Obama: a headless chicken.......

POTUS gives every indication of running around with only half his senses. He has had a bad start to his second term and his problems are far from over.

 

The weak acceptance of Chuck Hagel as SOD should  have taken its toll on O who undoubtedly hoped would contribute to a blue ribbon team of new cabinet members. Chuck did so badly in his appearance before the Senate Armed Services Committee that many are surprised he was even willing to show his face.  

 

And now O has to worry about the sequester eating his lunch. In a childlike manner, O has gone around the US warning everyone that the sequester will result in reductions in police, firemen, and other locally funded personnel knowing full well that such people are not on the national payroll.

 

O is making a bit of an ass out of himself and for no good reason. To cap all this off, some 900 illegal alien petty criminals were just released from detention on the grounds that the sequester has cut available funds; this was done by Janet Napolitano, SOHS nearly a week before the sequester is expected to begin.

 

Meanwhile, the politically correct right and left is having fits over FLOTUS opening the envelope announcing the Oscar winner for best picture of 2012. Most Americans could care less who opens the silly envelope, but in this case the media is giving considerable attention to those few who believe such activity is un-first lady like.

 

Our new SOS is as lackluster as he was when he campaigned for POTUS against W some eight years ago. Interestingly, it was John Kerry who introduced O to the US when O delivered the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention that year.

 

I wonder if there is such a thing as SOS fatigue with our people traveling all over the world putting on dog and pony shows. I can hear foreign dignitaries saying something like of ‘God, here comes the SOS again and we have to jump through hoops of fire to get the menu, protocol, accommodations, security, and agenda right’.

'Gays': time to return to the closet?

Let me say from the outset that I have no interest, let alone objection to what people do behind closed doors. I am with Mrs Pat who famously said ‘It doesn’t matter what you do as long as you don’t do it in the street and frighten the horses’.

 

But I recently saw a figure – don’t ask me for a link – that said that the homosexual population of the UK was 1.6% of the total.

 

If this is correct, or even inaccurate by a factor of 10, it occurs to me that they get far too much attention from the politicians and the chattering classes, far too much media coverage, far too much Parliamentary time, far too much legislative protection and favour and have far too much all-round influence.

 

We have recently had to endure the obscene farce of the debate on ‘gay, marriage using up a vast amount of Parliamentary time and public money. I understand that the effect will be no more than to confer the right to a ceremony in church (not the C of E), and a certificate. It will not confer any rights, such as inheritance, than they already have. So why the hoo-ha? It is said that ‘gays’ themselves were not particularly fazed, by all this and it seems to have been the product of yet more policy-by-focus group, helping Dave to dispel the image of the ’nasty party’.

 

I very much doubt that gays who wish to marry in church are motivated by belief, which declares sodomy to be a sin. They have other, more worldly, motives in their desperation to be seen as ‘normal’.

 

And it is not going away. Expect to see the Bill get savaged in the Lords.

 

Then we have the C of E riven by the issue of ‘gay’ Bishops and parsons, as if they have not been always with us. Every snotty-nosed kid used to have his quota of jokes about vicars and choirboys. If I understand it correctly, it is actually about whether Their Reverences should be allowed to flaunt it. As their Churches are empty I don’t see that it matters.

 

Sort this out, My Lord Bishops and then concentrate on real Christian issues, such as setting the moral tone of the nation, which you have conspicuously failed to do for the last 40years at least.

 

The ‘gay rights’ movement over the years seems to have been characterised by a high level of militancy, an ‘in your face’ aggressiveness. As witness, recall the case of the elderly couple who were prosecuted for refusing a room with a double bed to two homosexual men for reasons of conscience. Since there seems little that they can’t perform in a pair of singles, I was left in no doubt that this was a ‘sting’ by the ‘gay rights’  tendency.

 

Then there are the ‘gay pride’ marches in which painted poofs prance half-naked through the streets of Cape Town and Sydney. What purpose do they have except to cause offence to ‘straights’ and to ram their life-style down our throats?

 

If they wish to be seen as ‘normal’, why do they not behave normally?

 

The influence and power of gays ‘has increased, is increasing, and ought to be diminished’.

 

 

India, Cameron & calumny

I am not known to be a fervent supporter of our carpet-bagging PM, but I am at a loss to understand why the DT constantly rubbishes him when it is quite undeserved.

 

Take his present trip to India.

 

He turned in a brilliant performance in his interview on BBC World, effortlessly hefting the fast balls over the grandstand. One such was a question about British involvement in an arms sale bribery scandal. He brushed this away in a sentence, explaining that the company involved was Italian, Augusta, that happens to own Westland.

 

The following day the DT covered this as ‘PM faces embarrassing questions about arms bribes.

 

Then it published a long piece about ‘British atrocities in India’. Here is a part of it.

‘

Far worse acts were committed by Britain in the name of empire. They may have largely been forgotten here, but in India the memories are still painfully raw. They include the Bengal famine during the Second World War, in which more than a million Indians were allowed to starve to death after their rice paddies were turned over to produce jute for sandbags. Sir Winston Churchill ignored pleas to divert food ships.

The historian and author William Dalrymple believes the truth of colonial rule around the world needs to be taught as part of the new British history curriculum. His children studied the Tudors and Germany under the Nazis “over and over again”, but had not learnt of the atrocities carried out by Britain in India and Afghanistan. “Millions of people were killed, it [colonial rule] rested on a mountain of skulls, and people need to know that,” he says’.

So let’s deconstruct this in the interests of historical truth, not the revisionist rewriting of history favoured by the chattering classes (and for starters, there’s the perhaps minor point that India was the Indian Empire, never a colony. It was not administered by the Colonial Office, but by the Indian Civil Service, and India was settled by a mere handful of ‘colonists’).

So to the Bengal Famine.

Famines were endemic in India. This one was due not only to crop failure, corruption and hoarding, the usual causes, but also because the Japanese invasion of Burma had deprived Bengal of a large portion of its rice supplies. All this took place at the  height of the U-boat campaign in the Atlantic when Britain itself was facing possible starvation. The notion that Churchill had the means to divert food ships to feed millions of Bengalis is risible.

I can find not a shred of evidence that a cause of the famine would be changing to jute in preference to rice, but if this was a contributing factor it had little to do with the Raj, as it was unconcerned with what was almost exclusively an Indian industry that would be simply responding to the market.

And what of the Amritsar Massacre in 1919 ‘which killed over a 1000 people’, according to Dalrymple? This was a one-off event in the history of the Raj which resulted in a complete rewriting of the rule book on army duties in the aid of the civil power. The number of deaths was 359; the General who gave the order was disgraced and dismissed the service, and the Governor-General of the Punjab was assassinated.

What atrocities were committed in Afghanistan? The only one that comes to mind is when the entire British garrison in Kabul was slaughtered, the majority being civilians, women and children. There was just one survivor.

And when and where were these millions of people killed? Where is this mountain of skulls, which must all be in one place to form a mountain Could he possibly be referring to the millions left dead in the aftermath of independence following the creation of a Muslim Pakistan?

The Raj lasted 90 years, the lifespan of one old man. The Indian Civil Service had a mere 1200 British officers. India was largely left to govern itself, the Raj being responsible chiefly for defence, justice, law and order, and taxation.

The Indian Army was 240,000 strong in a then-population of about 300,000,000. After 1920 it was increasingly Indian officered.

The independence movement under Gandhi was based on passive resistance, not armed struggle.

The disgrace was not the Raj but the manner of leaving it, a scuttle that led to countless deaths and left still-unresolved problems, including the Kashmir Dispute that remains a major threat to world peace.

That was the legacy of a Socialist government that wanted to be out quickly regardless of the consequences.

Anyone with ‘raw memories’ would have to be over 80!

 

 

Immigation sense and nonsense.......

Of all current political topics none generates more heat than light than immigration, so in trying to make sense of it all, I have not the  slightest doubt that in response to this piece the ‘no more’ proponents will be out in force, we shall hear the sound of mass knee-jerking, and spittle-flecked denunciations from  the usual suspects.

 

So here we go.

 

The plain truth is that one thing that Obama and Dave have in common is not merely that their immigration policies – if they can be dignified by the word – are a damaging shambles. They are just plain stupid.

 

Take the US first.

 

A large part of the population and of the Republican Party is paranoid about Hispanics flooding across the border, stealing honest (white) Americans’ jobs, lowering wages, adding to the crime wave and the drugs problem and all manner of other sins. Keep them out, strengthen the borders, deport them –these are the constant refrains that we hear from Republican politicians and many others.

 

A reality check is overdue.

 

Border crossings are at a low ebb. Security seems to be working, but also the growth in the Mexican economy is creating more jobs at home.

 

There are at least 11,000,000 ‘illegals’ in the US, mostly Hispanics but many from the  Caribbean and elsewhere. If they were all deported at the same time the queue would stretch to the Arctic circle. So many are employed in various agricultural jobs that the industry could face severe problems if they were no longer available. They don’t generally poach jobs from Americans because they are largely replacement labour; for the same reason they have little impact on wages.

 

Many were brought to the US as children and have little or no knowledge of their countries of origin.

 

They have no standing, little protection, and pay no taxes.

 

Now to the other end of the scale.

 

Some of the best Universities in the US educate some of the world’s best brains. One previous benefit of this is that many of such immigrants remained in the US to the great benefit of both. The majority of Silicon Valley-type companies were launched by Asian entrepreneurs.

 

The present state of play is that the US operates an absurd quota system that appears to be based solely on numbers, regardless of the needs of the economy. The upshot is that these young people are awarded their Masters or their PhDs and then packed off home. Small wonder that India in particular is becoming a serious competitor in many forms of high-tech industry.

 

The present number is a seemingly random  65,000. This is filled very quickly, regardless of the demands of business.

 

Then there is the daftest aspect of all; the allocation of green cards by a national quota - so many for Canada, so many for Pakistan etc. The logic of this completely defeats me. The acid test for a green card must surely be the contribution that the applicant can make to the economy in particular and society in general (e.g., fluency in English).

 

And America has an astonishing talent for transforming immigrants into true American, unlike the UK policy of ‘multi-culturalism, which has been a disaster).

 

The national quota must be ditched completely. It is completely out-of-kilter with America’s national interests.

 

Fortunately, the tectonic plates are shifting right now.

 

Both the Senate and Obama are formulating proposals to legitimise the position of the illegals, so that they can be properly absorbed  on the TINA principle, Obama because it is a matter of principle and  the Republicans on a matter of  votes.

 

It’s a start. Let’s see what they do about quotas.

 

(For those who whinge here about the AS population being outbred into minority, try opening the doors to immigration from Europe. You might find that Polish artisans and Czech engineers to be a welcome addition to your numbers).

 

Now for Dave.

 

He has much comment in the media about his speech about Indians being welcome ‘without limit’.

 

Here is what the actually said.

“The fact is today, as we stand, and this is going to be the case going forward, there is no limit on the number of students who can come from India to study at British universities, no limit at all,”

“All you need is a basic English qualification and a place at a British university. And what’s more, after you’ve left a British university, if you can get a graduate-level job there is no limit to the amount of people who can stay and work, or the time that they can stay at work.”

I have no quarrel with that.

British universities depend heavily on foreign students financially. The present daft system, based on the ’baby and bathwater’ principle, is making this increasingly difficult because the Home Office ran scared of press reports – grossly exaggerated, as usual – about immigrants getting here via fraudulent language schools,  yet another case of focus group policy.

And as in the US, on graduating they are sent packing when they graduate, and sometimes before, such as the Indian student who was refused re-entry for his final year. But then I suppose if you have a stupid policy it gets implemented by stupid people

So when we talk about ‘no more immigration’ who exactly do we mean?

In my book this group would include these from countries having no linguistic or historical connection with the UK and which pose a security threat, chiefly Somalis, Yeminis, and  Pakistan, plus those from non-Anglophone countries in Africa.

Britain was built on immigration, although rather amusingly the same objections to Asians heard now are almost identical to those against the Jewish influx in the 19thCentury. The little town of Boston in Lincolnshire has been getting its share of media coverage lately because  of the fear of the agricultural industry there being taken over by Romanian and Bulgarian gang-masters.

But that particular abuse has been stopped, we are assured.

Boston has a high population from the Baltics. They came because the farmers needed labour and the locals didn’t want  to provide it despite having a very high rate off unemployment.

We should welcome those who have qualifications that we need and who are fluent in English (just make them fill in an entry form in English on arrival and if they can’t do it out they go).

Regulations should include a requirement for a clean health certificate for arrivals from countries where certain diseases are endemic. Many countries once required a TB-free certificate. That was ditched when we thought that we had pretty well eliminated the disease. Now it is back in some third-world countries in a virulent antibiotic resistant form. There is, of course, the certainty of forgery, but the response to that should be the refusal of treatment and immediate deportation.

We should not grant a permanent residence permit  until a person has paid five years’ taxes. Neither should they be entitled to benefit during the same period.

Work permits should only be granted in the country of origin.

Arrivals should need to prove that they have sufficient means to support themselves for a given period. Refugee status should only be granted if the applicant has not passed through another risk-free country en route.

And let’s acknowledge that we want to keep out the scum of the earth, not decent people seeking a better life who can become good and loyal citizens.

 

 

 

Gamblin' Dave.............

Let us draw a discreet veil over the ludicrous, pointless, and unnecessary debate on ‘gay’ marriage, and reflect upon Dave’s two recent triumphs, one being the EU budget, the other his speech committing the Government to a referendum on our future in the EU.

 

Forcing a budget cut against all the odds was more than just a financial victory. The reduction itself will only amount to a bit less than 1%, the budget representing 1% of GNI. But it has never happened in the whole history of the EU, and now a precedent has been set. The empty suits in Brussels must be beside themselves with fury and frustration. The European Parliament has threatened to block the deal. Should they try, they will rapidly find out what will happen when they try to defy the will of the elected leaders  of the national Governments.

 

My guess is that they will compromise on a budgetary review in 3 years’ time.

 

Brussels may have to get used to a new word – austerity.

 

An interesting comment from a Polish newspaper:

 

"The Union will head towards the free trade zone dreamed of by the British and supported by the Germans rather than the 'solidarity-driven federal structure' wanted by Paris...There is no doubt that, by imposing cuts, Germany has shown its economic strength. Berlin's dictate will be even harsher, while abundant transfers from Brussels may turn out to be only a nice memory if the Franco-Spanish-Italian-Polish club fails to improve its competitiveness."

 

But there is perhaps a greater significance.

 

The deal was forced through by UK and Germany. Angela was Dave’s trump card. It was backed by the ‘north’, leaving France and the Club Med out in the cold.

 

Does this mean the end of the alliance between Germany and France that has been the driving force in the EU since the beginning?

 

Perhaps that is being over-optimistic, but to quote Winston, ‘this is not the end; it is not the beginning of the end. But it is the end of the beginning!’

 

PMQs was an almost jovial occasion, instead of the usual bear-garden. Both Labour and the Libdems ‘welcomed’ the deal, and the PM even got praise from his most surly anti-EU backbenchers.

 

Now for that ‘referendum’ speech.

 

The media seemed united in the view that it was a masterly piece of oratory; that it was an irrevocable promise to hand over the issue to ‘the people of England who haven’t spoken yet”.

 

And that it is the biggest gamble since Dave enticed the Libdems into a coalition.

 

He is gambling that this will silence the Eurosceptics who are a majority in the Tory party inside and outside Parliament, that it will neutralise the electoral threat from UKIP, and that he can persuade the other EU members to give him sufficient of what he wants to secure an ‘in’ vote.

 

The joker in the pack is the plan for a Free Trade Agreement between the EU and the US.

 

The time-line of 2 years is politically highly significant.

 

For Obama,  the aim is to wrap it up while he still has a Congressional majority. For Dave, it will be in the bag before the referendum.

 

The gamble here is that the deal will underscore the dangers of not being part of the largest free-trade zone in history; of being the small boy with his nose pressed against ice-cream parlour  window.

 

My guess is that it will tip the balance, especially if Dave comes up with major concessions on such issues as EU employment law, security, justice, and the incessant meddling that comes from Brussels almost daily.

 

And it is not beyond possibility that he will gather support from other EU members, unless we believe that we are the only country in Europe to despise the unelected bureaucracy that really rules in Europe.

 

Dave could be the boy who pulls his  finger out of the dyke.

 

 

 

The new 'average American'............

The second Obama term is sailing along much like the first. He appears to be oblivious to his critics while pent-up resentment grows among the near-majority that think of him as America's nemesis. The lads that share coffee with me at a local convenience store are on the brink of despair. One insists that O and his henchmen are all communists dedicated to precipitating and American revolution.

 

As an average American, or what used to be an average American, I see no real threat that cannot be repaired with a legal regime change. O will do his thing as best and as much as he can despite hostile Republicans who will be able to largely veto any bill they don't like. Meanwhile, O will keep on using Executive Orders to legislate his will and thereby bypass Congressional subversions. Some of his EO's are of marginal legality, but by the time that gets sorted out, he will be history as a POTUS.

 

Critics complain that O is loading the American political agenda with social issues in an effort to eclipse financial ones. This may be true, but then again there is not much he can do about financial issues that would result in a quick success. His ideology prevents him from espousing capitalistic solutions and as a result he relies on government spending to bail us out of our fiscal and financial quagmire. In the process, O is creating heavy public dependencies upon an expanding government that promises to provide the basic needs to anyone unable to obtain them through their own resources. One might add, except O that is, that such dependencies incite healthy and able individuals to rely on welfare rather than get a job.

 

Put these people together with our rapidly rising Hispanic population and we have a new definition of average American. The steadily employed citizen with a work ethic has dominated American demographics since the boys returned home from WWII. Today employed white Americans are in a minority and who knows what happened to our work ethic.

 

The latter has been seriously eroded by a number of factors. One for sure is the welfare system that rewards people for not working. Another is the devastation of the middle class through abuse, rising costs, stagnant wages, inflation and mismanagement of our financial resources. Many more former middle class people have fallen into the poor category than have risen into the rich. Simultaneously, our percentage of rich people has grown both in number and in wealth. Rich was once considered someone worth a million dollars. Today, make that a billion. Taxation, professional service costs, real estate, fuel, travel, medical costs and food have all risen dramatically and have equally and adversely affected the middle class. The rich don't care and the poor have welfare.

 

We are known for a moderate tax rate and certainly more moderate than in Europe. Yet, we are paying in the neighborhood of 65% of our income in taxes. Beginning with income taxes say at 30%, then add state and local taxes, property tax, inheritance tax, sales tax, fuel tax, and a myriad of costs that have increased in order to protect sellers for going under because of taxes they have to pay. Add licenses to do work such as a shop or bar or taxi or medical or legal office and also include annual inventory taxes for retailers and we come up with a figure approaching 65%.

 

I vividly recall former President Lyndon Johnson and his proclamation of 'The Great Society' in which human services would improve in quality and decline in cost, where we would work fewer hours every week and a majority could enjoy the leisure of a second home in the country. Indeed, adherents to this pie in the sky pipe dream were actually commissioning studies of how additional leisure time would influence the average American; back when the average American was me.

 

Today, a formerly middle class family  has mom and dad working, the kids in some kind of care until a parent gets home, two cars, a home and considerable debt and cash poor. I hesitate to characterize the new average American, but it would include poor, immigrant, welfare and single parent families. If we include illegal immigrants, the scale is tipped whereby this group of people become the new majority.

An economic world game-changer (Part 2)

I am slowly devilling out the implications of the proposed Free Trade Agreement between the US and the EU, no easy task as this immensely important topic has gone  largely unreported.

 

Already there are signs of movement, with the imminent lifting of trade restrictions on the import of beef imposed by both sides, dating back to the ‘mad cow disease’ panic in 1997.

 

What is particularly significant is that there is a strong sense of urgency; the Americans say they want it done ‘on one tank of gas’, all done and dusted within 2 years.

 

This is of crucial importance for UK domestic policy; it will all precede Dave’s negotiations with the EU on the future of the Union and the outcome of the referendum to which he is irrevocably committed. I shall come back to the political significance of all this when I have got a handle on it.

 

The free trade zone created by a deal would be massive, accounting for half of world GDP and about a third of world trade, and the US and the EU are the biggest investors in each other’s economies.

 

Existing tariffs are pretty small, and it is beginning to look as if the greatest benefit would be relief on non-tariff barriers to trade.

 

One great leap forward would be allowing EU companies to bid for American procurement contracts, a potentially hugely lucrative market.

 

Another would be in services. For example, EU airlines are not allowed to carry passengers between American cities, or take over American airlines. BA will be salivating at the prospect; it has been stalking a US carrier for years.

 

But it may be that the biggest gain will be in getting rid of regulatory restraints on trade. No longer would pharma have to go through two lengthy and complex safety testing, and to date there is no agreement at all regarding new technologies.

 

A big stumbling block might be agriculture, especially in such areas as GM crops (on which the EU is paranoid) and hormones in beef.

 

There is everything to play for.

Late news: Obama's State of the Nation speech ' I am announcing that we will launch talks on a comprehensive Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership with the European Union — because trade that is free and fair across the Atlantic supports millions of good-paying American jobs'.

Is world free trade a'coming?

At last some positive news from Brussels.

 

And not just positive, but positively exciting; not just a game-changer but  a world economic game-changer.

 

The EU has given the go-ahead to negotiate a free-trade zone with the US which will create the largest trading bloc in the world.

 

The implications are breathtaking.

 

Here is the report from my EU source (but not reported elsewhere at this time, as far as I can see).

‘The European Union's national leaders today said that they would like to establish a free-trade zone with the United States, a deal that would be the biggest in the world.

The leaders used their summit, otherwise dominated by discussion about the Union's long-term budget, to state their “support for a comprehensive trade agreement” with the US and emphasised that negotiators should “pay particular attention to achieve greater transatlantic regulatory convergence”.

The message was underscored by José Manuel Barroso, the European Commission's president. “We need to move forward,” he said after the summit, adding that opening up trade would be a “powerful leverage for modernisation of our economies”.

The statement may dispel US concerns about the resolve of the EU to enter what would be highly complex talks. The US's own resolve could become clearer on 12 February when US President Barack Obama will give his State of the Union speech. He may choose to go one step further than his deputy, Joe Biden, who said on Saturday (2 February) that agreement on starting talks is “within our reach”.

The possibility of talks has received the strong backing of business lobbies on both sides of the Atlantic.

The EU's leaders highlighted the EU's other trade ambitions, saying that the EU expects a trade deal to be agreed with Canada “very shortly” and the EU is determined to follow up a deal agreed with Singapore in December with a similar liberalisation of trade with other Asian countries. Barroso also said that negotiations with Japan will start “soon”. EU negotiators won a mandate from the EU's member states in November’.

The US is also far advanced in negotiations about the creation of a US-Pacific free trade zone. This might also absorb ASEAN.

The implications are mind-boggling.

The various proposals would create an economic community of massive size. The effect on international business and industry would be electrifying; no tariff barriers to distort standards of living; a huge boost for globalization that has already brought millions out of grinding poverty; the free movement of goods and services, and the myriad of benefits that would flow from the liberalisation of trade.

It would bring the benefits that we expected from the EEC, but world-wide and without the sclerotic oversight of the EU.

Domestically, the impact of this move could be electrifying.

If this moves ahead in the next three years to show a likelihood at coming to pass, Dave’s referendum must be redundant.

The thought of Britain being excluded from the most important economic development – revolution, in fact – in the last 40 years is , well, unthinkable.

Truly we live in interesting times!