RWC Unfiltered 8-7-2011

• Is Israel Stock Market Fall Harbinger for U. S.?
• China’s Conniption Over US Credit Downgrade: Ironic
• Turkey Cuts F-35 Order from 120 to 6
• “Golden BB” In Afganistan Chinook Crash?
• Happy 100^th Birthday to Lucille Ball
• Investors Reject “Obamonomics.”
• Double Dip Recession: Jimmy Carter Redux.
• Berlin Wall Anniverary and Stats
• EAS Boondoogle Or Benefit
• Israel Says It Can, and Will Defeat Any Threat
• China Building Two Aircraft Carriers
• Obama Appears Set to Abandon Taiwan As It Has Other Allies
• DEA “Fast and Furious” Deadly Keystone Cops Tragedy

A peaceful protest against a fatal police shooting of a 29-year-old man in London’s Tottenham area degenerated into a Saturday night rampage, with rioters torching a double-decker bus, destroying patrol cars and trashing a shopping mall in the nearby Wood Green district.

Several buildings were also set ablaze. TV footage showed the double-decker bus in a fireball and mounted police charging through the streets trying to restore order. Police said 26 officers received injuries, most if not all apparently minor, and made 48 arrests.

London’s fire department said it dealt with 49 “primary” fires in the deprived Tottenham northern London neighbourhood. The incident appears to have revolved around social networking.

In what some see as a harbinger of things to come in the U. S. the Israeli stock market plunged more than six percent upon opening Sunday triggering an automatic trading suspension. Perhaps it was sparked by the S & P credit downgrade of U. S. from AAA to AA+.

But, the Israeli market fall may also have been influenced by the third Saturday of massive protests against the high cost of living.   An estimated 250,000 people took part in the demonstrations in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and other cities demanding affordable housing and a reduction in the 16% national sales tax,

Obama and sychophants attacked the S & P credit downgrade calling it the Tea Party downgrade and sending the likes of Senator John Kerry to the Sunday morning talk fest to continue its campaign of finger-pointing to try to deflect blame from its own ineptitude..

China owns more than $1 trillion in U.S. Treasuries and wasted no time weighing in after the United States lost its AAA credit rating.

A commentary published Saturday by the official Xinhua news agency demanded that Washington get its fiscal act together and — once again — questioned the primacy of the dollar. “China, the largest creditor of the world’s sole superpower, has every right now to demand the United States to address its structural debt problems and ensure the safety of China’s dollar assets,” the commentary said.

S&P’s downgrade served “as another warning shot about the long-term sustainability of the U.S. government finances,” it added.

On Friday, S&P downgraded the United States to AA+, an investment grade level just one notch below AAA. Ironically China’s own credit rating wa upgraded last year to AA- in part because it owns so much US securities.

China  will not dumb US treasuries, and privately hopes Obama continues to mismanage the US and get reelected so he can continue his bankrupt policies and bankrupting of America kicking the gate open wider for Chinese to develop it hegemony in the Pacific.

A new report has found that adults in Washington, D.C. are among the top users of cocaine in the country. All this time, we thought the problem was government waste, but it’s actually that the government’s wasted.

Citing continuing problems in the production of the US F-35 Joint Strike fighters and a big issue has been a 20% price increase. Turkey has reduced its plans to buy 120 to six  warplanes to replace it aging fleet of F-4 to F-5 fighters. China and to a lesser extent Russia are angling to export more warplanes to anyone with the cash.

GM Sold Only 125 of its troubled Volt electric vehicles in June. Despite its poor sales and rotten consumer reports GM says it plans to increase production of the electric dud that EPA says only has a 35 mile range on electric only power.

 Those in combat ispeak of the “golden BB” referring to that unlucky chance of being hit by a random or unlikely kill shot. It is a morbid metaphor that no matter how prepared or defended one is there is nothing that can overcome simple bad luck Last weekend more than 20 Navy SEALs reportedly from the unit that killed Osama bin Laden were among those lost when their helicopter was shot down and crashed in Afghanistan. First reports are that it was destroyed by a shoulder fired, unguided rocket propelled grenade that struck the twin rotor CH-47 Chinook helicopter in a vulnerable spot bringing it down.

Looming over the incident it the specter that the Taliban have been armed with guided surface to air missiles (SAM). When the U. S. armed the Mujahadeen with shoulder fired SAM weapons that sounded the knell for Soviet forces then in Afghanistan.

 Democrats in Congress are out for Standard and Poor’s blood demanding investigations of it for downgrading U. S. credit from AAA to AA+. Saturday Obama didn’t stir from a weekend off at Camp David but issued another bromidic statement. The USA credit rating is now below Canada, France and on a par with Belgium. More than ever are calling for Treasury Secretary Geithner’s head to be sent rolling down the rudderless White House’s driveway

Saturday 8-6-2011 would have been actress Lucille Ball’s 100th birthday. Lucille Ball died in 1989 in Los Angeles, but her legend lives on, most famously via her iconic TV show, I Love Lucy. The show ran from 1951 to 1957, but can be seen in syndication around the world, introducing generation after generation to Ball’s slap stick comic stylings.

Ball started her career as a contract player, or Goldwyn Girl, for Hollywood movie studio MGM. She starred in a variety of “B” movies for nearly 20 years before switching to TV, making the transition from “a platinum blonde sex symbol to a wise-cracking redhead.”

Ball was also the first woman to head a major Hollywood studio, dubbed Desilu, which produced Star Trek, Our Miss Brooks, Mission Impossible, The Untouchables, The Andy Griffith Show, My Favorite Martian, The Dick Van Dyke Show, and Make Room for Daddy, among others. She sold Desilu to Gulf and Western for $17 million in the 1960s and founded Lucille Ball Productions with second husband Gary Morton who0 she married after a nasty divorce from Desi.

After I Love Lucy, Ball starred in a number of TV shows, including The Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz Show, The Lucy Show, Here’s Lucy, and Life With Lucy. She was the first woman inducted into the Television Academy’s Hall of Fame.

If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara desert in five years you’d have a shortage of sand - Milton Friedman

The stock market soundly rejected the U.S, Debt limit deal and Obamaonomics in general  plunging nearly 1,000 points before program trading pulled it back up a little Friday.. The European meltdown contributing to the biggest lose in years and one of the biggest in American stock market history. This despite some good news on Friday in jobs produced that remain way below par.

“The United States is in a “vicious cycle” of depressed consumer demand and unemployment, and the government must shift its focus to improving the economy rather than slashing deficits,” according to former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich speaking at Dartmouth University where is graduated in 1968. The 4′10.5″ Reich, a devoted Keynesian, favors even more federal spending though there is virtually no evidence that will spark the economy. The moment harkens to November, 1937 when FDR’s then Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, Jr. who said,

“We want to see private business expand. … We believe that one of the most important ways of achieving these ends at this time is to continue progress toward a balance of the federal budget.”

“We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. And I have just one interest, and if I am wrong … somebody else can have my job. I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. I want to see people get enough to eat. We have never made good on our promises. … I say after eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started. … And an enormous debt to boot.”

Grover Norquist says the debt ceiling deal has his blessing.

Norquist, who heads the powerful anti-tax group Americans for Tax Reform, tells Newsmax that congressional members who signed his group’s “pledge” promising never to vote for a tax increase can vote for this deal.

“The deal proved that we can cut spending without trading away tax hikes,” Norquist says.

“The deal set a new precedent: Never again will the debt ceiling be raised without a similarly sized spending cut being attached,” he tells Newsmax.

The big loser in the deal? Norquist declares unequivocally that Obama wins that title.

“Obama’s internal polling must scare the heck out of him,” Norquist says. “He caved on the key Republican demands: no tax hike, spending cuts equal to the debt ceiling increase.”

Somnolence (SOM-nuh-luhns) noun: A state of sleepiness or drowsiness. EtymologyFrom Latin somnus (sleep). Ultimately from the Indo-European root swep- (to sleep), which is also the source of insomnia, hypnosis, soporific (inducing sleep), soporose (sleepy), somnambulate (to walk in sleep), and Sanskrit svapnah (dream). Earliest documented use: around 1386.

It’s been about 30 years since the U.S. slid into recession, crept out and then fell back in again - known as a double-dip contraction - and now the country seems poised to repeat history, the New York Times reports.

The government can do little to stop it.

“But Great Recession II, if that is what we are entering, has provoked a completely different response. Now the politicians are squabbling over how much to cut spending. After months of wrangling, they passed a bill aimed at forcing more reductions in spending over the next decade.”

Economies normally bounce back from recession by growing at a brisk pace, often more so than before the downfall.

That doesn’t happen when credit freezes, which is the case today and also the case around the time of the double dip in the early 1980s.

Furthermore, like 30 years ago, government policies today have been unable to get the economy going again, which suggests the economy must relapse back into recession, hit a bottom and then recover again.

“Government stimulus programs historically have often appeared to be accomplishing little until the cumulative effect suddenly helps to power a self-sustaining recovery. This time, the best hope may be that the stimulus we have already had will prove to have been enough.”

Fears of a recession are panicking investors and punishing stock prices, sending the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunging.

“The velocity and the magnitude of the decline was surprising to me,” says Tom Manning, chief investment officer at Silver Lake Advisors, according to the Boston Globe.

“Fears of a recession seemed to grip investors all day long.” J. P. Morgan/Chase predicts an anemic 1,5% growth in GDP through 2011.

It’s hard to believe that just a year ago, Obama was in his 40s and his approval rating was in the 50s. Now it’s the other way around.

August 14, 1961 is used to mark the building of the Berlin effectively cutting Berlin in two. It was 96 mi (155 km) barbed wire barricade and concrete wall with an average height of 11.8 ft (3.60 m). There were 302 guard towers with armed guards ordered to shoot-to-kill.

Well over 100,000 citizens of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) tried to escape across the inner-German border or the Berlin Wall between 1961 and 1988. More than 600 of them were shot and killed by GDR border guards or died in other ways during their escape attempt. They drowned, suffered fatal accidents, or killed themselves when they were caught.

At least 136 people were killed or died in other ways directly connected to the GDR border regime, including 98 people who were shot, accidentally killed, or killed themselves when they were caught trying to make it over the Wall; 30 people from both East and West who were not trying to flee but were shot or died in an accident; 8 GDR border guards who were killed while on duty by deserters, fellow border guards, fugitives, or a West Berlin police officer; and at least 251 travelers from East and West who died before, during, or after inspections at checkpoints in Berlin. These figures do not include the people who died of grief and despair over the Wall’s impact on their personal lives.

Saying the U. S. has solved its deficit crisis is like raising the blood-alcohol limit and then declared you’d solved the drunk driving problem.

For the past week Americans have heard about 4,000 laid off FAA workers and tens of thousands of lost construction jobs. The Senate restored the budget until September 16 but, what you do not know is it funds something called Essential Air Services (EAS).

Essential Air Service (EAS) subsidizes unprofitable airports some of which only embark one passenger a day. As of June 1, 2009, 152 communities are being served with taxpayer subsidized air service. of which those 45 are from Alaska, whose guidelines for service are separate and distinct from the rest of the country.

The subsidy per passenger , averaged across the entire program excluding Alaska, is approximately $74 peer seat per trip, and much higher on some particularly poorly-patronized flights. Patronage on many flights is very low. However, the program is politically popular in the cities receiving the subsidized flights, and Congressional panels expect the funding for the program to increase to $125 million

Adak, Alaska receives an  annual subsidy of $1,675,703 but Juneau airport bags $2,726,212. El Dorado/Camden, Arkansas rakes in $2,311,637 and Presque Isle, Maine receives gets $2,643,588; Dickinson, ND gets $2,274,177.

The worst perhaps is Ely, Nevada that embarks one person per day and cashes a $1,864,717 check averaging $5,000 taxpayer subside per passenger. One guy in Maryland flies to Baltimore for $57 because it saved him a 45 minute drive sending taxpayers a bill for $1,570,000.

ESA was enacted after the October 24, 1978. Airline deregulation that main purpose of the act was to remove government control over fares, routes and market entry (of new airlines)

The official unemployment rate dropped to 9.1% Friday because 200,000 people stopped looking for a job not because more jobs were created.

For the first time ever a major credit rating agency, Standard and Poors ,has downgraded U. S. credit to AA+ The Standard & Poor’s rating agency announced Friday that it has downgraded the U.S. credit rating to AA+ from its top rank of AAA.

“The downgrade reflects our opinion that the fiscal consolidation plan that Congress and the administration recently agreed to falls short of what, in our view, would be necessary to stabilize the government’s medium-term debt dynamics,” the agency said about the move, which was announced after the markets had closed.

 Rating agencies — S&P, Moody’s and Fitch — analyze risk and give debt a grade that is supposed to reflect the borrower’s ability to repay its loans.

The safest bets are stamped AAA. That’s where U.S. debt has stood for years. Moody’s first assigned the United States a AAA rating in 1917.

 Fitch and Moody’s, the other two main credit ratings agencies, maintained the AAA rating for the United States after this week’s debt deal, though Moody’s lowered its outlook on U.S. debt to “negative.”

A negative outlook indicates the possibility that Moody’s could downgrade the country’s sovereign credit rating within a year or two.

Rumors of a possible downgrade surfaced shortly after Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi announced in Rome that finance ministers of the Group of Seven industrialized nations may meet “in a few days” to discuss the sagging world economy.

The G7 members are Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States.

 The announcement came on a day when financial anxiety gripped the globe. Stock markets worldwide saw intense volatility amid worries of a widening debt crisis in Europe and a stalled economic recovery in the United States.

Stock market values fell across Asia and Europe on Friday. American markets were dramatically up and down a day after having their worst day since the 2008 financial crisis.

Concerns about debt issues in Europe appeared to battle with optimism that a positive U.S. jobs report indicated the American economy is not headed into a new recession — the dreaded “double-dip.”

 ”The crisis in Europe is quickly becoming on par with the financial crisis of 2008,” David Levy, portfolio manager at Kenjol Capital Management, told CNN Money. “The jobs report shows that things aren’t getting much worse in the U.S., but the focus is clearly on Europe at this point.”

 The Dow Jones index spiked 170 points in early trading on a better-than-expected jobs report, but then dropped by 200 points in mid-morning trading. It closed Friday up 60.93 points (0.54%). The Nasdaq closed down 23.98 points (0.94%).

In London, the FTSE 100 closed off 146 points, or 2.7%, to close the week down nearly 10%. Germany’s DAX fell 2.78% to finish the week down nearly 13%. And the French CAC 40 declined 1.26% to finish the week off 10.73%.

“We are going to get through this,” Obama said prior to the downgrade at the Washington Navy Yard, where he announced a jobs program for veterans. “Things will get better. And we’re going to get there together.”

Obama, who spoke Friday afternoon with France’s Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel about the crisis, noted that July marked the 17th consecutive month of private-sector job growth in the U.S., but said much more work needs to be done. No one exacept those using drugs or alcohol believes Obama.

 Brainiac Geithner charged that S & P made a math error. But, S & P went ahead with its downgrade for the first time in American history. S & P is the gold standard of rating’s agencies so thia will hurt America not matter what Obama syncophants pop off about.

Obamanomics is an abject failure. The only wayout is over Obama’s clueless dead political body

In England, in the 1880’s, “Pants” was considered a dirty word!

The Israel Air Force has bolstered capabilities and says it could overpower any enemy coalition in a regional war.

The Air Force has asserted that it expanded weapons and personnel capabilities over the last five years. Officials said the Air Force has introduced new platforms to overcome an Iranian-led coalition that would include Hamas, Hizbullah and Syria.

“We will be able to overcome anything the other side is preparing,” Israel Air Force chief of staff Brig. Gen. Nimrod Sheffer said. “I believe that one of the reasons the northern border has been peaceful since 2006 is that Hizbullah understands the Israel Defense Forces is prepared.”

He said the Air Force was developing platforms and methods to defeat surface-to-surface rockets and unmanned aerial vehicles.

“In preparation, we are doing intensive intelligence research and employing new methods improved after the war,” Sheffer said on July 27. “We are bringing in never-before-used weapons, and I know the Israel Air Force will be able to function properly in any incident.”

The Air Force has assessed that Iran significantly bolstered Hamas and Hizbullah. Sheffer said Hizbullah has learned to protect its weapons assets, particularly missiles and rockets, and acquired advanced anti-aircraft missiles.

“We see this in the way they better defend their people and assets,” Sheffer said. “Hizbullah draws conclusions, researches and improves, making it more difficult for our intelligence forces to locate both organizations and targets.”

The Air Force has assessed that Hizbullah and its allies would employ a significant number of unmanned aerial vehicles. Officials said Hizbullah could launch dozens of UAVs in any next war.

“We’ve improved our systems in order to better counteract the next UAV attempt,” Lt. Col. Assaf, commander of the Air Force’s Aircraft Control Unit. “Today we are prepared for unmanned threats of any scale, 24 hours a day.”

For its part, the Air Force has been expanding UAV operations. Officials said UAVs would conduct reconnaissance and other missions in an effort to coordinate between air and ground forces.

“We’ve significantly increased the number of training exercise,” Lt. Col. C., commander of the First UAV Squadron, said. “Before the Second Lebanon War [in 2006], we were insufficiently coordinated with ground forces, and now UAVs partake in every brigade training exercise. Ground forces know to request, receive and operate the vehicles extremely well, and the pace of creating targets greatly improved.”

Inside Israel’s mailed fist are 75 - 400 nuclear weapons that Israeli has never officially acknowledged as even existing. Many believe it conducted  a joint nuclear test with South Africa on September 22, 1979. In any case it is almost certain that it would use all force to avoid defeat and extinction. It has long been rumored that the words “Never Again” were welded, in English and Hebrew, onto the first nuclear warhead.

In 1939 Ernest Vincent Wright wrote a novel, “Gadsby”, which contains over 50,000 words — none of them with the letter E!

China’s military has begun construction of its first indigenous aircraft carrier as Chinese defense officials for the first time last week confirmed that the refurbished Soviet-era aircraft carrier is for “training and research.”

U.S. officials said the first indigenous carrier construction was spotted within the past several months at a shipyard on Changxing Island in Shanghai. The carrier is said to be about the size of the 1,001 feet long, 236 feet wide 55,000 ton concentionally powered Varyag, the Kuznetsov-class carrier purchased by China several years ago. China is expected to use carrier-modified J-15 jets for the ships.

“We expect China to build at least one indigenous carrier, probably two or more, but they have not revealed how many they intend to build, what the construction schedule will, or what their missions will be,” said one defense official.

“We are mindful of China’s military modernization programs and are monitoring carefully this and other military developments in China.”

In Beijing last week, Chinese Defense Ministry spokesman Geng Yansheng said the new aircraft carrier purchased from Ukraine in 1998 is being used for training and research although China will protect its waters and coasts with warships.

“This is the sacred responsibility of China’s armed forces,” Geng said, in a statement about the carrier on the ministry’s Web site.

“Building a carrier is extremely complex. We are currently refitting an old aircraft carrier, to be used for research and testing.

“An aircraft carrier is a weapons platform; it can be used for offensive or defensive purposes. It can also be used to maintain global peace and for rescue and relief work,” he added.

Reuters quoted a Chinese government source as confirming that “two aircraft carriers are being built at the Jiangnan Shipyard in Shanghai.”

Geng insisted the timing of the announcement on the aircraft carrier was not related to recent tensions in the South China Sea, where Vietnam and Philippines clashed recently with China over access to the sea’s mineral resources and freedom of navigation.

China has claimed the entire sea as its maritime territory and is pressuring states in the region to accede to its control.

Japan is especially worried about China’s military buildup.

“China’s next moves have to be watched carefully, or there eventually could be a negative impact on maritime safety in Asia,” Yoshihiko Yamada, a professor at Japan’s Tokai University, told Reuters..

The sun is 330,330 times larger than the earth!

A senior Navy admiral told Congress last week that the Pentagon’s new battle concept for dealing with China is nearing completion and is under review by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta.

The concept has been worked on by a secret Pentagon task force for the past year and was ordered in response to deficiencies recognized in coordinating Navy and Air Force forces in a future conflict with China.

According to defense officials, the concept grew out of a war game carried out several years ago examining a conflict with China that showed U.S. forces losing the conflict..

An earthquake on Dec. 16, 1811 caused parts of the Mississippi River to flow backwards!

China stepped up tensions on the Taiwan Strait in June when it sent two Su-27 interceptors after a U.S. Air Force U-2 reconnaissance jet and one jet crossed over the dividing line on the 100-mile Strait for the first time since 1999.

The incident was kept secret until last week when it was disclosed by a Taiwan newspaper and confirmed by U.S. defense officials.

Taiwan sortied F-16s and the Chinese warplanes  turned back.

Obama has again delayed a decision on advanced F-16 fighters for Taiwan that most say means he’ll block their request. Taiwan argues that it is a defacto unsinkable aircraft carrier off of the communist countries coastlinme and as such invaluable to U. S. security. There is little considence that Obama has th foresight or fortitude but prefers to try to appease China with his Rodney King-like foreign policy that has the U. S. in retreat and abandoning allies woirldwide.

When you have no solution yourself chastise your opponent for every attempt.

In what appears to have been a bad imitation of the keystone cops but with little to laugh at.-  U.S. federal agents allegedly cut a deal with the Sinaloa drug cartel that allowed it to traffic tons of narcotics across the border into thje U. S. , in exchange for information about rival cartels, according to documents filed in federal court.

The deal allegedly began with Humberto Loya-Castro, a Sinaloa cartel lawyer who became an informant for the D.E.A. after a drug case against him was dismissed in 2008.

According to the motion, the deal was part of a ‘divide and conquer’ strategy, where the U.S. helped finance and arm the Sinaloa cartel, through Operation Fast and Furious, in exchange for information that allowed the D.E.A. and FBI to destroy and dismantle rival Mexican cartels. Operation Fast and Furious is the failed Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives anti-gun trafficking program which allowed thousand of guns to cross into Mexico.

In response in court, the U.S. doesn’t dispute that Zambada-Niebla may have acted as an informant - only that he did not act with D.E.A. consent.

The average American family have seen their income fall nearly $300 per month under Obama’s Presidency.according to an analysis of income tax filings.