America Is No Longer A Superpower

When I first started writing this article I wrote the title as a question.  Upon further reflection I came to the easy decision that there really wasn’t any question about it and that I should write it as a statement instead to better reflect reality.  As our fearless leaders in Washington both republican and democrat debate whether or not we should launch military strikes against Syria I think it is time to acknowledge that our days of being a Superpower have passed.  Yes, we do still have the world’s most powerful military by far but that fact doesn’t look so powerful when you begin to realize that for us to use this military we have to borrow the money, mostly from China.  Can you really claim to be a real Superpower when you are dependent on rival regimes to finance your mighty military?  To me the answer is obvious and has been since the Great Recession began.  The sad fact of the matter is that we are now dependent on borrowed money from rival foreign powers to do anything militarily.  What happens when our interests don’t align with the people that are lending us the money?

 

Dear Mr. President

Dear Mr. President I thought I would just drop you a quick little line while your on your way back from meeting the Chinese where I am sure you tried to give away what few secrets we have left along with what ever remaining American jobs you could find to appease our Chinese debt holders.  This quick little note is just an attempt to remind you of the obvious which is that you can’t claim the war on terror is over and Al Qaeda has been decimated while also claiming that you need to have extraordinary powers to spy on the citizens you serve.  As we have seen since this story broke the average joe on the street already knows this so that begs the question why do you need reminded?  Please do explain.

Is Obama The Sleaziest President Since Nixon?

With three separate scandals brewing all at once it is a fair question to ask.  What has been on display this week is just how sleazy an operation the Obama White House really is.  The bottom line on these scandals is this administration is full of thugs and bullies who routinely go about trying to intimidate people who don’t agree with them.  From running the dirtiest campaign in modern memory to using the IRS as a modern take on the KGB this administration seems to believe that they can’t be held accountable so they are free to act like the thugs they really are.  Finally the main stream media has awaken to the fact that this guy is not anything at all like the man they had tried to portray over the last 4 years.  This reminds me of Bush during the Katrina fiasco, the press finally turned their guns on the president and didn’t let up for the rest of his presidency.  If Obama gets even half of that hostility he might as well go hang it up because his team is not used to being challenged by the press.  One democratic operative declared that the Obama administration were “scandal virgins” because they had never been involved in one yet and it reflected in their inability to get out in front of the scandals.  Of course I must sympathize with them because when you have not 1 but 3 separate scandals brewing all at once one could easily overwhelmed.

Facebook To Make Over 1 Billion Dollars But Will Not Pay Any Federal Taxes

In what can only be described as an injustice to the American tax payer Facebook has released its financial statement and has admitted that even though the company will make roughly 1.4 billion dollars  in pre tax profit they mysteriously will not owe the federal government anything.  How is this possible is the obvious question and the answer is of course accounting gimmicks.  Facebook appears to accomplish this in two ways.  First, the company is allowed to bank losses from prior years.  In other words, lets say Facebook hypothetically had a loss of 400 million in 2011.  Then the following year they made 1.4 billion.  They would then be able to subtract that loss in 2011 from their pre tax profit in 2012.  The second way is that Facebook does this is explained below.

” Companies like Facebook are allowed to treat the cost of non-cash compensation, such as stock options, as an expense that reduces profits, essentially the way they treat cash compensation such as salaries.

The difference is that Facebook—unlike, say, General Motors (GM)—relies heavily on stock options and restricted stock units as a form of compensation. It paid out a lot during its years as a private company that it must now recognize on its income statement and balance sheet”

The original story goes on to mention that Facebook will not only pay no federal tax on its billion dollar plus profit but will in fact receive over 4oo million dollars in tax refunds.  To say this is absurd is an understatement.  I guess this gives us an idea why our government is broke.  If you think this unfair hit the like button, lol.

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-02-15/facebook-gets-a-multi-billion-dollar-tax-break

The Fall Of The Athenian Republic

Below is a quote often attributed to a Alexander Tyler (although it is unverified), a Scottish professor who was active in the late 18th century and early 19th century.

“A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse over loose fiscal policy, (which is) always followed by a dictatorship.”

“The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence:

From bondage to spiritual faith; From spiritual faith to great courage; From courage to liberty; From liberty to abundance, From abundance to complacency; From complacency to apathy, From apathy to dependence, From dependence back into bondage.”

http://www.lorencollins.net/tytler.html

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1062343/posts

The Obama Attack Ads In Perspective

There has been a lot of noise this week from the Romney campaign about the Obama campaign’s attack ads and how they are beneath the dignity of the office and so forth.  Unfortunately a look back at presidential campaigns of the last 20 plus years prove a different conclusion which is that the side that embraces negative campaigning the most wins.  We can start by looking back at the now infamous Willie Horton ad from the 1988 presidential campaign ran by Bush 41’s campaign team.  The ad blasted Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis for letting convicted murderer Willie Horton out on a furlough on which he then proceeded to go on a crime spree which included rape and robbery.  The Clinton administration used similar tactics during the 98 congressional election when the Clinton administration put out a press release saying that African-Americans were being turned away at polling stations because of their color in obvious attempt to motivate their base of supporters to get out and vote.  Bush 43 has the dubious distinction of providing multiple examples of shady campaigning.  First, the way he savaged John McCain during the 2000 Republican Primary by saying that McCain had fathered a black child out of wed lock during the hotly contested battle for South Carolina.  Bush went on to discredit Vietnam vet John Kerry during the 2004 campaign with the Swift boat ads that called into question Kerry’s service during Vietnam.

So to me the only logical conclusion to this brief history lesson is that the campaign that makes the most effective use of attack ads will more than likely end up winning the election.  This is not to say that other factors are not important but the ability to frame the debate and cast your opponent in negative fashion seems to almost certainly lead to election night victory.  This leads me to the unfortunate conclusion that because of the evidence already mentioned and the fact that the Obama campaign seems to be far better at doing this will ultimately lead to a Obama victory in November unless Romney can somehow manage to not only defend himself better against these attacks but also effectively take the fight to Obama.  So far that has not happened.

Confronting Ghosts of 2000 in South Carolina – New York Times

Willie Horton – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Can America Trust Israel?

The Associated Press did a revealing story recently that exposed the Israelis as the worst US ally for spying on America.  What was disturbing about the story was how it seemed that Israel made it a point to let CIA officials know that Israel was spying on them almost taunting them.

“The CIA station chief opened the locked box containing the sensitive equipment he used from his home in Tel Aviv, Israel, to communicate with CIA headquarters in Virginia, only to find that someone had tampered with it. He sent word to his superiors about the break-in.

The incident, described by three former senior U.S. intelligence officials, might have been dismissed as just another cloak-and-dagger incident in the world of international espionage, except that the same thing had happened to the previous station chief in Israel.”

Some might read the above story and think it’s just the Israelis being aggressive, having a little fun.  Unfortunately the above was far from the only example, Israeli intelligence operations run the entire spectrum from spying on suspected terrorists in the US (which may be somewhat understandable) to industrial espionage, thats right they steal from us routinely.

“The CIA considers Israel its No. 1 counterintelligence threat in the agency’s Near East Division, the group that oversees spying across the Middle East, according to current and former officials. Counterintelligence is the art of protecting national secrets from spies. This means the CIA believes that U.S. national secrets are safer from other Middle Eastern governments than from Israel.”

The above quote is kind of a sad statement to make about an US ally that the story says has received about $60 billion in aid from US tax payers since the 1980’s.  I am generally a supporter of Israel but have also known about their extensive intelligence operations they have run against the US so to be honest I am glad someone is once again exposing them for what they do.  Its one thing to spy on some terrorist who happens to be in the US quite another to steal US military secrets about advanced fighter aircraft, missile defense technology, nuclear weapons and so on.  I believe its long past the time that we hold Israel accountable for their over zealous spying they do to us.

US Sees Israel as spy Threat

Federal Govt. Pushing Arizona Down Dangerous Path

 

Much as this blog predicted (End Of America) after the Supreme Court’s recent ruling that shot down parts of Arizona’s immigration law the state is beginning to come up with ways to subvert federal authority so they can fix their illegal immigration nightmare.  A measure is being brought about that seeks to undermine federal authority by giving Arizona the ability to ignore federal law that the state deems unconstitutional (in other words they would be doing the job of the US Supreme Court).  Let me start by saying that I sympathize with Arizona because the federal government has truly failed them on border security, and initiatives like these are the unfortunate natural byproduct of the federal government failing to live up too its constitutionally mandated role in securing the border.  Having said that this initiative would start the whole country down the slippery slope of undermining federal authority that could eventually lead to a United States that is not so united.  I know many people might scoff at the idea that something like this could bring about a severely weakened federal government, or worse states actually seceding from the Union.  But people should also consider how bad the situation in Arizona has become and remember that because the federal government shot down much of the state’s immigration law it is only going to get worse.

AZ initiative would let voters overrule federal law…

http://www.the1789project.com/2011/03/standing-up-for-the-rule-of-law-locally/

America’s Bold Statement To The World, 236 Years Ago Today

 “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Decleration of Independence

Thomas Jefferson

July 4, 1776

Happy Birthday America!

U.S. declares independence

End Of America

 

Could the Supreme Court’s controversial ruling yesterday on Arizona’s immigration law that will allow the federal government to continue to do nothing to stop illegal immigration spell the end for America?  Never say never, the reason it might happen would be that it puts border states into the unmanageable position of having the federal government default on fulfilling its constitutionally mandated role of securing the borders while also not being able to fill the vacuum themselves.  It’s just plain wrong that the feds do not enforce the border but it is even more shocking that the states are barred from trying to pick up the slack in an attempt to protect themselves from being overrun.  This puts border states into the odd position of having conflicting interests with the federal government.  Because of this it won’t be long before some in these states will begin to ask why do we send our tax dollars to Washington when they will not even enforce the border and also keep states from doing enforcement too.

HURT: Obama’s court victory sets up bigger defeat later