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Milton J. Madison - An American Refugee Now Living in China, Where Liberty is Ascending

Federalism, Free Markets and the Liberty To Let One's Mind Wander. I Am Very Worried About the Fate of Liberty in the USA, Where Government is Taking people's Lives ____________________________________________________________________________________________ "Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice. Tolerance in the face of tyranny is no virtue." -Barry Goldwater-

Friday, March 30, 2007

Thursday, March 29, 2007

The Rot At The United Nations......



UN Watch representitive speaks on the abysmal record of the UN on its oversight of human rights around the world. The UN's repsonse in this video? Is to not allow these kinds of opinions to be aired. See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.

Kick the UN out of the United States. Its a failed experiment. And one that exacerbates problems, not solve them.

NO PORK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!



Chinese fellow picking on a hallal hawker in Singapore.

Jew Hating At The United Nations....

The UN only seems to be able to criticise those free countries with functioning democracies such as Isreal on human rights violations while almost completley ignoring violations in Iran, Uzbekistan, Cuba, Sudan, etc. And what is this UN supposed to be doing? The UN is worse than worthless, it gives unearned political power to dirtbag dictators.

Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Quote of The Day...

"I'm going to hand everybody in America a shovel and we're going to start digging our way out."
-- Sen. Hillary Clinton, quoted by CNN, on what she'll do after being elected president.

Yes, she is absolutely right and she has contributed copious amounts of material that has to be shovelled.

Interesting Pictures That We Would Like To See.....




Sunday, March 25, 2007

Are Dissenting Global Warming Opinions Immoral?

The religion of global warming has now entered a new hysterical phase. Questions abound STILL on the exact causes, the actual amount of impact and responses, if necessary, for global warming and these questions and new problems with the current Al Gore static model will probably keep arising for decades, if it lasts that long.

So, the new tactic for the advocates for global warming is to reject or demonize those that demonstrate even scientific evidence that does not fit the advocacy's model dismissing them as immoral and therefore not worthy of consideration.
It is one thing to write these dissenting opinions off as factually false, but this is apparently no longer regarded as adequate by the global warming advocates. The dissent keeps popping up, it backed by some very reputable people wielding very credible facts, and the availability of alternate information outlets has made it impossible to smother the doubters and dissenters.


Now enter the moral angle. If global warming is now a moral matter, it would seem to suggest an associated implication that these inconvenient viewpoints are immoral. Apparently it is now the duty of "good" people to reject these opinions on this "moral" basis and without regard to whether they are factually true or false.
The biggest problem with the current global warming advocates religious-like position and the focus and application of the "moral" aspects of that position will most likely lead to misappropriation of resources driven by government intervention responding to political considerations. Government solutions, incorporating some real science and many political positions will most likely result inadequate, wrong or over-arching intervention.

But read the whole argument in the link above.

The Importance Of Greenhouse Gasses...

We observe that the Earth's surface is on average around +15 degrees C. However, without the greenhouse gasses that we find here, the surface would be -18 degrees C as explained by the amount of energy that hits the surface and the amount that is reflected back to space. That is to say, that greenhouse gasses account and hold in enough energy for an increase in 32 degrees C resulting in a surface so that it can sustain a multitude of life as compared to one that would be devoid of most life that know today.
In a very rough approximation the following trace gases contribute to the greenhouse effect:
60% water vapor
20% carbon dioxide (CO2)
The rest (~20%) is caused by ozone (O3), nitrous oxide (N2O), methane (CH4), and several other species.
So, as the temperature of the surface of the earth rises, water vapor in the air increases resulting in more greenhouse effect in a potentially never ending cycle. However, increases in water vapor also potentially increase the occurrence of clouds that both absorb energy and reflect it back to space reducing the impact of the Sun's heating effect. Additionally, in order to form water droplets, dust must be present since each water droplet can only form around a piece of dust. The amount of dust in the Earth's atmosphere is also variable dependent upon many factors.

As a result of this interaction and interplay between all of the greenhouse gasses and formation of clouds, the statement applies....
One of the major problems in climate research at present is the fact that we still cannot realistically reproduce the formation of clouds in currently available climate models. Therefore an exact prediction of the influence exerted by water vapor and a prediction of the warming on the whole, remains very doubtful. This area of research calls for an enormous amount of scientific work.

We conclude:
Due to the so called "greenhouse effect" - caused by atmospheric trace gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2), ozone (O3), and water vapor (H2O) - infrared radiation from the earth is stored temporarily in the atmosphere. Of all these trace gases, water vapor represents the most important constituent. It contributes to the natural greenhouse warming process by approximately 60%. Water vapor amplifies the anthropogenic contribution to greenhouse warming through a positive feedback. This amplification is counteracted by the increased reflection off clouds. How these two factors combine in the real atmosphere still remains an open question.
So, with the incomplete science in all the interactions between factors inputted in climate models, how do we know that increases in CO2 will definitely lead to catastrophic changes in climate?

you can read more about water vapor and its impact on climate, here.

More On Sunspot Activity And Climate Impacts...

Sunspot and radiation impacting the earth may have climate change potential as indicated here.....
Quite evident in the most recent several hundred years of the isotopic records is a seventy-year period of very low solar activity in the 17th and early 18th centuries--known as the Maunder Minimum--and following it, an unsteady, long-term rise to the present-day era of high sunspot numbers, called the Modern Maximum (Fig. 2 c, d). By applying what has been learned about solar radiation changes from the recent measurements from space, we can infer that this gradual build-up in solar activity over several hundred years may have been accompanied by a parallel increase in the radiation received from the Sun.
This report, written in 1996, is an interesting read for people that have been following the climate change non-debate. The impact of sunspot activity and natural variations of the Sun's radiation on the Earth is still unknown due to a severe lack of accurate data that amounts to only decades of readings.

The Other Climate Change Factors.....

Volcanoes and sunspot activity have an interrelated impact on global climate [from my Alma Mater]....
University at Buffalo scientists working with ice cores have solved a mystery surrounding sunspots and their effect on climate that has puzzled scientists since they began studying the phenomenon.
The research, published in a paper in the May 15 issue of Geophysical Research Letters, provides striking evidence that sunspots -- blemishes on the sun's surface indicating strong solar activity -- do influence global climate change, but that explosive volcanic eruptions on Earth can completely reverse those influences.
But of course, the UN [and Al Gore, who also invented the Internet] has all the answers to the threat of global warming, as understood today, and certain people don't want and aren't interesting in debating issues surrounding the science and debate is what makes science work.

Warships....

What is the only active duty US warship named after a foreign national? Here.

Saturday, March 24, 2007

Global Warming....

Here is some contrary evidence to the hysteria that we hear on the "news" everyday regarding global warming. There is evidence that the earth's temperature may actually be correlated with sunspot activity that leads to increases and decreases in clouds that change surface temperatures and that CO2 levles are the resul and not the cause of those effects.

Iran....

Well, i was wrong that there would be an overt attack on Iranian nuclear facilities but I think that is the result of a world that in unable to deal with the most intractable problems.

With Iran taking 15 British service personel hostage, tensions there will definately rise...
The announcement appeared to rule out any hope that the incident was a simple mistake that could be quickly rectified.

Instead, there were growing fears that the 15 British sailors and Royal Marines were victims of a deliberate ambush on the disputed Shatt al-Arab waterway by Iranian Revolutionary Guards, perhaps seeking to use the captives as hostages in the increasingly tense stand-off between the West and Iran over its nuclear programme.
I doubt that this incident has much to do with the neverending conflict in the UN where sanctions against the Iranian regime are being debated over their seeking to build a nuclear weapon capability. I think that this is more of a tactical maneuver designed to reopen supply lines of weapons and money into Iraq where Iran has been funding and supplying radical elements within that country....
IRANIAN agents are paying local Iraqis around the southern city of Basra as much as $500 a month to carry out attacks on coalition forces.

British Lieutenant Colonel Justin Maciejewski said contact with locals suggested that the “vast majority” of violence against British troops stationed in the city came from outside Iraq.

“We haven't found any 'smoking gun' but certainly all the circumstantial evidence points to Iranian involvement in the bombings here in Basra, which is disrupting the city to a great extent,” he added.
I wish the world good luck in dealing with these Iranian maniacs. Personally, I think that Iran has been mishandled and that we should have been much tougher on the country from the very start.

Thursday, March 22, 2007

The Nations' Snowmen....



Snowmen across the USA decended upon Washington to protest global warming and demanding that action be taken immediately.

Read the rest of the story here.

Monday, March 19, 2007

Who Said This?

Speech...
Nevertheless, Iraq does pose a serious threat to the stability of the Persian Gulf and we should organize an international coalition to eliminate his access to weapons of mass destruction. Iraq's search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to completely deter and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power. Moreover, no international law can prevent the United States from taking actions to protect its vital interests, when it is manifestly clear that there is a choice to be made between law and survival. I believe, however, that such a choice is not presented in the case of Iraq. Indeed, should we decide to proceed, that action can be justified within the framework of international law rather than outside it. In fact, though a new UN resolution may be helpful in building international consensus, the existing resolutions from 1991 are sufficient from a legal standpoint.
Global warming rock star, Al Gore in a speech September 23, 2002.

It appears as if the consensus on both sides of the aisle was that Iraq posed WMD or at least had the ability or the intention to build them as the UN sanctioned crumbled. Either that, or Bush fooled Al too. Even though he spent 8 years in the Clinton administration, was Gore likely to get suddenly fooled? Or maybe he gets fooled on a regular basis?

Notice for all you Bush haters, I also included Al's assessment that he felt the risk was not great enough to justify immediate invasion. People can have reasoanble disagreements on that.

Friday, March 16, 2007

The Scream....

Thursday, March 15, 2007

How Can The Temperature Be Both Hot And Cold At The Same Time?

I am upstate New York visiting my folks and the temperature rose quite rapidly the past couple of days. Spike reported that last week when he was visiting his mom in the Bronx, it was very cold, below zero, but it reached around 25 (75 F) here today. Since there is still several inches of snow on the ground, the air feel very odd. It is obviously warm but also with a feeling of cool, I suppose as little puffs of snow cooled air are floating around, one's skin feels the warm with the interspersed buffeting by invisible balloons of cool. I have never really felt anything like it and unfortunately, my obtuse prose attempting to describe it isn't effective in communicating the feeling.

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Churchill And Hitler In Munich....

The core of a man as outlined in this speech with an excerpt following...
When in November 1932, shortly before Hitler came to power, and Churchill was in Munich doing some historical research about the First Duke of Marlborough, his ancestor, an intermediary tried to get him to meet Hitler, who was in Munich at the time and had high hopes of coming to power within months. Churchill agreed to meet Hitler, who was going to come to see him in his hotel in Munich, and said to the intermediary: "There are a few questions you might like to put to him, which can be the basis of our discussion when we meet." Among them was the following question: "What is the sense of being against a man simply because of his birth? How can any man help how he is born?"
Hitler declined to meet with Churchill. Churchill constantly questioned and and pushed back against Nazi racist intentions that were largely ignored by the appeasing European politicos of the time after Hitler gained power in Germany.

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

Clash Of Civilizations? It Takes Two Civilizations To Clash....

The clash we are witnessing around the world is not a clash of religions, or a clash of civilizations. It is a clash between two opposites, between two eras. It is a clash between a mentality that belongs to the Middle Ages and another mentality that belongs to the 21st century. It is a clash between civilization and backwardness, between the civilized and the primitive, between barbarity and rationality. It is a clash between freedom and oppression, between democracy and dictatorship. It is a clash between human rights, on the one hand, and the violation of these rights, on other hand. It is a clash between those who treat women like beasts, and those who treat them like human beings. What we see today is not a clash of civilizations. Civilizations do not clash, but compete.
More here.

Wafa Sultan



The interviewer basically could only call her a blasphemer against Islam. I guess that I am too.

You knwo all of this makes me wonder, with the millions of Muslims living in the USA, are they the 7th century variety or non-barbaric 21st century type?

Saturday, March 10, 2007

I No Longer Listen Or Watch BBC News Programming....

As I wrote about before, here. The BBC is just not a trustworthy source of news. Others, even this reporter, sees it my way too. Its biases, anti-American and hard left, just make it unbearable to watch. Best of luck BBC. You won't get a cable subscription from me anytime soon.

Banning Muslims....

Seems as if Filipinos are figuring out the Muslims just can't be trusted so they are being banned from working in malls due to the risk of bombings...
Filipino Muslims are 'basically' banned by multi-millionaire shopping mall owners from working in their firms in the southern island of Mindanao for fear they might be used by al-Qaeda affiliated militants in launching terror attacks, members of the Islamic community have denounced. Michael Abellanosa, 24, who works for the 'Premier' shopping centre in Mindanao's Koronadal town, told AdnKronos International (AKI) that his company is afraid to hire Muslim workers for security reason.
This is probably not a good thing. This will further alienate those that aren't frothing at the mouth Muslims, but it seems that due to the risks, Filipinos just don't want to take the risks. I don't want to go into shopping malls where there are Muslims either.

Also, just as a note, it is OK for a Muslim to lie to a non-believer for the 'greater good' and is considered holy and blessed work. Greater good generally means to the benefit of the Muslim world.
Al-Takeyya is a policy whereby a Muslim may lie, deceive or omit critical truths if it promotes the spreading of Islam AND the conquest of the non-Muslim world. According to William P. Welty, Ph.D., al-Takeyya/Taqiyya is:

"The Islamic principle of lying for the sake of Allah. Falsehoods told to prevent denigration of Islam, to protect oneself, or to promote the cause of Islam are sanctioned by the Qur'an, including lying under penalty of perjury in testimony before the United States Congress, lying or making distorted statements to the media such as claiming that Islam is a religion of peace and deceiving fellow Muslims when the one lying has deemed them to be apostates."

Democrats Getting Fooled By.....



Democrats getting fooled by first themselves in 1998 and then continued to get fooled in their thinking by Bush. How do they plan to lead in the age of terrorism if anyone and everyone can food them on these issues?

Jackie Mason on Politics And The Media...

Thursday, March 08, 2007

Quotes Of The Day......

"I hate the Republicans and everything they stand for,"
Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean told Democrats gathered at a Manhattan hotel when choosing the new head of the DNC that he eventually secured.

"I don't hate Republicans as individuals. But I hate what the Republicans are doing to this country. I really do."
Democrats, the party of hate, the party that is trying to stick a knife in the backs of our soldiers, the party of cut and run in Iraq for politcial gain no matter what the consequences, the party that continues to play the race card over and over and over, the party that wants to tax the crap out of you to fund further vacuous utopian socialist/communist but unfortuately worthless in practice social programs, the party that wants to emulate the amazing sucess of the French where the oxymoron "French work ethic" is what would happen to our nation.

Tuesday, March 06, 2007

Global Warming Causing Massive Problems Already....

Al Gore knows that global warming will just pull apart the fabric of society....
Brothel owners in Bulgaria are blaming global warming for staff shortages.

They claim their best girls are working in ski resorts because a lack of snow has forced tourists to seek other pleasures.
Al Gore better fix this problem soon otherwise there will be a lot of Bulgarian fellows without servicing.

Who Was Dred Scott....

Dred Scott,
was a slave who sued unsuccessfully for his freedom in the famous Dred Scott v. Sandford case of 1856. His case was based on the fact that he and his wife Harriet had lived, while slaves, in states and territories where slavery was illegal, including Illinois and parts of the Louisiana Purchase. The court ruled 7 to 2 against Scott, finding that he held no property and therefore was not entitled to file suit in a federal court.

The case raised the issue of a slave's freedom when he was in a free state. Congress had not asserted whether slaves were free once they stepped foot on Northern soil. The ruling arguably violated the Missouri Compromise because, based on the court's logic, a white slave owner could purchase slaves in a slave state and then bring his slaves to a state where slavery was illegal without losing rights to the slaves. This factor upset the Northern Republicans and further split Northern and Southern relations.
The decision, handed down 150 years ago, today, March 6, 1857, was based upon the following majority Supreme Court Decision....
With the aid of new lawyers (including Montgomery Blair), the Scotts sued again in federal court. They lost and appealed to the United States Supreme Court. In 1856, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney delivered the majority opinion. It consisted of the following points:
* Any person descended from black Africans, whether slave or free, is not a citizen of the United States, according to the U.S. Constitution.
* The Ordinance of 1787 could not confer freedom or citizenship within the Northwest Territory to Black people.
* The provisions of the Act of 1820, known as the Missouri Compromise, were voided as a legislative act because the act exceeded the powers of Congress, insofar as it attempted to exclude slavery and impart freedom and citizenship to Black people in the northern part of the Louisiana cession.

In effect, the Court ruled that slaves had no claim to freedom; they were property and not citizens; they could not bring suit in federal court; and because slaves were private property, the federal government could not revoke a white slave owner's right to own a slave based on where he lived, thus nullifying the essence of the Missouri Compromise. Chief Justice Taney, speaking for the majority, also ruled that Scott was a slave, an object of private property, and therefore subject to the Fifth Amendment prohibition against taking property from its owner "without due process."
Most of the appointees to the Supreme Court at the time came from slave owning families. And this...
Soon after the decision, Taylor Blow, a son of Scott's original owner, Peter Blow, purchased Scott and his family in order to free them. (the Blow children had also provided financial support for Scott's lawsuits.)

Dred Scott was free from 26th May, 1857 until his death from tuberculosis on 17th September, 1858. His grave is in St. Louis Calvary Cemetery.

In June 1862, Congress and the President ignored The Dred Scott Decision and enacted a law prohibiting slavery in the territories.

Chief Justice Taney died in 1864, and Congress denied funds for a bust honoring Taney in 1865. Senator Sumner of Massachusetts denounced Taney's Dred Scott Decision as the "incident of our history... most deadly in its consequences."

In 1868, the 14th amendment granted citizenship to any person born in the United States, including African Americans - thus negating the Dred Scott Decision.




Click on the strip to expand.

Currency Exchange....

I had a bunch of Canadian dollars I needed to exchange, so I went to the currency exchange window at the local bank. The line was short.

There was just one guy in front of me . . . an Asian fellow who was trying to exchange his yen for dollars and he was a little irritated. He asked the teller,

"Why it change??"

"Yestoday, I get two hun-ate dolla fo yen."

"Today I get hun-ate eighty."

"Why it change?"

The teller shrugged his shoulders and said, "Fluctuations?"

The Asian guy says, "Fluc you white people, too."

New Iranian Banknote.....



Includes the nuclear symbol. What is that telling you? That they are now promoting their nuclear ambitions.

And you moronic liberals, don't say that that the Iraq invasion has tied our hands. We have over 100,000 soldiers within striking distance. Vietnam is what is tying our hands.....still.

France Surrenders as “Precaution” After Swiss Troops Wander Into Liechtenstein....

France, the global appeaser, performs a precautionary surrender as Swiss soldiers accidently wander into neighboring Lictenstein!

Monday, March 05, 2007

Quote Of The Day....

You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.
You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
You cannot help little men by tearing down big men.
You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.
You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.
You cannot establish sound security on borrowed money.
You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred.
You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than you earn.
You cannot build character and courage by destroying men's initiative and independence.
And you cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they can and should do for themselves.
William J. H. Boetcker, 1916 [often attributed to Abraham Lincoln]

Ronald Reagan, October 27, 1964....

A speech supporting presidential candidate Barry Goldwater still appropriate for us today, just replace Islamist radicals for Soviets [full text here]....
If you and I have the courage to tell our elected officials that we want our national policy based upon what we know in our hearts is morally right. We cannot buy our security, our freedom from the threat of the bomb by committing an immorality so great as saying to a billion now in slavery behind the Iron Curtain, "Give up your dreams of freedom because to save our own skin, we are willing to make a deal with your slave masters." Alexander Hamilton said, "A nation which can prefer disgrace to danger is prepared for a master, and deserves one." Let's set the record straight. There is no argument over the choice between peace and war, but there is only one guaranteed way you can have peace--and you can have it in the next second--surrender.

Admittedly there is a risk in any course we follow other than this, but every lesson in history tells us that the greater risk lies in appeasement, and this is the specter our well-meaning liberal friends refuse to face--that their policy of accommodation is appeasement, and it gives no choice between peace and war, only between fight and surrender. If we continue to accommodate, continue to back and retreat, eventually we have to face the final demand--the ultimatum. And what then? When Nikita Khrushchev has told his people he knows what our answer will be? He has told them that we are retreating under the pressure of the Cold War, and someday when the time comes to deliver the ultimatum, our surrender will be voluntary because by that time we will have weakened from within spiritually, morally, and economically. He believes this because from our side he has heard voices pleading for "peace at any price" or "better Red than dead," or as one commentator put it, he would rather "live on his knees than die on his feet." And therein lies the road to war, because those voices don't speak for the rest of us. You and I know and do not believe that life is so dear and peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery. If nothing in life is worth dying for, when did this begin--just in the face of this enemy? Or should Moses have told the children of Israel to live in slavery under the pharaohs? Should Christ have refused the cross? Should the patriots at Concord Bridge have thrown down their guns and refused to fire the shot heard 'round the world? The martyrs of history were not fools, and our honored dead who gave their lives to stop the advance of the Nazis didn't die in vain. Where, then, is the road to peace? Well, it's a simple answer after all.

You and I have the courage to say to our enemies, "There is a price we will not pay." There is a point beyond which they must not advance. This is the meaning in the phrase of Barry Goldwater's "peace through strength." Winston Churchill said that "the destiny of man is not measured by material computation. When great forces are on the move in the world, we learn we are spirits--not animals." And he said, "There is something going on in time and space, and beyond time and space, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty."

You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on Earth, or we will sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness.

We will keep in mind and remember that Barry Goldwater has faith in us. He has faith that you and I have the ability and the dignity and the right to make our own decisions and determine our own destiny.

Thank you very much.
Ronald Reagan was a Democrat till 1962...
1948:Reagan supports Harry Truman for president.
1950:Reagan campaigns for California Democrat Helen Gahagan Douglas in her bid for the U.S. Senate against Richard Nixon.
1952:Reagan campaigns as a Democrat for Eisenhower.
1956:Reagan campaigns as a Democrat for President Dwight Eisenhower's re-election.
1960:Reagan campaigns as a Democrat for Richard Nixon for president.
1962:Reagan officially changes his party registration to Republican.
Its an interesting transformation and that as a Democrat, he campaigned for Republicans. Even in the 1960's, Kennedy and Johnson were strident anti-communists and prepared to face head-on the Soviet and Chinese threats, however, the McGovernite pacifist wing of the Democrats were emerging and eventually have taken over the now dangerous Democratic party.

Sunday, March 04, 2007

Don't Get Angry....

Better not to get angry, just take a deep breath.

Men And Women Are Different....

Expereince the orgasm of the opposite sex, here. Wan ker-sin will like this one.

Saturday, March 03, 2007

Media Reports, You Decide.....

Al Gore has a problem with the balanced reporting going on in the press on global warming. He thinks that balance in reporting is actually bias...
"I believe that is one of the principal reasons why political leaders around the world have not yet taken action," Gore said. "There are many reasons, but one of the principal reasons in my view is more than half of the mainstream media have rejected the scientific consensus implicitly — and I say 'rejected,' perhaps it's the wrong word. They have failed to report that it is the consensus and instead have chosen … balance as bias."
See, here we have another Democrat expecting the press to report whatever they say as the absolute. I guess that Democrats are so used to the press doing their work for them, that Gore is shocked that they don't do it all the time for everything. The Democrat's basic philosophy is two fold:
1. I know what is better for you than you do.

2. I know what the proper solution is, government intervention, where one solution is formulated and that is the only path forward and all other solutions are crowded out.
I think that by reporting the facts and letting us decide is what the role of the press is. Their job is not to be an advocate of a position but also question the "scientific" evidence even if it appears to be overwhelming. Just like the vigorous defense of clearly guilty criminals in the American judicial system, the objective is to ensure that every opportunity is taken to gather and analyze evidence supporting a position. Not just for global warming but for everything. Unfortunately, as of late, the press has largely been a shill for leftist positions and the Democrats. I welcome them returning to their role as reporting the news instead of advocating positions.

Tough Week In The Markets....

In case anyone missed it, Tuesday, the Shanghai market dropped by nearly 10% in price in one session. The drop was due to concerns surrounding a proposal by the Chinese government to.....
RAISE CAPITAL GAINS TAXES.
It is facinating, that a communist country, where there is still much controlled by central command, reacts so quickly to such taxes. But since the common person has so little options to invest their savings, and there are so many fewer restrictions on their ability to change behavior, that they take actions quickly. The trail balloon was floated since the Chinese authorities are looking for ways to cool the speculative excesses in the Chinese economy and they floated this trial balloon. So for all you leftist, liberals and American Democrats, higher taxes have negative consequences as this week's activity in China shows. Higher taxes cause decreases in capital values and after tax incomes and drive prices down. People know this and act rationally. Prices fall so so the same risk adjusted after tax cash flows are created. Even liberal economist Arthur Okun knew this when recommending a cut in taxes to Democrat President Kennedy 45 years ago.
The rich have less incentive to work because high marginal tax rates take a large fraction of their additional income (top tax rates were between 50 and 70 percent at the time he was writing). The relatively rich also have more of an incentive to spend on tax-deductible items and on tax shelters as a way of avoiding taxes. "High tax rates," wrote Okun, "are followed by attempts of ingenious men to beat them as surely as snow is followed by little boys on sleds." For these insights, Okun can be considered one of the original supply-siders.
The rich have less incentive to work and to invest. Lower after tax returns do not reduce the risk of losses, so prices have to fall in order to compensate for the changes in after tax cash flows. So, the Chinese authorities recognized this natural response, came out and took the proposal off the table and the market stabilized.

The big problem that China has, due to the brittleness of the regulations surrounding capital flows, China is having a difficult time sterilizing capital flows. The way that it works is like this....
Money flows into China in the form of investment or in trade surplus.

The holders of this foreign exchange income/flows go to the government to get local currency, RMB for their foreign exchange.

The government gives RMB for the foreign currency.

So the government creates a credit in the banking system in RMB against receiving the foreign currency.

The government then has to decide what it will after creating the new RMB deposit in the banking system.
They can either just let it be which increases the supply of money, essentially creating new money out of thin air and risking inflation. Excess creation of the supply of money generally creates a situation where prices and inflation of prices of various things may occur ...

Or sterilize the capital flow by buying the RMB so that the money supply does not grow faster than demand for money dictates.
There are problems with the excess foreign capital flows and trade surpluses. First is that if the government doesn't sterilize and take the money out of circulation, then there could be large increases in prices or inflation.

The second is that if it is sterilized, then it cost money to sterilize. The government (I say the government when I mean the Central Bank) buys the excess RMB in the system by issuing bonds. They obviously have to pay interest on the bonds and this costs the government money. Or they can raise reserve requirements that costs the banking system, since the money is given to the Central Bank without interest.

Either way, it creates some form of financial stress.
It appears to me, that given the rampant speculative excesses in China as of late in the stock and property markets, that the government has not been able to fully sterilize or unwilling to fully sterilize the excess money created in the financial system. they have chosen to take short-term growth in exchange for risks of longer-term increase in inflation. And a Milton Friedman has pointed out numerous times, it is something that doesn't really work, since eventually a central bank will have to squeeze money supply hard to squeeze out the speculative excesses.

Expect more of the same in China. Also, in the US, the central bank, the Federal Reserve, has raised interest rates from the low rates a number of years ago. We have seen the tightening monetary policy manifest itself in weakening residential real estate prices and stress in the credit markets, particularly those credit products where excess risk was taken, such as sub-prime mortgages.

Friday, March 02, 2007

Another Great Hong Kong Name....

Received an email from a vendor that I have done business with.... Volcano Zhang. Ha ha ha.

Quote Of The Day....

"It's probably true that hard work never killed anyone-but why take the chance?"

Ronald Reagan, 40th President of the United States

Thursday, March 01, 2007

Copperheads....

What is a copperhead? There is a poisonous snake that lives in swamps and strikes without warning that is called a copperhead. The name copperhead also refers to those congressional representatives, mostly Democrats, during the US Civil War that wanted to surrender and end the war, effectively splitting the US into north and south....
During the American Civil War (1861-1865), the Copperheads nominally favored the Union but strongly opposed the war, for which they blamed abolitionists, and they demanded immediate peace and resisted the draft laws. They wanted Lincoln and the Republicans ousted from power, seeing the president as a tyrant who was destroying American republican values with his despotic and arbitrary actions.

Some Copperheads tried to persuade Union soldiers to desert. They talked of helping Confederate prisoners of war seize their camps and escape. They sometimes met with Confederate agents and took their money. The Confederacy encouraged their activities whenever possible. Most Democratic party leaders, however, repelled Confederate advances.
Sounds familiar? Kind of like the modern Democrats that demonize Bush and demand withdrawal from Iraq before completing the mission. The modern copperheads appear to be doing the same thing, assisting Islamists in achieving their goals of regional domination in the Middle-East, irrespective of what the consequences or outcomes of a withdrawal would be.

We are involved in global confrontation with Islam and the war in Iraq will be only one in a series of conflicts that will more than likely last decades. Kind of reminds me of the Cold War. Where Vietnam, far from a defeat in my simple mind, was just one of the battles in a long war where the goal was to tie up communist resources. Remember, that this conflict in Asia included the UN sanctioned Korean War, the stationing of ten's of thousands of American troops on Taiwanese soil when the PRC was shelling the country in the late 1950's, Vietnam, an invasion of India by China in some mountainous region in the 1960's and general risks where the US was compelled to station 10's of thousands of troops regionally and maintain a strong Pacific blue water fleet to defend our interests here and contain the spread of political communism. Some of these conflicts involved the client states of the expansionary Soviet and somewhat rudderless Chinese communist empires post WWII. Anyone that thinks that withdrawing from Iraq and deploying the forces elsewhere will end the conflict with Muslims is delusional. In the unlikely event that we withdraw from Iraq anytime soon, we will probably find that there will be more attacks on US and particularly European soil as fanatical Islam resources are shifted from the Middle-East to the West.

Flat Earth Society....

Given my opinions on the prospects of global warming, I figured that I should also join the "Flat Earth Society" whose website can be found here. For me, in my daily life, it just doesn't matter if the earth is flat or round. Also, I see no point in arguing about it since there is so little that I can do. The flatness or roundness of the earth is already baked into the cake and it just something that I have to live with. Also, the evidence of the roundness of the earth is just a scam foisted on us by one individual, Grigori Efimovich ( AKA Christopher Columbus) and perpetuated by silly science probably funded by the airlines or some other oligopoly business....
Then, in the year of our Lord fourteen-hundred and ninety-two, it all changed. For decades a small band of self-proclaimed "enlightened" individuals had been spouting their heretical nonsense that the Earth was in fact round. Citing "proof" based on nothing more than assumptions, half-truths and blind guesses, they dazzled the populace with their " . . . undeniable mathematical and scientific evidence . . . that the world is shaped not like a pancake, but an orange!"

Rightly wishing to dispel notions regarding the alleged citrus-like shape of our planet, the Church was able to either silence or execute nearly all the fanatics. But a small handful remained, continuing to spread their blasphemous speeches and to promote their heretical ideals involving the very center of the universe. One of their number, who called himself Grigori Efimovich, would later be known to the rest of the world as Christopher Columbus. Using an elaborate setup involving hundreds of mirrors and a few burlap sacks, he was able to create an illusion so convincing that it was actually believed he had sailed around the entire planet and landed in the West Indies. As we now know, he did not. What Efimovich actually did was sail across the Atlantic Ocean to a previously undiscovered continent, North America, and even then only to a small island off the coast. It took him several years more even to "discover" his blunder and claim it as a " . . . new world". But the damage had already been done, and mankind entered into what we now call its "Dark Ages"
Also, I know that the world is probably flat and that is has a edge that one can fall off into a stinking burning place. That place, if one wants to experience it first hand, is also commonly known as Manila, but it is actually the stinking burning edge of the earth.

Proof, well how about this proof, take a citrus orange and pour a glass of water on it. What happens to the water? It runs off and none of it stays on the top of the orange where you poured the water. Now pour that glass of water on a plate. What happens? It stays there. See! Now go outside and pour that same glass of water on the ground. Does it roll off out of sight like the water on the orange? No, it does not. This is proof that world is flat and not round like a citrus orange. So this is a simple experiment that you can do on your own that proves that the earth is flat.

So, don't listen to all the "scientists" that are telling us that the earth is warming. They are probably using the same false science that has convinced many many unenlightened people that the earth is round like a citrus, has, it just makes me chuckle to myself. In any case, whether round or flat, there is little that we can do about it anyway!

Today, I tried to join the Flat Earth Society, but the website seems to not be active. Maybe it is being cyber attacked by those evil round earthers that don't want to promote the truth and perpetuate the myths of a round earth and of global warming!

Enjoy your day!