RWC: Unfiltered 10-30-11

• A Half Century Ago
• ‘Jesus’ name ruled ‘unconstitutional’
• UK Succession Law Changing
• 7-year-old with “Boy Parts” Wants To Join Girl Scouts: Others Have
• Muslims Bitch About Crosses at Catholic U.
• Young and Minorities Falling Out of Love With Obama
• 30,000 Iranian Fighters Already Inside Iraq.
• 21^st Century American Says UK Telegraph
• Hamas Attacks Israel with Libyan Missiles
• 33 year-old Teacher Gets 4-years For Sex With Over Age Boys.
• Is Cain The Black Barry Goldwater
• China Raises Ante In Asia

On October 30, 1961 the Soviet Union exploded the most powerful thermo nuclear bomb ever detonated at 50 megatons a thousand four hundred times more powerful than the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs. Even then its yield was reduced by half to reduce radioactive fallout that eventually ringed the globe.

The blast punctuated the Berlin Crisis of 1961 (4 June - 9 November 1961) and was the last major politico-military European incident of the Cold War about the occupational status of the German capital city, Berlin, and of post-World War II Germany. The U.S.S.R. provoked the Berlin Crisis with an ultimatum demanding the withdrawal of Western armed forces from West Berlin-culminating with the city’s de facto partition with the East German erection of the Berlin Wall.

 The 22nd Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union-the last to be attended by the Communist Party of China-was held in Moscow during the crisis.

 Last week’s polls found Obama leading Romney, Cain and Perry  in Arizona, Ohio and nationwide Romney ties Obama in Nevada

A board of county commissioners in North Carolina is asking the Supreme Court for help: Its members don’t believe they should have to forbid volunteers from mentioning the name of Jesus in prayers offered before their meetings.

But the American Civil Liberties Union and Americans United for Separation of Church and State are standing by their victory in a U.S. circuit court decision that states even “a solitary reference to Jesus Christ” in invocations before the Forsyth County Board of Commissioners’ meetings could do “violence to the pluralistic and inclusive values that are a defining feature of American public life.”

Furthermore, wrote Judge James Harvie Wilkinson III in the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals majority opinion, legislative invocations offered in Jesus’ name are inherently “sectarian” and thus should be censored lest they make some attendees feel “uncomfortable, unwelcome and unwilling to participate in … public affairs.”

But the board disagrees, and with the help of the Alliance Defense Fund is asking the Supreme Court to trump Wilkinson’s ruling.

“America’s founders opened public meetings with prayer; this county simply wants to allow its citizens to do the same,” said ADF Senior Counsel David Cortman in a statement. “We trust the U.S. Supreme Court will want to review this case because of the long history in America of offering prayers before public meetings. Public officials shouldn’t be coerced into censoring the prayers of those invited to offer them just because secularist groups don’t like people praying according to their own conscience.”

Scott Rasmussen noted in WSJ that “it would be wise for all Republicans to remember that their team didn’t win (in 2010), the other team lost. Heading into 2012, voters will remain ready to vote against the party in power unless they are given a reason not to do so.”    

Sons and daughters of British monarchs will have an equal right to the throne under changes to the United Kingdom’s succession laws agreed to last Friday.

The leaders of the 16 Commonwealth countries that have the queen as head of state approved the changes unanimously at a Commonwealth of Nations summit in Australia. The individual governments of those 16 countries still must agree to the changes for them to take effect.

 The constitutional changes would mean a first-born girl has precedence over a younger brother. They also mean that a future British monarch would be allowed to marry a Catholic.(see Gunpowder Plot below)

The laws would apply to any future children of Prince William and Catherine, the Duchess of Cambridge, who married this year.

 The Dunpowder Plot was to blow up the House of Lords during the State Opening of England’s Parliament on 5 November 1605, as the prelude to a popular revolt against the Protestant king by radical Jesuit lead Catholics. Afterward James’s nine-year-old daughter, Princess Elizabeth, was to be installed as the Catholic head of state. It is celebrated in UK as Guy Fawkes Day named for one of the plotters who was captured with 36 barrels of gun powder in Parliament’s basement the night before.

When a 7-year-old Colorado child wants to join the Girl Scouts it would seem like a no brainer except the child has “boy parts” and a local leader said “no.” According to the boy’s mother he is and has been only interested in Girl things.

The Girl Scouts of Colorado does allow people with boy parts to join its troops, as long as the child is truly transgendered — meaning the child identifies as a girl, and the family identifies the child as a girl.

 ”We feel it is important to include all girls, so when a family says, ‘This is my daughter and she wants to be a Girl Scout,’ we are not going to question that,” Rachelle Trujillo, vice president of communications for Girl Scouts of Colorado told The LA Times.

There are only about 30,000 members of the Girl Scouts in Colorado now, and it is unclear how many have “boy parts ” but it seems there are those.

In a couple years those boy parted members could present some interesting challenges on overnighters or even in swimming pool showers. If the mother insists the Girl Scouts face a challemge. So far the Girl Scout have no said how many transgendered member and leaders it has on its membership rolls.

 Child psychologist and lawyers will have a field day with his one.

 Support for ObamaCare is at an alltime low of just 34% approving with over half (51%) disapproving of it.

Crosses in every room at Washingon D.C.’s 125-year old Catholic University of America are a human rights violation that prevent Muslim students from praying.

That’s the complaint to the Washington, D.C. Office of Human Rights filed by a professor from rival George Washington University across town.

GWU Law School Professor John Banzhaf takes the Catholic institution to task for acting ”probably with malice” against Muslim students in a 60-page complaint that cites ”offensive” Catholic imagery all over the Catholic school, which he says hinder Muslims from praying.

Baffled Catholic University officials say they have never received a complaint from any of the schools Muslim students.

Banzhaf, who already has a pending lawsuit against the university over ending its policy of allowing mixed-gender dormitories and has a history of filing civil rights suits on such topics as childhood obesity and smoking, filed the complaint alleging that Muslim students are not given their own prayer rooms.

He alleges that the university, “does not provide space - as other universities do - for the many daily prayers Muslim students must make, forcing them instead to find temporarily empty classrooms where they are often surrounded by Catholic symbols which are incongruous to their religion,” according to the Tower, Catholic University’s student newspaper. 

The complaint further objects that Muslims must pray at the school’s chapels “and at the cathedral that looms over the entire campus - the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.”

A spokesperson for the human rights office said they are investigating Banzhaf’s complaint - and the inquiry could take as long as six months.

“This attorney is really turning civil rights on its head,” observed Patrick Reilly of the Cardinal Newman Socity. “He’s using the law for his own discrimination against the Catholic institution and essentially saying Catholic University cannot operate according to Catholic principles.”

The complaint is absurd, writes Thomas Peters on the website CatholicVote.

“Can you imagine a law professor helping Catholic students to sue a Jewish or Muslim school to demand that the schools install crosses, remove their religious symbols, and allow the Catholics to construct a chapel on their property?” wrote Peters. ”Can you imagine the argument being that Jewish and Muslims schools using their religious symbols and following their faith traditions would be described in the legal brief as “offensive”?!

“Normally I would have confidence that this lawsuit will be deemed without merit, but the way things are going these days, I just can’t be sure anymore. Simply  incredible.”

A Russian Company got a $730,000,000 (million) approved loan to a company owned by a Russian billionaire and a friend of Vlad Putin of KGP fame.

Shortly after Obama took office, 84 percent of voters aged 18 to 29 approved of the president, according to Post polling. Earlier this month, that figure had dropped to 52 percent.

And a new poll for the Democratic-leaning polling consortium Democracy Corps showed Obama’s approval among young voters actually slipping below 40 percent, a figure roughly consistent with the rest of the population.)

Like the other key voter blocs that helped deliver the 2012 election for Obama - think African American and Latino voters - young voters have fallen out of love with the president, at least to some extent.

But young voters present even more of a challenge than other key voting blocs for the president. That’s because while black turnout increased substantially in 2008 and Latino voters swung strongly for Obama, young voters did both - coming to the polls in record numbers and swinging hugely for the president.

“They are such a key target to our success, including young minority voters, especially Hispanics,” said Democratic pollster John Anzalone.

In the 2008 election, the final tally among 18-to-29-year-olds was 66 percent for Obama - a full 12 points more Democratic than in any presidential election in the past four decades. Young voters accounted for about 8 million of Obama’s 10 million-vote margin in the popular vote over Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).

In no other demographic group did Obama so outperform his Democratic predecessors. And that makes this voter bloc hugely important to his reelection chances.

It also makes replicating what happened in 2008 with young voters very difficult.

Thursday a CIA drone fired six missiles at a convoy killing four top Taliban terrorists in Pakistan. Because Pakistan didn’t whine we can assume thay tacitly approved.

Two weeks have gone by since Obama accused Iran of instigating a foiled plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to Washington last April. Yet neither the US nor Saudi Arabia has done anything about it - even at the UN.
Friday, Oct. 21, Obama reaffirmed that all US soldiers will be brought home from Iraq by the end of the year. Two days later, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pledged in Tajikistan: “To countries in the region, especially Iraq’s neighbors, we want to emphasize that American will stand with our allies and friends, including Iraq, in defense of our common security and interests.”

 She spoke as Obama was preparing to pull out of Iraq, leaving in Baghdad a government and national army incapable of defending the country against widening cycles of terror, headed by a prime minister under Tehran’s thumb and more than 30,000 armed members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ terrorist arm, al Qods Brigades, deployed there.
Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki is so completely in thrall to Iran that he was afraid to accede to Washington’s insistent demand for immunity to be extended to at least 5,000 US soldiers remaining in Iraq, although left on his own he would have been inclined to do so.
The eight-year US military presence in Iraq ends therefore leaving Iran sitting pretty on its two key strategic goals:

1. The exit of American soldiers, whose presence in Iraq since the 2003 invasion was deemed in Tehran a continuous threat to its borders. US military involvement in Afghanistan is seen in the same light.

2. A weak Shiite-led government in place in Baghdad, heavily dependent on Tehran’s will. Torn by strife among Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds, Iraq is in no state to obstruct Iran’s hegemonic plans for the Persian Gulf and Syria.

The Iranian regime’s right hand for achieving those goals was - and is - Al Qods commander Lt. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the man also accused by Washington of masterminding the assassination plot.

Washington is well aware of Soleimani’s capacity for interfering with American interests. Indeed he crows about it.Last July, US sources leaked a message he posted in 2008 to Gen. David Petraeus, then head of US Central Command and now CIA Director:

 ”General Petraeus, you should know that I, Qassem Suleimani, control the policy for Iran with respect to Iraq, Lebanon, Gaza and Afghanistan. And indeed, the ambassador in Baghdad is a Quds Force member. The individual who’s going to replace him is a Quds Force member.”

 He was flaunting his control of Baghdad at American expense.  Since then, he has expanded this control, Military sources report, by injecting 30,000 al Qods fighting personnel into Iraq, all trained in guerrilla tactics to the standards of Western and Middle East elite units.

 At least half are deployed in Baghdad in the guise of bodyguard units Iraqi government members and political figures have hired from local firms. Most of the Shiite figures in government and parliament are now using al Qods details for protection. This makes the easily vulnerably to manipulation from Tehran.

 Today, Al Qods has the run of Baghdad’s Green Zone, the top-security enclave built a cost of billions of American dollars to keep the US embassy and high commands in Iraq and its seat of government safe from terrorist bombs.
After the US military drawdown in just over two months, the 16,000 US embassy staffers remain in the Green Zone, including 5,000 security officers from civilian contractors.

 They will stand eyeball to eyeball with a like number of al Qods operatives defending the pro-Iranian Iraqi government. It is on this jarring note that America is about to end its war in Iraq. 

Turkey already has troops in the ground in the North. Sytria will takes its ite out of the West and Iran will get the rest after some perfunctory haggling.

A pregnant goldfish is called a twit.

The American phoenix is slowly rising again. Within five years or so, the US will be well on its way to self-sufficiency in fuel and energy. Manufacturing will have closed the labour gap with China in a clutch of key industries. The current account might even be in surplus, says a column in the UK Telegraph.

Meanwhile, the China-US seesaw is about to swing the other way. Offshoring is out, ‘re-inshoring’ is the new fashion.

“Made in America, Again” - a report this month by Boston Consulting Group - said Chinese wage inflation running at 16pc a year for a decade has closed much of the cost gap. China is no longer the “default location” for cheap plants supplying the US.

A “tipping point” is near in computers, electrical equipment, machinery, autos and motor parts, plastics and rubber, fabricated metals, and even furniture.

“A surprising amount of work that rushed to China over the past decade could soon start to come back,” said BCG’s Harold Sirkin.

The gap in “productivity-adjusted wages” will narrow from 22pc of US levels in 2005 to 43pc (61pc for the US South) by 2015. Add in shipping costs, reliability woes, technology piracy, and the advantage shifts back to the US.

The list of “repatriates” is growing. Farouk Systems is bringing back assembly of hair dryers to Texas after counterfeiting problems; ET Water Systems has switched its irrigation products to California; Master Lock is returning to Milwaukee, and NCR is bringing back its ATM output to Georgia. NatLabs is coming home to Florida.

Boston Consulting expects up to 800,000 manufacturing jobs to return to the US by mid-decade, with a multiplier effect creating 3.2m in total. This would take some sting out of the Long Slump.

As Cleveland Fed chief Sandra Pianalto said last week, US manufacturing is “very competitive” at the current dollar exchange rate. Whether intended or not, the Fed’s zero rates and $2.3 trillion printing blitz have brought matters to an abrupt head for China.

Fed actions confronted Beijing with a Morton’s Fork of ugly choices: revalue the yuan, or hang onto the mercantilist dollar peg and import a US monetary policy that is far too loose for a red-hot economy at the top of the cycle. Either choice erodes China’s wage advantage. The Communist Party chose inflation.

Foreign exchange effects are subtle. They take a long to time play out as old plant slowly runs down, and fresh investment goes elsewhere. Yet you can see the damage to Europe from an over-strong euro in foreign direct investment (FDI) data.

Flows into the EU collapsed by 63p from 2007 to 2010 (UNCTAD data), and fell by 77pc in Italy. Flows into the US rose by 5pc.

Volkswagen is investing $4bn in America, led by its Chattanooga Passat plant. Korea’s Samsung has begun a $20bn US investment blitz. Meanwhile, Intel, GM, and Caterpillar and other US firms are opting to stay at home rather than invest abroad.

Europe has only itself to blame for the current “hollowing out” of its industrial base. It craved its own reserve currency, without understanding how costly this “exorbitant burden” might prove to be.

China and the rising reserve powers have rotated a large chunk of their $10 trillion stash into EMU bonds to reduce their dollar weighting. The result is a euro too strong for half of EMU.

The European Central Bank has since made matters worse (for Italy, Spain, Portugal, and France) by keeping rates above those of the US, UK, and Japan. That has been a deliberate policy choice. It let real M1 deposits in Italy contract at a 7pc annual rate over the summer. May it live with the consequences.

The trade-weighted dollar has been sliding for a decade, falling 37pc since 2001. This roughly replicates the post-Plaza slide in the late 1980s, which was followed - with a lag - by 3pc of GDP shrinkage in the current account deficit. The US had a surplus by 1991.

Charles Dumas and Diana Choyleva from Lombard Street Research argue that this may happen again in their new book “The American Phoenix”.

The switch in advantage to the US is relative. It does not imply a healthy US recovery. The global depression will grind on as much of the Western world tightens fiscal policy and slowly purges debt, and as China deflates its credit bubble.

Yet America retains a pack of trump cards, and not just in sixteen of the world’s top twenty universities.

It is almost the only economic power with a fertility rate above 2.0 - and therefore the ability to outgrow debt - in sharp contrast to the demographic decay awaiting Japan, China, Korea, Germany, Italy, and Russia.

Europe’s EMU soap opera has shown why it matters that America is a genuine nation, forged by shared language and the ancestral chords of memory over two centuries, with institutions that ultimately work and a real central bank able to back-stop the system.

The 21st Century may be American after all, just like the last.

Whether you agree with the Telepraph’s analysis or not it feels good.

What remains is for America’s national leadership to use the energy within its borders and put all those dollars in America’s pocket. Yes, it can provide incentives for so-called green energy and to stop its irrational and almost hysterical determination to do bet on a maybe rather than using what we have while hedging the maybe 30-50 years hence.

Charles de Gaulle’s final words were, “It hurts.”

The feds have OK’d cuts of 10% that are expected to save California $623 million. The state spends $14 billion on Medi-Cal, the state’s Medicaid program. The program is that of last medical resort for 7,600,000 of the poorest Californians ioncluding illegal aliens. Those cuts will mean less and poorer medical care as some doctors refuse to accept Medi-Cal patients because reimbursement is so low is does not cover costs.

 California is reluctant to identify how much is going to undocumented foreigners but some estimates runs as high as 30% or $4,000,000,000 (billion). There have ven been cases where foreign residents cross and recross the border to get free medical care.

An Italian American group is complaining about Godfather Pizza’s use of a Al Capone-like mob characature saying it demeans Italian Americans.

Libya has in effect become the main arms supplier of Hamas the radical Muslim group..

Western intelligence sources said the Hamas regime in the Gaza Strip has received a huge amount of missiles, rockets and other weapons from Libya since June virtually without limits or restriction.

As reprehernsible as Quadaffi was while in power he bottled up one of this most destructive arsenals on earth.

It is a lesson in unintended consequences and there are lingering doubts that the new Libyan Muslim regime will do anything but facilitate more arms to their Muslim henchmen in Gaza actng as a dagger at Isreal’s throat.

Ironically Quadaffi’s demise could windup igniting a conflagration consuming the region or even more.

In classic fashion Obama said Friday he was completely behind the St. Louis Rangers In the World Series.

A week after its prisoner exchange Hamas resumed rocket fire onto Israel from the Gaza strip. Hamas gunners pounded Ashdod, Ashkelon, Sderot, Kiryat Malachi, Ofakim, Gan Yavne and the Eshkol farm district were subjected to Jihad Islami volleys of more than 35 missiles Saturday, Oct. 29, in retaliation for the loss of a senior five-man missile team in an Israeli air force strike a few hours earlier. One Israeil was killed. The terrorists were shown firing 20 rounds in rapid succession from a Grad multiple rocket launcher mounted on a small truck which then drove off at speed - the same weapon used by Libyan rebels in Sirte.

The Grads were smuggled from Libya under NATO’s nose along with tons of other weapons..

The Hamas terror organization is solely responsible for any terrorist activity emanating from the Gaza Strip,” the Israeli military said on Oct. 27.

This marked the first rocket strike on Israel since it released 477 Palestinians in the first phase of a prisoner deal with Hamas on Oct. 18. The source of the rockets is most likely Libya where thousands of munitions have disappeared. The interim Libyan regime is overtly pro-Muslim.

The Israel Air Force responded to the rocket attack on Ashdod. The military said the air force targeted three “terror activity sites in the central Gaza Strip” as well as a weapons warehouse in the south. “Direct hits were confirmed,” the military said.

By a 41% to 38% margin Americans say they disapprove of the Occupy Wall Street crowd for what it is doing and the way they are doing it.

A 33-year old Ohio woman teacher has been entenced to four years in prison for seducing four 17 year-old boys even though the age of consent in Ohio is 16. She was sentenced under new statute proecting students from teachers or other authority figures.

Had the woman not been a teacher she could not have been prosecuted.

Regardless she is now a registered sex offender banned for life from teaching or any other  position of authority over youth.

Istanbul, Turkey is the only city in the world located on two continents where tectonic plates rub - hence it is an earthquake zone as it most of Turkey. Over 500 died there in last week’s earthquake.

Is Herman Cain the black Bary Goldwater? Cain continues to soar in the polls. In some, he is leading the presumptive front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, Mitt Romney. What accounts for Mr. Cain’s meteoric rise? He is the anti-Romney and could save America a small fortune in hair gel.

The media class despises Cain. The establishment GOP and some neoconservatives dismiss him as a lightweight. Both the liberal left and the Beltway right have settled on their preferred Republican nominee: Mr. Romney. The former Massachusetts governor is seen as the “responsible” choice. Mr. Romney is a brainy technocrat.

Cain vows to control spending, streamline regulations and grow the economy. On social issues, especially abortion and homosexual rights, some don’t really believe Mr. Romney’s pro-life, pro-family conversion is genuine. He represents the limp wristed Northeastern wing of the GOP. Many Republicans believe he has the best chance of defeating President Obama in 2012. Yet it also explains the Cain phenomenon. Voters like him because he is someone who speaks his mind without calibrating every word.

Mr. Cain’s visceral appeal is that he is the outsider, the anti-establishment candidate. Unlike Mr. Romney, Mr. Cain is not a conventional politician. On the campaign trail, Mr. Cain’s answers are often not scripted; rather, they are blunt, raw and honest. He is articulate and passionate and uses simple, clear language that resonates with the electorate. In short, he is not a phony.

Plus, and more to the point, Cain erases the impediment facing all those who voted for Obama to avoid being labeled a racist .But, although Cain is not raising nearly enough money to be competitive with either Romney or Obama he is doing better. That is simply not enough

In the last three days, the Syrian engineering corps has laid minefields along the Jordanian, Turkish borders to cut down on the influx of weapons and armed manpower supporting the anti-Assad opposition and the outflow of army deserters. Assad fears he is facing Arab military incursions backed by NATO.

Reportedly North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il, accompanied by his son and heir-apparent Kim Jong-Un, rushed to military fortresses after soiling their Depends after they heard about the bloody killing of his buddy dictator Moammar Gadhafi in Libya.

The two Kims made a “surprise visit” to the People’s Army Unit No. 985, the North’s official Korean Central News Agency said on Oct. 22, two days after Gadhafi was captured and killed outside his birthplace of Sirte while hiding in a drainpipe.

Burma has sent several thousand young officers and engineers to Moscow to study nuclear science and missile technology and defectors are talking abour Super weapons.

China is overtly threatening the U. S. about refocusing its military assets from Iraq and Afghanistan to Asia. It was a push back to Sec Defense Panneta’s assurance to Japan and South Korea. And the most clear sign yet that Obama has put U. S. international relations into the toilet.

The Chinese leadership is taking very seriously Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s statement that after curtailing its involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, Washington would focus more of its energy and resources on the Asia-Pacific Theatre.

Panetta said in Tokyo last week that despite overall cuts in the Pentagon budget, “we are not anticipating any cutbacks in this region.”

In addition to Washington’s perceived role in backing Vietnam and the Philippines’ ownership of a host of South China Sea islets also claimed by China, CCP strategists see a broader - and more sinister - expansion of the time-honored “anti-China containment policy.”

Two powers normally not involved in the South China Sea imbroglio - India and Japan - have since mid-2011 given not-so-subtle backing to several ASEAN members in their sovereignty contests with the PRC. Even as defense cooperation between India and Vietnam has been boosted, Indian oil companies are set to start drilling for oil close to areas in the Paracel Island chain that are also claimed by China. Meanwhile, the Japanese Self-Defense Forces have concluded training and other military-cooperation agreements with the forces of Vietnam and the Philippines.

This is despite Beijing’s high-decibel warnings that countries “outside of the South China Sea” region, meaning the U.S., India and Japan, should desist from “muddying the waters by internationalizing the South China Sea disputes.”

It is understood that the CCP leadership has decided on a three-pronged strategy. Firstly, the construction of state-of-the-art weapons would be speeded up. This includes the early deployment of two to three aircraft carriers currently being built. An entire new fleet consisting of aircraft carrier battle groups is expected to be based in the southern tip of Hainan Island.

Secondly, the state media and military spokesmen are upping the ante on China’s psychological warfare regarding the possibility that the PLA might use force to settle sovereignty altercations.

On Tuesday, the hardline Global Times ran an editorial asserting China’s right to use military force to “kill the chicken to scare the monkey.”

A Jan. 10, 2010 cable said that the social consequences of the imbalance include “an estimated excess of over 30 million unmarriageable males, a potentially destabilizing force that threatens to cause unrest in the most economically marginalized areas, and could lead to increased gender violence through demand for prostitution and trafficking in girls and women.”