Fire Hydrant of Freedom

Can someone find the youtube or other URL for last night's "60 Minutes" segment on Steve Jobs' I-Pad helping autistic people?

I know someone with a very autistic child and heard that the segment was quite good.

Karzai Says Afghanistan Would Back Pakistan if U.S. Attacks
Published October 23, 2011
| Associated Press
 
AP
Oct. 20: US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, right, shakes hands with Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai during their meeting in Kabul.

KABUL, Afghanistan –  Afghan President Hamid Karzai has said if the United States and Pakistan ever went to war, his country would back Islamabad, drawing a sharp rebuke Sunday from Afghan lawmakers who claimed the country's top officials were adopting hypocritical positions.

The scenario is exceedingly unlikely and appears to be less a serious statement of policy than an Afghan overture to Pakistan, just days after Karzai and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Islamabad must do more to crack down on militants using its territory as a staging ground for attacks on Afghanistan.

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"If fighting starts between Pakistan and the U.S., we are beside Pakistan," Karzai said is an interview with private Pakistani television station GEO that aired Saturday. "If Pakistan is attacked and the people of Pakistan need Afghanistan's help, Afghanistan will be there with you."
He said that Kabul would not allow any nation, including the U.S., to dictate its policies.
Both Washington and Kabul have repeatedly said Pakistan is providing sanctuary to militant groups launching attacks in Afghanistan.
The comments set off a firestorm of criticism in the country. Afghan lawmakers argued they were particularly hypocritical coming just weeks after the assassination of former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani by a suicide bomber.
While it is unclear who masterminded Rabbani's killing, the Afghan government has said it was planned in the Pakistani city of Quetta, the Taliban leadership's suspected base. In addition, the Afghan interior minister accused the Pakistani intelligence service of being involved -- a claim that has not been substantiated.
"Pakistan has never been honest with Afghanistan, and the nation of Afghanistan will never forget those things that happen here" because of Pakistan, Shah Gul Rezaye, a lawmaker from Ghazni province told The Associated Press, citing Rabbani's death and other incidents of violence.
"They make deal with terrorists, and then with the international community ... to get $1 billion from the U.S. under the name of the struggle against terrorism," she said.
The U.S. Embassy in Kabul said it was up to the Afghan government to explain Karzai's remarks.
"This is not about war with each other," Embassy spokesman Gavin Sundwall told the AP. "This is about a joint approach to a threat to all three of our countries: insurgents and terrorists who attack Afghans, Pakistanis, and Americans."
Following her stop in Kabul, Clinton flew to Pakistan to deliver the blunt message that if Islamabad is unwilling or unable to take the fight to the al-Qaida and Taliban-linked Haqqani network operating from its border with Afghanistan, the U.S. "would show" them how to eliminate its safe havens.
Even so, she said the U.S. has no intention of deploying U.S. forces on Pakistani soil, and that the favored approach was one of reconciliation and peace -- an effort that needed Islamabad's cooperation.
Pakistan has been reluctant to move more forcefully against the Haqqani, arguing such an act could spark a broader tribal war in the region.
While it weighs its options, NATO pressed ahead with its operations.
The U.S.-led coalition and Afghan forces on Saturday concluded two operations aimed at disrupting insurgent operations in Kabul, provinces south of the Afghan capital and along the eastern border with Pakistan -- all places where the Haqqani network has launched attacks.
NATO did not release further details about the operations, but Army Lt. Col. Jimmie Cummings, a coalition spokesman, said Sunday that "a number of Haqqani affiliated insurgents plus additional fighters have been either detained or killed in the course of operations."
During her visit to Pakistan, Clinton said Haqqani fighters were among those killed and captured during the operations.
"Many dozens, if not into the hundreds, have been captured or killed on the Afghan side of the border," she said in Islamabad.
The push comes as NATO plans to pull out its combat forces by the end of 2014 and hand over full security responsibility to the Afghans.
But the attacks and assassination attempts continue.
In the latest such incident, bodyguards for Afghan Interior Minister Bismullah Khan Mohammadi shot and killed a would-be suicide bomber who was waiting for the minister's convoy Sunday in Sayyed Khel district of Parwan province, north of Kabul, the ministry said. The minister was not in the convoy at the time.
NATO also said three of its service members were killed separate clashes with insurgents in the south and east of the country. The coalition did not provide additional details, but the deaths, which occurred Saturday and Sunday, raised to 474 the number of NATO service members killed so far this year in Afghanistan.
Also, five villagers were killed while trying to remove a roadside mine planted by the Taliban in the western province of Herat, the provincial governor's spokesman, Mohyaddin Noori, said Sunday.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2011/10/23/karzai-says-afghanistan-would-back-pakistan-if-us-attacks/#ixzz1beyUKKMu

Spurred on by Tom's presence here I think we are having a good conversation.  I now repost something from the Economics forum that I originally had brought to my attention by Tom.

The point of particular interest here is the explanation of low interest rates.  Then I will follow with a separate post concerning a different explanation of interest rates-- which will plant the question of whether both analyses are correct, one is, or neither is.

============

I am trying to understand your reasoning in the discussion about inflation vs. deflation.  One of the things I don't understand is the role of "credit". You write that "the market value of credit is collapsing at an amazing rate".  But isn't "credit" the same as "debt"?  When the market value of debt falls, then I wouldn't I need less "real estate" to get rid of my debt? Please, can you spend a minute to clarify this contradiction.
---------------
No Contradiction

Hello Josef,

An accepted offer for credit is a loan, resulting in debt for the borrower, and an asset (the loan) on the balance sheet of the lender (typically a bank or finance company). So yes debt = credit extended (plus agreed upon interest).

When the value of assets (loans) drop significantly, banks become capital impaired and cannot lend. This is happening now even though banks are hiding losses by not marking assets to market prices.

We have heard absurd statements from the Central bank of France that there are no toxic assets on French bank balance sheets. The market price of Greek debt says otherwise.

Plunge in Mark-to-Market Prices of Bank Assets

We can infer marked-to market plunges in value of bank assets by the enormous drops in financial stocks this year. We know the value of debt on the balance sheets of banks has collapsed, even if banks deny it.

Inability to pay back debt also shows up in credit default swaps, sovereign debt ratings, and soaring bond yields of Greece, Portugal, Spain, and Italy vs. Germany.

These credit actions show a demand for safe hiding places such as US and German government bonds and cash. We can see that in record low US treasury yields and German government bond yields.

Debt Not Marked-to-Market

The second question is where your error is "wouldn't I need less real estate to get rid of my debt?"

The debt remains until it is written off. In the US, people still owe more on their houses than they can pay back. The money is owed but will not be paid back. The same applied to may types of loans including auto loans, credit card debt, home equity lines, etc.

Enormous Foreclosure Backlog

US Banks have the value of their assets (mortgage loans, commercial real estate loans, consumer credit loans), at prices that do not reflect likelihood of default and thus that debt is not marked-to-market.

Writedowns are deflation in action, and they are coming.

In many instances, people walk away from mortgage debt. In those cases banks eventually foreclose. The key word is "eventually" as the list of pending foreclosures is measured in decades at the current rate.

Please see First Time Foreclosure Starts Near 3-Year Lows, However Bad News Overwhelms; Foreclosure Pipeline in NY is 693 months and 621 Months in NJ for details.

US Writedowns Coming on REOs

When homeowners walk away or go bankrupt, generally they are relieved of debt. However the problem for banks does not go away.

After foreclosure, banks have a different asset on the books. It is no longer a loan, but rather REO (Real Estate Owned).

What do you think those houses on the balance sheets of banks are worth vs. the value banks hypothesize they are worth?

Once again, this capital impairment shows up in banks inability and unwillingness to lend. When banks don't lend, businesses don't expand, and when businesses don't expand unemployment stays high.

This deflationary cycle feeds on itself until home prices fall to the point where there is genuine demand for them and banks are recapitalized.

European Writedowns

The biggest debt problem in Europe is in regards to loans made by French and German banks to Greece, Spain, Portugal, and Italy.

The ECB, EU, and IMF compounded the problem by throwing more money at Greece, on terms and timelines Greece cannot possibly pay back.

Europe has other huge structural issues regarding productivity in Spain and Greece vs. Germany, and in currency union that cannot possibly work given the lack of a fiscal union.

Poor Policies by IMF, EU, ECB, Fed

EU, IMF, ECB, and Fed policies in the US and Europe were designed to hide losses on real estate loans, to hide losses on sovereign debt loans to Greece, Spain, Portugal etc, and to prevent losses to banks and bondholders.

Barry Ritholtz had an excellent column on that yesterday called Banking’s Self Inflicted Wounds.

Policies of governments and central banks that bail out private banks are wrong because they place more burden on already over-extended and deep in debt taxpayers who are not equipped to take on more debt.

The deflationary backdrop will persist until debt is written off, consumer deleveraging peaks, home prices fall to affordable values, and global structural imbalances fixed. The situation is not encouraging because of five critical problems.

Five Critical Problems


Keynesian clowns everywhere refuse to accept the fact that debt is the problem and one cannot possibly spend one's way out of debt crisis.
Europe has structural problems related to the currency union, productivity, union work rules, pensions, retirement, and country-specific fiscal problems.
The US has structural problems related to prevailing wages, collective bargaining of public unions, corporate tax policies, etc.
Stimulus and bailouts are bad enough in and of themselves, but stimulus and bailouts without fixing structural problems is insanity.
Politicians on both continents refuse to address structural issues

Process is Important, Not the Term

It's important to not get hung up on the term "deflation" but rather to understand the process I am describing, the implications of that process, and why the policy actions taken have not worked (and cannot possibly work), all called well in advance.

For more on the process of deflation (regardless of what one wants to call it), please see Bizarro World Inflation; About that 2011 Hyperinflation Call ...

Yes Virginia, U.S. Back in Deflation; Inflation Scare Ends; Hyperinflationists Wrong Twice Over

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

third post of the morning

As the GOP casts about for a response to Occupy Wall Street, at least one prominent Republican isn't sweating it. In the war over class, Mitt Romney is already waving a white flag. And therein lies one of his chief liabilities as a Republican nominee or president.

The Occupy masses don't have a unified message, though the Democrats embracing them aren't making that mistake. President Obama helpfully explained that the crowds in New York and elsewhere are simply expressing their "frustrations" at unequal American society. The answer to their protests is, conveniently, his own vision for the country. If wealthier Americans and corporations are just asked to pay their "fair share," if "we can go back to that then I think a lot of that anger, that frustration dissipates," said the president.

This is a campaign theme in the making, and one with which Mr. Obama has already had plenty of practice. Congressional Democrats, too, see the value of pivoting off Occupy Wall Street to build an election-year class-warfare argument.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's latest answer to any spending proposal is a "millionaire's surtax," which he intends to make Republicans vote against ad nauseam. Labor unions, liberal activist groups—all see an Occupy opportunity to refocus the blame for a faltering economy away from President Obama and to greedy, rich America.

But here's the other big prize, from the White House's perspective: The man they most expect to become the Republican nominee, Mitt Romney, is already running from this debate. Mr. Romney, they see, is in the full throes of Guilty Republican Syndrome.

It's a curious illness, even if its source is clear: success. Mr. Romney is a multimillionaire, and through his own hard work. It's a great American story, yet the Republican is paralyzed at the thought of what his opponents might do with it in a 9% unemployment economy. Democrats have already pounced on his time at Bain Capital, accusing Mr. Romney of "stripping down" companies and "laying off" employees for profit. The press has run exposés on his privileged upbringing, his "oceanfront" vacation home, his use of private jets.

Even his Republican opponents, who should know better, are lobbing anti-wealth pot shots. Herman Cain has taken to comparing his own "Main Street" business experience to Mr. Romney's "Wall Street" past. Rick Perry is running an ad that hits Mr. Romney on his state health-care plan but ends with this bit of class: "Even the richest man can't buy back his past."

Having initially fought these caricatures, Mr. Romney has since begun to exhibit all the syndrome's symptoms. He's put forth a 59-point economic plan that eliminates the capital gains tax—but only for people who earn less than $200,000 a year. He's declared, at a New Hampshire town hall (and at every other opportunity): "I'm not running for the rich people. Rich people can take care of themselves. They're doing just fine." He's developed a form of Tourette's that causes him to employ the term "middle class" in nearly every sentence.

Related Video
 James Taranto on how Mitt Romney's guilt as a millionaire feeds Democratic class warfare.
..Mr. Romney is clearly hoping that his own passive form of class warfare will head his opponents off at the blue-collar pass. Really? The 2012 election is shaping up to be a profound choice. Mr. Obama is making no bones about his vision of higher taxes, wealth redistribution, larger government.

Mr. Romney has generally espoused the opposing view—smaller government, fewer regulations, opportunity—but only timidly. This hobbles his ability to go head to head with the president, to make the moral and philosophical case for that America. How can Mr. Romney oppose Mr. Obama's plans to raise taxes on higher incomes, dividends and capital gains when the Republican himself diminishes the role of the "top 1%"? How can he demonstrate a principled understanding of capital and job creation when latching on to Mr. Obama's own trademark $200,000 income cutoff?

At a town hall in Iowa Thursday, Mr. Romney took it further: "For me, one of the key criteria in looking at tax policy is to make sure that we help the people that need the help the most."

These are the sort of statements that cause conservative voters to doubt Mr. Romney's convictions. It also makes them doubt the ability of a President Romney to convince a Congress of the need for fundamental tax reform. If anything he owes a debt to Newt Gingrich, who in a recent debate gave him a taste of how politically and intellectually vulnerable he is on this argument, asking Mr. Romney to justify the $200,000 threshold.

Mr. Romney's non-responsive response included five references to the "middle" class and another admonition that the "rich" are "doing just fine." Mr. Obama can't wait to agree, even as he shames Mr. Romney over his bank account.

Mr. Romney isn't the first Republican to develop Guilty Syndrome, and one option would be to form a support group with, say, George H.W. Bush. A better cure might be the tonic of Ronald Reagan, who never let his own wealth get in the way of a good lower-tax argument. Reagan's message, delivered with cheerfulness and conviction, was that he wanted everyone in American to have the opportunity to be as successful as he had been. If Mr. Romney is looking for a way to connect with an aspiring American electorate, that's a start.

WASHINGTON — Herman Cain, the Republican presidential candidate with the sharp wit and easy-to-remember tax plan, is a cancer survivor, radio host and former chief executive of Godfather’s Pizza. On the campaign trail, he talks up his business experience, casting himself as a “problem solver” and Washington outsider.

But the role that helped propel Mr. Cain into politics was that of an ultimate Washington insider: industry lobbyist.

From 1996, when he left the pizza company, until 1999, Mr. Cain ran the National Restaurant Association, a once-sleepy trade group that he transformed into a lobbying powerhouse. He allied himself closely with cigarette makers fighting restaurant smoking bans, spoke out against lowering blood-alcohol limits as a way to prevent drunken driving, fought an increase in the minimum wage and opposed a patients’ bill of rights — all in keeping with the interests of the industry he represented.

It was a role that gave him an intimate view of the way Washington works, putting him in close proximity to Republican leaders at the time, including Newt Gingrich, now one of his presidential rivals, and John A. Boehner, now speaker of the House. And it helped Mr. Cain lay the groundwork for the next chapter in his life, his entry into electoral politics, beginning with a short-lived bid for the White House in 2000.

Those who knew him then could see his ambitions developing. Rob Meyne, an official at the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, which contributed handsomely to the restaurant group, wrote in a 1999 e-mail to his colleagues that Mr. Cain’s presidential plans were “not totally unexpected.” In the message, part of an online archive of tobacco industry documents, a wry and somewhat skeptical Mr. Meyne assessed Mr. Cain’s chances.

“Nice to have goals, huh?” Mr. Meyne wrote, speculating that perhaps Mr. Cain wanted to be vice president or had a cabinet post in mind. “In any event,” he went on, “Cain brings some positives. He is a genuine ‘antigovernment mandate’ conservative who happens to be an African-American. He is a wonderful speaker and would be an effective and charismatic candidate. He is also good on our issues.”

Mr. Cain, 65, declined to be interviewed for this article. He does not hide his experience at the restaurant group — it is mentioned on his Web site — but on the campaign trail he emphasizes his earlier stint running Godfather’s, although he has not run a major corporation for more than a decade.

In many ways, his advocacy of a special interest fits with his free-market, anti-Washington themes. Colleagues from the restaurant association remember him as an energetic leader and a fierce foe of any initiative that he saw as a government intrusion into the private sector.

He was at first reluctant to give up his perch as a corporate executive to run a trade group. But Thomas A. Kershaw, a Boston restaurateur and owner of Cheers, the bar that inspired the television show, said the chance to work in the nation’s capital seemed to hold allure.

“I think what was enticing to him was coming to Washington and getting into the middle of the whole political arena,” Mr. Kershaw said. “I think he had his eye on politics.”

Mr. Cain burst into the spotlight in 1994, two years before he joined the trade group full time, while still running Godfather’s. As the association’s unpaid chairman, he sparred with President Bill Clinton during a nationally televised town-hall-style meeting on health care. Mr. Cain insisted that the Clinton plan would cost jobs, asking, “If I’m forced to do this, what will I tell those people whose jobs I’m forced to eliminate?”

Their polite, if pointed, back and forth — Mr. Clinton pushed back with calculations that Mr. Cain declared “incorrect” — made the pizza executive a minor celebrity and sent the White House scrambling to respond.

“That was a very seminal moment for Herman,” said Stephen J. Caldeira, who later ran the association’s communications operation under Mr. Cain. “I think that was when he got the political bug.”

=================

He caught the eye of Jack Kemp, a leading Republican in Washington who shared his free market views, in 1996, when Bob Dole sought the White House with Mr. Kemp as his running mate, Mr. Cain advised them. That same year, after a headhunting firm identified Mr. Cain as a possible successor to the restaurant association’s departing chief executive, he signed on.
The Long Run
When Mr. Cain took the helm of the restaurant association, anti-drunken-driving groups were waging a campaign to lower the legal blood-alcohol limit from 0.10 percent to 0.08 percent — a change that restaurant owners feared would hurt liquor sales. In an opinion article in his local newspaper, The Omaha World-Herald, Mr. Cain called instead for stiffer penalties for drunken driving — an argument that drew a pointed rebuke from Diane Riibe, a board member of Mothers Against Drunk Driving.
“Mr. Cain and those he represents are in the business of selling alcohol,” Ms. Riibe wrote, “not saving lives.”
Anti-tobacco groups were also upset with positions he advocated. Because the cigarette makers had a less than stellar image, they often built lobbying partnerships with other industries.
Under Mr. Cain’s leadership, the restaurant association opposed higher taxes on cigarettes and the use of federal money to prosecute cigarette makers for fraud — positions that Matt Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids said had little to do with the restaurant business.
And Mr. Cain argued vociferously that the decision about whether to go smoke-free was the province of individual restaurant owners, not the government. “The restaurant industry literally became the alter ego of the tobacco industry during that period of time,” Mr. Myers said in an interview.
The restaurant association relied heavily on R. J. Reynolds for financial support, records show. Mr. Meyne, the Reynolds senior director of public affairs, served on the restaurant group’s board, and Mr. Cain served on the board of Nabisco, which had earlier merged with Reynolds.
In a 1999 memorandum, Mr. Meyne wrote that in previous years his company had given the trade group “as much as nearly $100,000 in cash and much more in in-kind support,” adding, “They have done virtually everything we’ve ever asked, and even appointed us to their board.”
Mr. Cain did not entirely become a creature of Washington during his time here. He kept his home in Omaha, where the pizza company was headquartered, and took an apartment in the Northern Virginia suburbs. Weekdays, when he was not traveling, he worked out of the association’s Washington headquarters. Weekends, he flew home to his wife in Omaha.
The trade group did not have an especially high profile in Washington when Mr. Cain took over. Each year, Fortune magazine published its “Power 25” list of the most influential interest groups in the capital. The restaurant group had never made the list. But by the time Mr. Cain left, he said in his book, the group was ranked 15th.
He bolstered his media relations department, hired more lobbyists and demonstrated a knack for simple titles and catchy names — foreshadowing, perhaps, the “9-9-9” tax plan that is a central feature of his presidential campaign. He branded his media strategy “Mo, Me, Mo,” for motivation, message, momentum.
He built a nationwide grass-roots program aimed at getting local restaurant owners to come lobby in Washington, on the theory that every lawmaker’s district has restaurants. He called it “BITE Back,” for “Better Impact the Elected.” He strengthened state affiliates, creating a new political action committee — the Save American Free Enterprise Fund, or SAFE — to help state chapters beat back initiatives they regarded as antibusiness.
While Mr. Cain was not a constant presence on Capitol Hill — his lobbyists did the industry’s day-to-day bidding — he did take pains to cultivate relations with Republican leaders. Those friendships seem to have lasted; Mr. Gingrich told CNN last week that Mr. Cain had a good shot at becoming the Republican nominee, while Mr. Cain said last month that he had “the greatest admiration” for Mr. Gingrich and even named him as a possible running mate.
“We were not on the radar before him,” said Joseph K. Fassler, a former board chairman of the restaurant association. “I remember one day I was walking in Washington with him, and Colin Powell was driving by. He stopped the car, got out and gave Herman a hug. I remember how impressed I was, seeing that.”
Mr. Cain left the trade group in November 1999. When his own presidential aspirations for 2000 faltered, he became co-chairman of Steve Forbes’s unsuccessful campaign. That year, he moved back to his native Georgia to concentrate on his motivational speaking business and writing books. He dabbled in politics again, seeking the Republican nomination for the Senate in 2004 — and losing badly in the primary to Johnny Isakson, who went on to win the general election.
Mr. Meyne, who now works for the gambling industry and declined to be interviewed for this article, predicted as much. His 1999 e-mail assessing Mr. Cain’s prospects outlined his political weaknesses (“no natural geographic base from which to run” and no proven fund-raising ability) before offering a prescient conclusion.
“Bottom line: Herman Cain is certain, in one form or another, to be a political factor for a number of years to come,” Mr. Meyne wrote. “We have a good relationship with him, and that will certainly be to our benefit.”

A good day is when Luc wakes up and wants to be a tractor for Halloween. Or a helicopter. Or Hercules. Or anything other than a princess, bounding door-to-door in tiara and tulle.

A few weeks ago, the 4-year-old boy's desire to trick-or-treat as a princess sparked a dilemma for his two moms, Anna and Louisa Villeneuve: Which do you honor and protect, your child's independent spirit or tender feelings?
"My first reaction was 'He wants to be a princess? We're there!' " said mama Anna. But almost everybody she talked with about Luc's intention told her, "Whoa; that's a bad, bad, bad idea."

For a girl who grew up wanting to dress like a boy, Luc's choice felt like a blow against stereotyping. "But I'm trying to leave my inner activist at home," she said, "and just do what's best for my son.  It's one thing to say 'Son, you can be anything you want. Our society needs to be less uptight.' "

It's another thing entirely to consider how a boy in a princess dress will be treated when all the other boys are trick-or-treating in Superman or Power Rangers costumes.

"I want to encourage him to stand up and be himself," she said. "But my 4-year-old is too little and too fragile to know where the social boundaries are. And I don't want his feelings hurt on what should be one of his happiest nights."

Luc is dreamy-eyed, with lush brown hair and a tentative smile when I meet him after a nap, curled up on mommy Louisa's lap. The toys stacked in neat piles along the wall range from building blocks to trucks to baby dolls.  All year long, he's been donning princess garb in the dress-up corner at his preschool. The adults in his life are fine with that. The little girls, however, have a problem with it. "Boys can't be princesses," they tell Luc, designating him a "wizard" instead.

Still, it's one thing for a little boy to play princess at school, and another to parade in a ball gown before a crowd on the annual Halloween march through the business district in the family's hometown, Glendora.  Anna and Louisa remember the sea of "Yes on 8" signs that sprouted around them in 2008, when the measure banning gay marriage was on the ballot. Gay marriage was rejected that year by voters, just months after the couple officially wed on June 17, the first day gay marriage was legal in California.  Now, Anna envisions those folks snubbing her trick-or-treating princess-boy.

"I imagine that when those Glendorans shut their doors, they're going to say 'See, that's why lesbians shouldn't raise children.' "

She doesn't think that having lesbian moms has influenced Luc's costume choice. Two years ago, he was a Jedi. Last year, he was a purple bat.

"I think he likes the bling, the accessories," she said.

But Anna knows that others see costume as commentary.

"My grandma was horrified when we posted pictures on Facebook of Luc in a princess dress with a tiara" after a visit last year to the dress-up exhibit at the L.A. County Fair.

"She's already anticipating that this is early-onset gayness. 'How could you be encouraging this? It's just not right!' she says."

Her grandmother is 87. But she got a similar response from students in the literature class she teaches at Citrus College.

"My colleagues said, 'Go for it. Support him.' My students said, 'Tell Luc that they are out of princess costumes' or find some other excuse not to let him."

That's exactly what my college daughter said when I shared Luc's dilemma with her. When did young people become such closet conformists? "We're not," she said. "We're just closer to Luc's age. And we remember how mean kids are."

Anna imagines Luc at 15 looking at old pictures with his friends and thinking, "Moms, I was only 4. Why didn't you look out for me?"

Even a child development professor at the college agreed: "Let him be a princess at home, but encourage him to pick out a boy costume for the neighborhood."

The message has come through loud and clear: You're lying if you tell your son: "You can be whoever you want." You can't.  At least not until you're old enough to spend Halloween in West Hollywood.

::

Things began to break the moms' way last week, when they took Luc to a Halloween fair and steered him toward the prince costumes.

"He was like 'Wow.' The sword, the helmet, the armor." At home, they fashioned a shield and sword out of cardboard and duct tape, and Luc played prince all day. "He was thrilled," Anna said.

A few days later, he'd backtracked a bit: He talked about dressing as a pitchfork. And by Friday, he was planning to be "a cannon with a big ball firing out of his face." Now that's something that might have me tracking down the child development expert.

Anna and Louisa haven't yet decided what to allow and what to rule out. The thought they are putting into the choice is a testament, in my eyes, to what good and loving mothers they are.  I imagine they've learned a few things from this about in-the-trenches parenting — including the fickle factor of Halloween. 
A typical kid's desires might shift a dozen times in the holiday run-up. My daughter once changed from witch to black cat in the car on the morning of Halloween, as the first-grade parade was about to begin. That's not about gender identity, but the lure of multiple fantasies.  What Anna and Louisa care about most is not what costume Luc wears, but how the strangers he encounters treat him.

"What I don't want is for somebody to open up that door and say 'Dude, what are you doing in a princess dress?' " Anna said. "It might just be confusion, not disapproval. But that's the comment that will make my child feel like he's done something wrong."

So here, after all the soul-searching, is the very simple message she wants me to share: Remember the tenderness of children's feelings if you open that door on Halloween and find a boy in a princess dress among the innocent trick-or-treaters.

sandy.banks@latimes.com

http://www.businessinsider.com/the-hottest-idea-in-monetary-policy-2011-10

Over the weekend, Goldman came out with a report calling on the Fed to embrace Nominal GDP targeting: In other words, set as a goal for the economy that nominal GDP that we saw back in 2007, and then produce enough inflation so that we got there.
Now Bernanke is out with a new speech about monetary policy in the post-Great Recession era, and though he doesn't say that much substantive, he does talk more about trying to more clearly express monetary policy goals.
According to PIMCO's Bill Gross, that's code for... targeting Nominal GDP.
Meanwhile, Chicago Fed President Charles Evans has been making similar comments, about weighting the Fed's mandate much more towards the full employment/growth end of the spectrum, even if it means high inflation.
All of which means you should really be reading the work of Bentley Economist Scott Sumner, who has been writing forever about the benefits of Nominal GDP targeting, and who is sure to be the hottest economist in the world, as this takes off.
You can start by watching his lecture below.
Please follow Money Game on Twitter and Facebook.


Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-hottest-idea-in-monetary-policy-2011-10#ixzz1bWRKLZcr

It is probably safe to bet that the tradition of heated arguments over immigration began millennia ago, when the first country drew a line in the sand.  But the past week in the United States of America has been a hot one, at least by any recent comparison.

You might say it began on Tuesday night, like many a bloody fight, in Vegas, when this exchange took place at the Republican debate:



Rather unpleasant, no?

Or it could have been said to begin back on Saturday, when Herman Cain, at a Tea Party sponsored event in Tennessee, proposed an electrified fence — not the joy buzzer type but the type that kills those who dare to breach it — on the U.S.-Mexico border. Or even earlier on Saturday, when Michele Bachmann, campaigning in Iowa proposed her own “secure double fence” for the border. (Bachmann, who seems to always have a pen handy, signed a pledge with the group Americans for Securing the Border, affirming her commitment to the fence.)

Midweek, The Times’s Trip Gabriel reported on the potential fallout for the G.O.P. of this kind of tough talk: the alienation of droves of Latino voters in battleground states in 2012.

And one might even suppose it culminated in an immigration fight of a different sort —the late-week dust-up that began when a story in The Washington Post asserted that the U.S. senator Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican, “embellished” the story of his parents arrival in the United States from Cuba, for his political advantage. Many — including The Miami Herald and Rubio himself — responded with outrage at the story, and called the motives of the paper into question. Rubio’s stature as a popular Latino Republican, one who has been mentioned as a vice-presidential candidate, has led some to assert that the story itself was a “hit job.”

And lest anyone think the issue breaks clearly down partisan lines, there was this, as reported by The Hill: “The U.S. deported more people — nearly 400,000 — who were in the country illegally in fiscal 2011 than ever before, according to the latest numbers released Tuesday by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) bureau.

“President Obama’s administration touted the startling figures as evidence of its progress in stopping illegal immigration, a record that could help the president win back independent voters who abandoned Democrats in the 2010 midterm elections.”

Despite all the hot collars and flaring tempers brought on by the Republican antics, it was this last point, a revealing bit of information on the Obama administration’s position on the matter, which opened a round of soul-searching among some bloggers on the left. How tough should Democrats be on immigration and border security?

Soon after the debate, Joe Klein at Swampland pointed out.

It should also be noted that all this macho posturing about electrified fences, crocodiles etc. avoids the most basic fact about illegal immigration — it is down dramatically. The bad economy means there are fewer jobs to lure illegals. The efforts of the last several Presidents [have] significantly beefed up Border Patrol, fencing and high-tech surveillance. And the Obama Administration has been very tough on illegals–almost 400,000, a record, have been deported in the past year. (Of course, you won’t hear the Obama Administration touting this since it might turn away Latino votes…the President, like a strict Franciscan Friar, does not tout his good works, like tax cuts and tightening the border. Weird.)

Kevin Drum at Mother Jones replied to Klein’s post:

I don’t really have a big problem with beefing up the border patrol, but the real answer to illegal immigration (in the short term, anyway) is to lower the cost of legal immigration by boosting quota levels and to raise the cost of illegal immigration by making it unprofitable for employers to hire undocumented workers. That means getting E-verify to work and then tightening up the enforcement and penalties on employers who cheat. It will be interesting to see if the American public actually supports this once they see the results (no more cheap gardeners, no more cheap vegetables, etc.), but the basic idea is hardly impossible to implement.

So far, so good. Then Ryan Bonneville at The League of Ordinary Gentlemen threw a wet blanket on the border patrol bandwagon:

As has been widely reported for several days now, Obama set a new deportation record in the last fiscal year (narrowly edging out the previous record, which also belonged to his administration). This is, no doubt, the latest in his myriad attempts to co-opt the right and burnish his bipartisan credentials heading into the upcoming election. …

Any time he moves to the right, they are going to move further to the right, and their base is going to move with them. There is nothing Obama can do to alter the political calculus here.

But Bonneville truly sounded a note of despair about Klein, Drum and what he calls the “feckless discourse” of Obama and his base on immigration:

Obama’s base is as feckless as he is, which is why he expresses no compunctions about the policy choices he makes. What do you say to Joe Klein when he claims that the “most basic fact” about illegal immigration is that it’s “down”? That the real reason we don’t need crocodiles patrolling the border has nothing at all to do with the number of people illegally crossing it? Drum isn’t much better when his response is “I don’t really have a big problem with beefing up the border patrol”. Why not, Kevin? …

Instead of the fine, self-righteous rage I was working up about what a failure Obama’s presidency has been, I’m left mostly with disappointment. I don’t want to imply that there aren’t any voices doing great work on this ([Adam] Serwer is one of them, most of the time), but more and more it’s becoming clear that Obama is right about what liberals want, and I’m wrong. That’s not infuriating; it’s crushing.

(For those who are riveted by this, Drum defends his stance in a response post, which in turn elicited a response from Matt Yglesias.)

But still the fireworks were being generated by Republicans. On Thursday, Steven Benen at Political Animal expanded on the Times analysis of the Latino voter fallout:

A few weeks ago, Mitt Romney’s campaign launched an attack ad, going after Rick Perry for a Texas policy that offers in-state tuition to children of undocumented immigrants. It was an ugly, borderline-racist commercial, intended to exploit right-wing animus towards Latino immigrants. I noted at the time that Romney appears to be hoping that these voters have short memories and will forget about his divisive antics by Election Day 2012.

Of course, the larger issue goes well beyond one obnoxious ad. Given the extent to which Republican presidential hopefuls are appealing to anti-immigrant voters, the Latino community isn’t exactly being made to feel welcome in the GOP.

But it’s clear Latino voters may not just run up against that problem with Republicans. Adam Serwer, who Bonneville praises, had this to say even before Tuesday’s debate, on the cognitive dissonance of the administration’s stance on “immigration removal:”

In the twisted bizarro world of Washington politics, media conventions have obliged journalists to report with equal “balance” the Republican claim that Obama is pursuing a policy of “backdoor amnesty” even as he racks up more deportations than any president ever before. You’ll hear something similar at the GOP debate tonight if the Republican candidates are asked what needs to be done about illegal immigrations. Perhaps the other candidates will compete with Herman Cain at imagining the most elaborate possible death trap that could be placed at the border to deter would-be migrants.

What you won’t hear about, however, is the human cost to the families, citizen and non-citizen, impacted by the sheer volume and efficiency of the Obama administraton’s immigration removal policy. Neither side is particularly interested in talking about that — Republicans because compassion for the undocumented is political suicide, and the administration because it’s attempting a delicate balancing act between strict immigration enforcement policies and maintaining the approval of Latino voters who were hoping for more out of the Obama administration than record deportation numbers.

Some borders, it seems, can’t be crossed.

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http://www.examiner.com/conservative-in-national/breaking-new-evidence-show-hillary-a-mastermind-behind-gunwalker

Last week it was reported that the State Department and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton were deeply involved in the scandal known as Operation Fast and Furious, or Project Gunwalker. Today, however, new evidence has surfaced indicating that not only was Hillary deeply involved in the scandal but was one of the masterminds behind it.

According to investigative citizen journalist Mike Vanderboegh, sources close to the development of the Gunwalker scheme state that early on, Hillary and her trusted associated at State, Andrew J. Shapiro, devised at least part of the framework of what would later become Operation Fast and Furious. It was Shapiro who first described the details of the proposed scheme early in 2009 just after the Obama Administration took office.

Vanderboegh relates the following:

My sources say that as Hillary's trusted subordinate, it was Shapiro who first described to the Secretary of State the details of what has become the Gunwalker Scandal.

The precise extent to which Hillary Clinton's knowledge of, and responsibility for, the Gunwalker Plot, lies within the memories of these two men, Shapiro and Steinberg, sources say.

The sources also express dismay that the Issa committee is apparently restricting itself to the Department of Justice and not venturing further afield. The House Foreign Affairs Committee, they say, needs to summon these two men and their subordinates -- especially at the Mexico Desk at State -- and question them under oath as to what Hillary Clinton knew about the origins of the Gunwalker Scandal and when she knew it.

There is one other thing those sources agree upon. The CIA, they say, knows "everything" about the "Mexican hat dance" that became the Gunwalker Scandal.

The 'Steinberg' mentioned in the quote above is Hillary Clinton's former Deputy Secretary of State, who was appointed directly by Barack Obama and was considered from the start to be an 'Obama man' whose objective was to carry out the wishes of the President in the State Department.

Hillary had said of Steinberg,

Clinton said Steinberg had been a “fixture” at meetings with the National Security Council (NSC) and frequently represented the US State Department at the White House.

That statement is key. Hillary herself stayed out of all meetings dealing with strategy concerning the euphemism the Administration used to designate Gunwalker, 'strategy meetings on Mexico and the problem of drug and gun trafficking.' Hillary's absence would give the impression that she had no connection to the scheme while making sure that her views were represented by Steinberg and Shapiro, both of whom were fully complicit with the details that developed concerning how to pad statistics on U.S. guns in Mexico.

According to sources, Hillary was obsessed with gun statistics that would prove that '90% of the firearms used by Mexican criminals come from the United States.' As previouly reported, that meme, repeated incessantly by Democratic Senators, Barack Obama, certan members of the ATF, Janet Napolitano, and Hillary Clinton was patently and blatantly false. The fact that they all knew it was false is borne out by the lengths to which each of the above named co-conspirators went to attempt to 'prove' that the 90% figure was true.

Again, Vanderboegh relates the following:

My sources say that this battle of the "statistics" was taken very seriously by all players -- the White House, State and Justice. Yet, WHY was this game of statistics so important to the players? If some weapons from the American civilian market were making it to Mexico into the hand of drug gang killers that was bad enough. What was the importance of insisting that it was 90 percent, 80 percent, or finally 70 percent? Would such statistics make any difference to the law enforcement tactics necessary to curtail them? No.

This statistics mania is similar to the focus on "body counts" in Vietnam. Yet if Vietnam body counts were supposed to be a measure of how we were winning that war, the focus on the 90 percent meme was certainly not designed to be a measure of how we were winning the war against arming the cartels, but rather by what overwhelming standard we were LOSING. Why?

Recall what the whistleblower ATF agents told us right after this scandal broke in the wake of the death of Brian Terry: "ATF source confirms ‘walking’ guns to Mexico to ‘pad’ statistics."

Thus, from the beginning the scheme was to pad statistics on U.S. guns in Mexico in order to be in a strengthened position to call for gun bans and strict gun control at a time when it was politically unpopular. Further, the scheme would involve a made-up statistic, out of thin air--90%--which then had to be proved by using civilian gun retailers along the southern border as unsuspecting pawns to walk U.S. guns into Mexico by ATF agents, straw purchasers, and others with connections to Mexican drug cartels.

And the evidence points to the fact that Hillary Clinton was one of the original Administration officials who was 'in the loop' on the scheme from the very beginning.

There is some footage of Hillary, in Afg I think, where she is handed some small electronic device which apparently had the crude jerky footage of the still alive Kadaffy being captured and then a shot of him dead with a hole in his temple.  The look of bloodthirsty glee on her face (for the record, I did too) as she realized what is was was quite special.

Here is the clearest footage I have seen:

http://www.breitbart.tv/new-video-released-showing-initial-capture-of-gaddafi/

Iraq’s parliament speaker has proposed that Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Iran and Iraq hold conferences on a regular basis aimed at forming an understanding on political stability and security in the region after the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq is complete. It is not clear yet whether the proposed summits will take place, but each party has its own interests it would like to secure in Iraq, and Iraq itself is hoping to avoid becoming the battlefield where regional rivalries play out. However, because of Iraq’s sectarian divisions, it will be difficult for the Iraqis themselves to agree on what an understanding should look like, and the country’s geographic location in the heart of the Middle East make it the natural battleground for influence for its more powerful neighbors. Iran is in the strongest position in Iraq, but the potential for regime change in Syria — Tehran’s closest ally — could put a damper on its aims.

Analysis
Iraqi Parliament Speaker Osama al-Nujaifi met Oct. 17 with Iranian Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani on the sidelines of the Inter-Parliamentary Union in Switzerland to discuss Iraq’s proposed initiative to host regular meetings with Saudi Arabia, Iran and Turkey on security and political stability following the  U.S. withdrawal from Iraq. Thus far, only Iran has committed to join the summits, and conflicting reports have emerged on whether Saudi Arabia and Turkey have even been formally invited yet.

The meetings would be intended to provide a forum for the countries to reach an understanding on the future of the region — one that Iraq hopes will enable it to be left relatively unmolested and free to pursue its interests, especially the development of energy resources, amid its neighbors’ competition for influence. However, this is unlikely for a number of reasons. First, Iraq is extremely fragmented and while the Sunnis, Shia and Kurds may be in agreement that they do not want Iraq to become the site of a proxy battle, they are disunited on what they want in a post-U.S.-withdrawal understanding. In addition, because of its sectarian links and other leverage over Iraq, Iran will be in a stronger position than Turkey and Saudi Arabia at least in the near term, and the other players know this. However, while Tehran may have gained Iraq for now, should the regime of Syrian President Bashar al Assad fall and a Sunni regime replace it, Iran could lose the country that has long been its closest ally in the region, setting back its ambitions and threatening its position in Iraq. The longer it takes Iran to consolidate its gains, the more it risks losing them to some unforeseen development.


Iraq’s Proposed Meeting

Al-Nujaifi proposed in September a vague initiative on solving Iraq’s domestic political impasse. Following a trip to the Iraqi Kurdistan capital of Arbil in late September to meet with the Kurdish leadership, he announced the initiative would also include proposals to solve outstanding issues with Turkey, Iran and Kuwait. The latest manifestation of the initiative, which includes a rotating regional summit between Saudi Arabia, Iran and Turkey came after al-Nujaifi visited Tehran on Oct. 1-3 to discuss Iran’s shelling along its border with Iraq and visit an annual Iranian conference on the Palestinian issue.

Nujaifi is a member of the al-Iraqiya List, the main Sunni political party in Iraq, and is a key player in drafting long-awaited and politically contentious legislation for the oil sector — the development of which is one of the most important reasons for Iraq to secure its autonomy and stability after the U.S. withdrawal. The details of the law are a critical component for the Kurdistan Regional Government’s goal of autonomy and the regional and sectarian balance of power in Iraq. The fact that Iran has agreed to participate in an initiative proposed by a Sunni party is significant and may encourage the Saudis and Turks to join in as well if they feel it is not only supported by Iraq’s Shiites.

Each of the countries has its own reasons for possibly joining the proposed summits. Saudi Arabia wants to limit Iran’s expansion and knows that the United States’ position in the region is too weak to help it — as Riyadh’s deployment of its own military forces to crush Bahrain’s uprising in March demonstrated. Turkey, like Saudi Arabia, is a predominantly Sunni country and eyes Iran’s regional rise with suspicion, though not the outright hostility of Riyadh. While it, too, wants to prevent a Shiite crescent from forming uninterrupted all the way from Iran through Iraq to the Levant over the longer term, its immediate concern is Kurdish militancy emanating from northern Iraq, which has escalated in recent days. To address this, Ankara needs help from both Iraq and Iran, and would use the proposed meetings toward this end if it participates. Iran, which has significant sectarian links to Iraq’s Shiite majority, wants to use its commanding influence in Iraq as a springboard to expand its power elsewhere, and in any case, such a solution follows Iran’s general foreign policy strategy of pushing for security frameworks to be decided by countries in the region without the United States.

If the Saudis feel the proposed series of meetings is the best way to maintain some influence in Iraq, they may participate in them until a more promising option avails itself. Riyadh understands, however, that it does not have the kind of leverage in Iraq that Tehran does — even attending the meetings will on some level be viewed as a victory for Iran, as it has often pushed for these sorts of regional gatherings that do not include the participation of the United States. With tensions between the two countries at an all-time high — especially in light of the alleged Iranian plot to kill the Saudi ambassador on U.S. soil — even if the meetings do take place, trust between the two powers will be in very short supply.


Regional Dynamic

Until the fall of Saddam Hussein following the U.S. invasion in 2003, Iraq was known as the “Shield of the Arabs” because it prevented Iran from expanding its influence westward. With Saddam gone, Iran was easily able to re-emerge and take advantage of its links to Iraq’s Shiite majority. Now, with the United States readying to leave the country by 2012, Iran will have a chance to fully consolidate its gains — and begin contemplating its moves beyond Mesopotamia.

To a degree, Riyadh has already accepted Tehran’s domination of Iraq, but it desperately does not want Iranian influence to push beyond it, especially in countries along the Gulf such as Bahrain, where Iran has already , and feels it must contain Iran’s influence in Iraq to do so.

One possible area for the Saudis to pressure Iran is Syria. During the Iraq war, Saudi jihadists often entered Iraq via Syria in order to attack U.S. troops in the country. As the opposition movement to remove the al Assad regime from power continues, Saudi militants could theoretically travel to Syria via Iraq to fight the minority Alawite regime. Syria has been a close Iranian ally for decades, so Tehran does not want to see the country fall — a development that would be all the more painful coming so soon after its main obstacle, the Saddam regime, had been removed. Iran needs Iraq to prevent these militants from entering the country and making matters even more difficult for the al Assad regime.

Turkey, too, has aspirations of regional leadership but has taken a more measured approach on Iran than the antagonism that characterizes Tehran’s relations with Riyadh. Like Iran, Ankara also does not want to see the Syrian government collapse, albeit for a different reason — it fears chaos along its border, not losing a steadfast ally. Iran has often used the issue of Kurdish militancy to  entice cooperation with Turkey on other matters. Though Turkey sees itself rising to a position of leadership over the course of the next decades, in the short term its main goal is to rein in Kurdish militants, which can be done easier with Iran’s support than its opposition. Thus, Saudi Arabia cannot really count on Turkey as a partner willing to do whatever necessary to constrain Iranian power, at least not at present.

Because Iraq’s factions have a difficult time agreeing among themselves on issues such as central government control versus regional autonomy, the distribution of oil revenues and political posts, expecting them to come together to broker a deal with these three other regional powers seems unlikely at best. It is difficult to envision an arrangement that would pacify regional players’ seemingly insurmountable differences and conflicting ambitions. Even if the meetings do take place, Iraq will be the epicenter of the Middle East’s internal power struggle for some time to come, and Iran will continue exploiting its leverage there.



Read more: Iraq's Attempt to Protect its Autonomy | STRATFOR

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/car-company-us-loan-builds-cars-finland/story?id=14770875

Existing home sales fell 3.0% in September To view this article, Click Here
Brian S. Wesbury - Chief Economist
Robert Stein, CFA - Senior Economist
Date: 10/20/2011
Existing home sales fell 3.0% in September to an annual rate of 4.91 million units, matching consensus expectations. Existing home sales are up 11.3% versus a year ago.
Sales in September were down in the Midwest, South, and West, but up in the Northeast. All of the decline in overall sales was due to single-family homes. Sales of condos/coops rose slightly.
 
The median price of an existing home fell to $165,400 in September (not seasonally adjusted), and is down 3.5% versus a year ago. Average prices are down 2.5% versus last year.
 
The months’ supply of existing homes (how long it would take to sell the entire inventory at the current sales rate) ticked up to 8.5 from 8.4 in August.  The rise in the months’ supply was all due to a slower pace of sales. Inventories of homes for sale fell slightly.
 
Implications:  Sales of existing homes came in right as the consensus expected, falling slightly after the large increase in August. Sales have seemed to stabilize around a 4.6 to 5.0 million annual rate.  The National Association of Realtors said that cancelled contracts to buy existing homes increased to 18% in September from a more typical 9% - 10% over the past year. This might have been related to hurricane storm damage but also shows that credit conditions remain tough despite low mortgage rates. No wonder all-cash transactions accounted for 30% of sales in September, versus a traditional share of 10%.  While a large portion of sales came from distressed properties (such as foreclosures and short sales), this is necessary for inventories to continue to be worked off and for the housing market to ultimately recover.  The inventory of existing homes is down 13% in the past year and homes available for sale this September were at the lowest level for any September since 2005. In other news this morning, the Philadelphia Fed index, a measure of manufacturing activity in that region, increased sharply to +8.7 in October from -17.5 in September. The consensus had expected -9.4.  We believe the index was beaten down in prior months because of negative sentiment, not an actual drop in activity.  Now, with fears of a recession starting to decline, the index is getting back to normal, reflecting industrial growth. Also this morning, new claims for unemployment insurance declined 6,000 last week to 403,000.  The four-week moving average is also 403,000, versus 440,000 in May.  Continuing claims for regular state benefits increased 25,000 to 3.72 million.

Analyst Kamran Bokhari gives an overview of the challenges facing Libya after the death of former Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi.
Editor’s Note: Transcripts are generated using speech-recognition technology. Therefore, STRATFOR cannot guarantee their complete accuracy.
Related Links
•   Gadhafi Coverage
•   Libya: Gadhafi’s Death in Perspective
•   Libya’s Gadhafi Reportedly Killed in Sirte
Ousted Libyan leader Col. Moammar Gadhafi was killed Oct. 20 when rebel forces took his hometown of Sirte. Col. Gadhafi’s death is largely symbolic because it does not change the ground reality that he had ceased to be the ruler of his country when his forces left Tripoli and the capital was taken over by rebel forces. Therefore the ground realities have not changed with Col. Gadhafi’s death because the NTC, the National Transitional Council, and its other rebel allies still need to demonstrate — and now more than ever before — that they can actually effectively run the country.
The one thing that held all the rebels together was the presence of Moammar Gadhafi, even though the rebels had taken the capital and the focus was to essentially put down any form of pro-Gadhafi resistance wherever it may be, especially in his hometown, Sirte. And now that has been accomplished, and therefore the next question is whether these rebel forces will continue to be able to hold their unity and not descend into a situation of chaos and civil war.
There are two main forces that are centered in the two major cities of the country. The National Transitional Council, which was effectively a Benghazi-based entity and then relocated to the capital once the capital fell to the rebels. But in the capital there is another entity called the Tripoli Military Council that is also distinguishing itself from the NTC. And then there are ethnic differences between Arabs and Berbers, there are ideological differences between Islamists and non-Islamists.
So we have a very complex landscape that will somehow need to come together. And therefore the biggest concern right now is how to disarm all the militias that have been active in fighting the Gadhafi regime and turn them into, or integrate them into, a new military force representing the new government, if and when the new republic is formed.
Gadhafi’s death therefore moves the country into the next phase and which is the most difficult stage of this entire conflict, especially now that the country is awash with hundreds of thousands of fighters armed to the teeth and the goal of securing the country and forming a new state remains elusive.

At the link below, Dick Morris succinctly explains why Herman's plan makes perfect sense, despite the attacks on it by the other candidates and the media.  Herman DOES need to do a better job of defending the plan in a debate format, however.  I have no doubt he is working on doing that as we speak:

www.dickmorris.com/blog/defending-999-dick-morris-tv-lunch-alert/

Reflections on the Iranian Assassination Plot
October 20, 2011

 

By Scott Stewart
On Oct. 11, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that two men had been charged in New York with taking part in a plot directed by the Iranian Quds Force to kill Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States, Adel al-Jubeir, on U.S. soil.
Manssor Arbabsiar and Gholam Shakuri face numerous charges, including conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction (explosives), conspiracy to commit an act of terrorism transcending national borders and conspiracy to murder a foreign official. Arbabsiar, who was arrested Sept. 29 at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, is a U.S. citizen with both Iranian and U.S. passports. Shakuri, who remains at large, allegedly is a senior officer in Iran’s Quds Force, a special unit of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) believed to promote military and terrorist activities abroad.
Between May and July, Arbabsiar, who lives in the United States, allegedly traveled several times to Mexico, where he met with a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) confidential informant who was posing as an associate of the Mexican Los Zetas cartel. The criminal complaint charges that Arbabsiar attempted to hire the DEA source and his purported accomplices to kill the ambassador. Arbabsiar’s Iranian contacts allegedly wired two separate payments totaling $100,000 in August into an FBI-controlled bank account in the United States, with Shakuri’s approval, as a down payment to the DEA source for the killing (the agreed-upon total price was $1.5 million).
Much has been written about the Arbabsiar case, both by those who believe the U.S. government’s case is valid and by those who doubt the facts laid out in the criminal complaint. However, as we have watched this case unfold, along with the media coverage surrounding it, it has occurred to us that there are two aspects of the case that we think merit more discussion. The first is that, as history has shown, it is not unusual for Iran to employ unconventional assassins in plots inside the United States. Second, while the DEA informant was reportedly posing as a member of Los Zetas, we do not believe the case proves any sort of increase in the terrorist threat emanating from the United States’ southern border.
Unconventional Assassins
One argument that has appeared in media coverage and has cast doubt on the validity of the U.S. government’s case is the alleged use by the Quds Force of Arbabsiar, an unemployed used car salesman, as its interlocutor. The criminal complaint states that Arbabsiar was recruited by his cousin, Abdul Reza Shahlai, a senior Quds Force commander, in spring 2011 and then handled by Shakuri, who is Shahlai’s deputy. The complaint also alleges that, initially, Arbabsiar was tasked with finding someone to kidnap al-Jubeir, but at some unspecified point the objective of the plot turned from kidnapping to murder. After his arrest, Arbabsiar told the agents who interviewed him that he was chosen for the mission because of his business interests and contacts in the United States and Mexico and that he told his cousin that he knew individuals involved in the narcotics trade. Shahlai then allegedly tasked Arbabsiar to attempt to hire some of his narco contacts for the kidnapping mission since Shahlai believed that people involved in the narcotics trade would be willing to undertake illegal activities, such as kidnapping, for money.
It is important to recognize that Arbabsiar was not just a random used car salesman selected for this mission. He is purportedly the cousin of a senior Quds Force officer and was in Iran talking to his cousin when he was recruited. According to some interviews appearing in the media, Arbabsiar had decided to leave the United States and return permanently to Iran, but, as a naturalized U.S. citizen, he could have been seen as useful by the Quds Force for his ability to freely travel to the United States. Arbabsiar also was likely enticed by the money he could make working for the Quds Force — money that could have been useful in helping him re-establish himself in Iran. If he was motivated by money rather than ideology, it could explain why he flipped so easily after being arrested by U.S. authorities.
Now, while the Iranian government has shown the ability to conduct sophisticated operations in countries within its sphere of influence, such as Lebanon and Iraq, the use of suboptimal agents to orchestrate an assassination plot in the United States is not entirely without precedent.
For example, there appear to be some very interesting parallels between the Arbabsiar case and two other alleged Iranian plots to assassinate dissidents in Los Angeles and London. The details of these cases were exposed in the prosecution and conviction of Mohammad Reza Sadeghnia in California and in U.S. diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks pertaining to the Sadeghnia case.
Sadeghnia, who was arrested in Los Angeles in July 2009, is a naturalized U.S. citizen of Iranian descent who at one point ran a painting business in Michigan. Sadeghnia was apparently recruited by the Iranian government and allegedly carried out preoperational surveillance on Jamshid Sharmahd, who made radio broadcasts for the Iranian opposition group Tondar from his residence in Glendora, Calif., and Ali Reza Nourizadeh, who worked for Voice of America in London.
Sadeghnia’s clumsy surveillance activities were a testament to his lack of tradecraft and were noticed by his targets. But even though he was fairly inept, a number of other factors seem to support claims that he was working as an agent for the Iranian government. These include his guilty plea, his international travel, and the facts that he conducted surveillance on two high-profile Iranian dissidents on two continents, was convicted of soliciting someone to murder one of them and then returned to Tehran while on supervised release.
Sadeghnia’s profile as an unemployed housepainter from Iran who lived in the United States for many years is similar to that of Arbabsiar, a failed used car salesman. Sadeghnia pleaded guilty of planning to use a third man (also an Iranian-American) to run over and murder Sharmahd with a used van Sadeghnia had purchased. Like the alleged Arbabsiar plot, the Sadeghnia case displayed a lack of sophisticated assassination methodology in an Iranian-linked plot inside the United States.
This does raise the question of why Iran chose to use another unsophisticated assassination operation after the Sadeghnia failure. On the other hand, the Iranians experienced no meaningful repercussions from that plot or much negative press.
For Iranian operatives to be so obvious while operating inside the United States is not a new thing, as illustrated by the case of David Belfield, also known as Dawud Salahuddin, who was hired by the Iranian government to assassinate high-profile Iranian dissident Ali Akbar Tabatabaei in July 1980. Salahuddin is an African-American convert to Islam who worked as a security guard at an Iranian diplomatic office in Washington. He was paid $5,000 to shoot Tabatabaei and then fled the United States for Iran, where he still resides. In a plot reminiscent of the movie Three Days of the Condor, Salahuddin, who had stolen a U.S. Postal Service jeep, walked up to Tabatabaei’s front door dressed in a mail carrier’s uniform and shot the Iranian diplomat as he answered the door. It was a simple plot in which the Iranian hand was readily visible.
There also have been numerous assassinations and failed assassination attempts directed against Iranian dissidents in Europe and elsewhere that were conducted in a rudimentary fashion by operatives easily linked to Iran. Such cases include the 1991 assassination of Shapour Bakhtiar in Paris, the 1989 murder of Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou in Vienna and the 1992 killing of three Iranian-Kurdish opposition leaders at the Mykonos restaurant in Berlin.
All that said, there was a lengthy break between the Iranian assassinations in the West in the 1980s and 1990s and the Sadeghnia and Arbabsiar cases. We do not know for certain what could have motivated Iran to resume such operations, but the Iranians have been locked in a sustained covert intelligence war with the United States and its allies for several years now. It is possible these attacks are seen as an Iranian escalation in that war, or as retaliation for the assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists in Iran, which the Iranians claim were conducted by the United States and Israel.
South of the Border
One other result of the Arbabsiar case is that it has re-energized the long-held U.S. fears of foreign entities using the porous U.S.-Mexico border to conduct terrorist attacks inside the United States and of Mexican cartels partnering with foreign entities to carry out such attacks.
But there are reasons this case does not substantiate such fears. First, it is important to remember that the purported Iranian operative in this case who traveled to the United States, Arbabsiar, is a naturalized U.S. citizen. He is not an Iranian who illegally crossed the border from Mexico. Arbabsiar used his U.S. passport to travel between the United States and Mexico.
Second, while Arbabsiar, and purportedly Shahlai, believed that the Los Zetas cartel would undertake kidnapping or assassination in the United States in exchange for money, that assumption may be flawed. Certainly, while Mexican cartels do indeed kidnap and murder people inside the United States (often for financial gain), they also have a long history of being very careful about the types of operations they conduct inside the United States. This is because the cartels do not want to incur the full wrath of the U.S. government. Shooting a drug dealer in Laredo who loses a load of dope is one thing; going after the Saudi ambassador in Washington is quite another. While the payoff for this operation seems substantial ($1.5 million), there is no way that a Mexican cartel would jeopardize its billion-dollar enterprise for such a small one-time payment and for an act that offered no other apparent business benefit to the cartel. While Mexican cartels can be quite violent, their violence is calculated for the most part, and they tend to refrain from activities that could jeopardize their long-term business plans.
One potential danger in terms of U.S. mainland security is that the Arbabsiar case might focus too much additional attention on the U.S.-Mexico border and that this attention could cause resources to be diverted from the northern border and other points of entry, such as airports and seaports. While it is relatively easy to illegally enter the United States over the southern border, and the United States has no idea who many of the illegal immigrants really are, that does not mean that resources should be taken from elsewhere.
As STRATFOR has noted before, many terrorist plots have originated in Canada — far more than have had any sort of nexus to Mexico. These include plots involving Ghazi Ibrahim Abu Mezer, a Palestinian who was convicted of planning a suicide bombing of the New York subway system in 1997; Ahmed Ressam, who was arrested when he tried to enter the United States with explosives in 1999; and the so-called Toronto 18 cell, which was arrested in 2006 and later convicted of planning a string of attacks in Canada and the United States.
Moreover, most terrorist operatives who have traveled to the United States intending to participate in terrorist attacks have flown directly into the country from overseas. Such operatives include the 19 men involved in the 9/11 attacks, the foreigners involved in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the follow-on New York landmarks bomb plot, as well as failed New York subway bomber Najibulah Zazi and would-be Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad. Even failed shoe bomber Richard Reid and would-be underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab attempted to fly directly into the United States.
While there is concern over security on the southern U.S. border, past plots involving foreign terrorist operatives traveling to the United States have either involved direct travel to the United States or travel from Canada. There is simply no empirical evidence to support the idea that the Mexican border is more likely to be used by terrorist operatives than other points of entry.

Fotos of what definitely appears to be the anus's body on FOX.   Looks like a confirmed kill to me.

By RON PAUL
To know what is wrong with the Federal Reserve, one must first understand the nature of money. Money is like any other good in our economy that emerges from the market to satisfy the needs and wants of consumers. Its particular usefulness is that it helps facilitate indirect exchange, making it easier for us to buy and sell goods because there is a common way of measuring their value. Money is not a government phenomenon, and it need not and should not be managed by government. When central banks like the Fed manage money they are engaging in price fixing, which leads not to prosperity but to disaster.

The Federal Reserve has caused every single boom and bust that has occurred in this country since the bank's creation in 1913. It pumps new money into the financial system to lower interest rates and spur the economy. Adding new money increases the supply of money, making the price of money over time—the interest rate—lower than the market would make it. These lower interest rates affect the allocation of resources, causing capital to be malinvested throughout the economy. So certain projects and ventures that appear profitable when funded at artificially low interest rates are not in fact the best use of those resources.

Eventually, the economic boom created by the Fed's actions is found to be unsustainable, and the bust ensues as this malinvested capital manifests itself in a surplus of capital goods, inventory overhangs, etc. Until these misdirected resources are put to a more productive use—the uses the free market actually desires—the economy stagnates.

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Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke
.The great contribution of the Austrian school of economics to economic theory was in its description of this business cycle: the process of booms and busts, and their origins in monetary intervention by the government in cooperation with the banking system. Yet policy makers at the Federal Reserve still fail to understand the causes of our most recent financial crisis. So they find themselves unable to come up with an adequate solution.

In many respects the governors of the Federal Reserve System and the members of the Federal Open Market Committee are like all other high-ranking powerful officials. Because they make decisions that profoundly affect the workings of the economy and because they have hundreds of bright economists working for them doing research and collecting data, they buy into the pretense of knowledge—the illusion that because they have all these resources at their fingertips they therefore have the ability to guide the economy as they see fit.

Nothing could be further from the truth. No attitude could be more destructive. What the Austrian economists Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich von Hayek victoriously asserted in the socialist calculation debate of the 1920s and 1930s—the notion that the marketplace, where people freely decide what they need and want to pay for, is the only effective way to allocate resources—may be obvious to many ordinary Americans. But it has not influenced government leaders today, who do not seem to see the importance of prices to the functioning of a market economy.

The manner of thinking of the Federal Reserve now is no different than that of the former Soviet Union, which employed hundreds of thousands of people to perform research and provide calculations in an attempt to mimic the price system of the West's (relatively) free markets. Despite the obvious lesson to be drawn from the Soviet collapse, the U.S. still has not fully absorbed it.


The Fed fails to grasp that an interest rate is a price—the price of time—and that attempting to manipulate that price is as destructive as any other government price control. It fails to see that the price of housing was artificially inflated through the Fed's monetary pumping during the early 2000s, and that the only way to restore soundness to the housing sector is to allow prices to return to sustainable market levels. Instead, the Fed's actions have had one aim—to keep prices elevated at bubble levels—thus ensuring that bad debt remains on the books and failing firms remain in business, albatrosses around the market's neck.

The Fed's quantitative easing programs increased the national debt by trillions of dollars. The debt is now so large that if the central bank begins to move away from its zero interest-rate policy, the rise in interest rates will result in the U.S. government having to pay hundreds of billions of dollars in additional interest on the national debt each year. Thus there is significant political pressure being placed on the Fed to keep interest rates low. The Fed has painted itself so far into a corner now that even if it wanted to raise interest rates, as a practical matter it might not be able to do so. But it will do something, we know, because the pressure to "just do something" often outweighs all other considerations.

What exactly the Fed will do is anyone's guess, and it is no surprise that markets continue to founder as anticipation mounts. If the Fed would stop intervening and distorting the market, and would allow the functioning of a truly free market that deals with profit and loss, our economy could recover. The continued existence of an organization that can create trillions of dollars out of thin air to purchase financial assets and prop up a fundamentally insolvent banking system is a black mark on an economy that professes to be free.

Mr. Paul, a congressman from Texas, is seeking the Republican presidential nomination.

"If we didn't try so hard to stave off corrections maybe the expectation of continued falling prices wouldn't set in for so long and so deeply.  How does someone buy a house today if they know the price will be lower tomorrow?  They don't.  Consistently falling prices are a bad thing.  Back to you."

I'm not sure if it is your intention but as best as I can tell, you make a telling argument against the theory of fighting deflation.   If I understand correctly you are saying the feared dynamic of postponing purchases is actually lengthened by slowing the process down with "anti-deflationary" efforts-- is this your point?

Simultaneously the flood of money creates inflationary bubbles anew in other sectors e.g. food and other commodities.

So, as best as I can tell my doubts about fighting deflation are sound.

Yes?

Last week, protests broke out again in Europe, from Rome to London. The monthlong Occupy Wall Street demonstrations in New York have spread. The current unrest follows this summer's riots in London and flash mob incidents in U.S. cities. In 2009 and 2010, Tea Parties turned out hundreds of thousands in protests against the Obama administration's policies and eventually gave him the largest midterm rebuke since 1938.

All of these protests, of course, are vastly different -- or are they really?

Ostensibly, the Wall Street protests rail against a small elite who makes a lot of money lending, investing and speculating -- although the protestors don't seem to worry much about the mega-salaries of actors, professional athletes or sympathetic multimillionaires like Al Gore, George Soros or John Kerry. American flash mobbers and London hoods thought it was OK to take things that were not theirs, since they have less than others. The Tea Partiers were simply tired of paying more taxes for big-government programs that they thought only made things worse.

In the current left and right anger -- somewhat analogous to the upheavals of 1848 or the 1930s -- the common denominator is frustration that Western upward mobility of some 60 years seems to be coming to an end. In response, millions want someone or something to be held accountable -- whether Wall Street insiders, or wasteful and corrupt governments, or the affluent who have more than others.

Unfortunately, political leaders -- unwilling to risk their careers by irking the people -- have offered few explanations for the root causes of all the various unrest. Instead, they assure us that Social Security is solvent, or that pensions and wages can remain sacrosanct, or that billionaires and millionaires are alone culpable. Sometimes they exploit race and class divisions in lieu of explaining 21st-century realities.

So here goes an explanation for the multifaceted unrest. For the last six decades, constant technological breakthroughs and growing government subsidies have given a billion and a half Westerners lifestyles undreamed of over the last 2,500 years. In 1930, no one imagined that a few pills could cure life-threatening strep throat. In 1960, no one planned on retiring at 55. In 1980, no one dreamed that millions could have instant access to civilization's collective knowledge in a few seconds through a free Google search.

Yet, the better life got in the West for ever more people, the more apprehensive they became, as their appetites for even more grew even faster. Remember, none of these worldwide protests are over the denial of food, shelter, clean water or basic medicine.

None of these protestors discuss the effects of 2 billion Chinese, Indian, Korean and Japanese workers entering and mastering the globalized capitalist system, and making things more cheaply and sometimes better than their Western counterparts.

None of these protestors ever stop to ponder the costs -- and ultimately the effect on their own lifestyles -- of skyrocketing energy costs. Since 1970 there has been a historic, multitrillion-dollar transfer of capital from the West to the Middle East, South America, Africa and Russia through the importation of high-cost oil and gas.

None seem to grasp the significance that, meanwhile, hundreds of millions of Westerners are living longer and better, retiring earlier, and demanding ever more expensive government pensions and health care.

Something had to give.

And now it has. Federal and state budgets are near bankrupt. Countries like Greece and Italy face insolvency. The U.S. government resorts to printing money to service or expand entitlements. Near-zero interest rates, declining home prices, and huge losses in mutual funds and retirement accounts have crippled the middle classes.

Bigger government, marvelous new inventions and creative new investment strategies are not going to restore the once-taken-for-granted good life. Until "green" means competitive renewable energy rather than a con for crony capitalists, we are going to have to create and save capital by producing more of our own gas and oil, and relying more on nuclear power and coal.

Westerners will have to work a bit longer and more efficiently, with a bit less redistributive government support. And they must confess that venture capitalists, hedge funds and big deficit-spending governments are no substitute for producing themselves the real stuff of life that millions now take for granted -- whether gas, food, cars or consumer goods.

Otherwise, a smaller, older and whinier West will just keep blaming others as their good life slips away. So it's past time to stop borrowing to import energy and most of the things we use but have given up producing -- and get back to competing in the real world.

The usual suspects here are curious about my dalliance with economic heresy.  As they begin to question me, I seek to pin down the definition of "deflation".  As such my question is not really a question-- it is a request that they define what the word "deflation" will mean in this conversation.  If it results only after a bubble bursts, that is one thing-- and arguably it is but a return to the mean. OTOH, if there are other situations that constitute a deflation, then I am asking them to describe and define them. 

What I am not doing is asking for random guesses. 

Forgive me DF, but are you guessing or have you thought about this aspect of economic theory?

What would be the cause of "systemic deflation" be if it weren't the bursting of a bubble?

"I am liberal, at least compared to the average forum participant, and I think that defending the borders is of paramount importance." 

That may be, but given how hard-core right most of us are that could be a true statement of someone who is center or even right of center.

As I previously bantered with you in a sidebar, I consider you a Democrat back from when mainstream Democrats were patriotic, reasonable, and rational people i.e. NOT a liberal 

BTW, and unrelated to what follows, foreclosures in CA are way up.
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Data Watch
________________________________________
Housing starts surged 15.0% in September to 658,000 units at an annual rate To view this article, Click Here
Brian S. Wesbury - Chief Economist
Robert Stein, CFA - Senior Economist
Date: 10/19/2011
Housing starts surged 15.0% in September to 658,000 units at an annual rate, coming in well above the consensus expected pace of 590,000.  Starts are up 10.2% versus a year ago.
The gain in September was mostly due to multi-family starts, which are extremely volatile from month to month and which were up 51.3%. Single-family starts rose 1.7%. Multi-family starts are up 55.3% from a year ago while single-family starts are down 4.9%.
 
Starts rose in all regions of the country with the West seeing the biggest gains up 18.1%.
 
New building permits fell 5.0% in September to a 594,000 annual rate, coming in below the consensus expected pace of 610,000. Compared to a year ago, permits for multi-unit homes are up 11.3% while permits for single-family units are up 3.5%.
 
Implications:  Home building soared 15% in September, bouncing back after the unusually harsh weather we saw in August, coming in at the highest level since April 2010.  However, most of the increase was due to a 51.3% spike in multi-family units, which are volatile from month to month. The general trend in multi-family units should continue to go higher given the movement away from owner-occupancy and toward rental occupancy. To help show this, 5 or more unit completions were up 43.4% in September. Another positive from today’s report was that although single-family homes under construction hit a new record low, total homes under construction increased for the second time in three months. This is only the second time homes under construction have increased since 2006! What this shows is that the bottoming process is happening and home building should trend higher over the next couple of years. After a large rise in building permits last month, permits fell 5% in September, but remain up 5.7% from a year ago.   Based on population growth and “scrappage” rates, home building must increase substantially over the next several years to avoid eventually running into shortages.