the deadline to end US combat duties in Iraq but he will still leave 50,000 troops ( thats about double the size of Australia's permanant army personnel) there until 2011:

US PRESIDENT Barack Obama has ordered an end to US combat in Iraq within 18 months.

"Let me say this as plainly as I can: by August 31, 2010 our combat mission in Iraq will end,'' Mr Obama said, laying out a new war strategy at a US Marines base in North Carolina.

But angering some supporters, Mr Obama said up to 50,000 US troops, compared to the current 142,000-strong force, would remain in Iraq under a new mission until the end of 2011, nearly nine years after his predecessor George W Bush ordered an invasion to topple Saddam Hussein.

Considering that the real hard yacca is over its properly a good decision. Senator John Mcain approves too. However I wouldn't be surprised if there are still considerable troops there long after 2011, especially if Iran becomes a problem, after all there are still US troops in Japan and Germany.

My Hope for Change

I'm an unashamed admirer of how Barack Obama used the Internet in his election campaign, awestruck would be a better description, so I'll be watching closely how he will use the Internet in government. Lots of Youtube videos and a blog for the White house are obvious developments, but will he be able to usher in a Web 2.00 government? Will he be able to use modern technology to reform public service administration? That's the big test. Various governments have introduced some interesting applications such as fix My Street and the Apps for Democracy but clearly there's a long way to go. If he can harness the 'net to cut through bureaucracy and red tape I'll be a happy little small government free marketeer.