Tag: WND

WND column

2012: An important year

In history, there are certain years that bear special significance. Every educated individual understands the importance of 1066, of 1776 and of 1913. And while the Mayan calendar-based eschatology has garnered an amount of media interest and Mexican tourism, there are some reasons to suspect that 2012 will be more historically momentous than the mere fact of it being a presidential election year would tend to indicate.

The reason for this is that a number of recognizable, large-scale historical patterns that have been playing out for years all appear to be coming to a head at approximately the same time. There are four of these distinct trends, which, although inextricably intertwined to some degree, can nevertheless be identified as the economic, political, geo-strategic and demographic patterns.

WND column

The Eurocrisis comes to America

Something is very rotten indeed in the city-state of Brussels. Last night, I had dinner with a friend of mine who works for a large bank in Europe. We talked a bit about the increasingly ominous state of the European financial situation, and he mentioned something rather worrisome. This week, his bank was holding a series of internal meetings to inform various financial services managers of the bank’s plans to respond to a serious financial event. My friend explained that this indicated the various scenarios have already been gamed out, and the bank is rapidly moving to prepare itself in case any of the more problematic scenarios turn out to accurately reflect the real world situation.

Of course, these preparations don’t mean that anything is going to happen today, tomorrow or even next week. Boarded windows are not hurricane magnets.

WND column

The Madness of Newt Romney

The argument for nominating Newt Romney as the Republican candidate for president is pretty straightforward. Newt Romney is not Barack Obama. Newt Romney is believed capable of defeating Barack Obama due to its generally moderate position approximately half way between Barack Obama and Republican Party conservatives and a strong Republican electoral tailwind. Since Newt Romney is believed to be less unattractive than Barack Obama and capable of winning the general election, Republicans should, therefore, look past its flaws and nominate it as the Republican presidential candidate in 2012.

WND column

Choosing Collapse

Another flavor of the month has passed its sell-by date. To no one’s surprise, except perhaps those Republicans in desperate search of a get-out-of-racism-free card, the Magic Negro, Part II: Republican edition has “suspended” his campaign, thus marking the latest collapse of a nominal frontrunner. If we are to take the polls seriously, this leaves Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney as the two leading candidates for the Republican nomination, which is arguably the least attractive leadership pair on offer since the Polish people were divided between Hitler and Stalin.

WND column

Weekend at Bernanke’s

It’s perfectly understandable why so few people are paying attention to the crisis that is threatening the global financial system, even though the professionals are biting their nails like little children about to embark upon their first rollercoaster ride. In addition to all the confusing and esoteric terminology being thrown around more freely than medical terms on a hospital show – before being introduced to “House,” I didn’t realize that all medical conditions, no matter how rare, are treated with either surgery or steroids – it is hard to distinguish between the gravity of a Dubai corporation asking for a loan extension and the Italian government collapsing for the 343rd time since Mussolini fled Rome.

There is a certain amount of crisis fatigue now, even among those of us who pay close attention to the ups and downs of the global markets and the economic statistics. One can only anticipate disaster so many times before being tempted to throw up one’s hands and assume that the global economy is going to muddle through somehow, all apparent reason and evidence to the contrary.

WND column

There is only one

Last week, Joseph Farah expressed a certain degree of frustration with the Republican candidates for president. Like clockwork, one candidate after another has demonstrated fatal flaws that serve to completely disqualify him, or her, as the case may be, from the White House.

Mitt Romney is still the nominal front-runner, as he has been from the start. However, he is only a front-runner because of the huge quantity of corporate cash he has collected, which is hardly a positive in an election cycle when the electorate is keenly aware of the huge amount of corruption in the Wall Street-Washington axis. He has no conservative grassroots support because he is not a conservative. Not only is he a religious cultist and an architect of the precursor to Obamacare, but he is downright notorious for his lack of principle. While it is possible he could defeat Obama, there is no reason to believe he would govern in a manner that is materially different than President Goldman Sachs. Both Romney and Obama are post-ideological, in that neither appears to believe in anything but himself.

WND column

Democracy and Europe

Two weeks ago, I wrote about the end of Europe’s great experiment with democracy. Not only have countries across the continent been forced into a one-vote, one-time arrangement which bears a striking similarity to the National Socialist plebiscite approach, but now the unelected European Commission is utilizing the financial muscle of the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank to remove duly elected officials and install unelected heads of government.

In Greece, Lucas Papademos was sworn in as prime minister last week. He is not a member of Parliament, has never been elected to office and is a former Federal Reserve economist. In Italy, Silvio Berlusconi resigned under pressure and is being replaced by Mario Monti, a former European commissioner and Goldman Sachs adviser. Like Papademos, Monti is an economist who has spent his career in the employment of the international banks and has never been elected to office. He has, however, been appointed to the rather ominous sounding position of senator-for-life. Fortunately, he has yet to make any statements concerning the reliability of the railway schedules.

WND column

Transfer or Tea Party?

Most Americans opposed TARP. They saw no reason to use taxpayer money for bailing out the very financial institutions that had been parasitically feeding off them for decades. But America is not a democracy. It is no longer even a representative democracy. The banking bailout, the GSE bailout and the subsequent automotive bailout were all rammed down the unwilling throats of the American public by the Goldman-controlled Treasury Department with the help of the Bush administration and congressional Democrats. It was rather like a doctor forcing a rape victim to pay for her own chemotherapy because it would benefit her rapist.*

Bipartisan support for the bailout made it clear to all and sundry that at the end of the day, the supposed divide between the Republican and Democratic parties is an imaginary one. Republicans and Democrats are nothing more than a unitary bank party.

*I know this makes no sense. That’s the point. Neither did the bailouts.

WND column

R.I.P. European Democracy, 1945-2011

Being for the most part historically illiterate, few intellectuals are prepared to admit that modern representative democracy and the basic concept of individual rights are 18th century phenomena that were the byproducts of a Christian society. They prefer to attribute both institutions to the Enlightenment, despite the fact that it was the Enlightenment that led directly to the revolutionary horrors of the French revolution and it is the Enlightenment that presently serves as the inspiration for the anti-democratic authoritarian bureaucracy of the European Union.

WND column

Herman Cain: Pro-Choice Republican

Herman Cain on abortion, Take 1: “It’s not the government’s role or anybody else’s role to make that decision. Secondly, if you look at the statistical incidents, you’re not talking about that big a number. So what I’m saying is, it ultimately gets down to a choice that that family or that mother has to make. Not me as president. Not some politician, not a bureaucrat. It gets down to that family, and whatever they decide, they decide. I shouldn’t have to tell them what decision to make for such a sensitive issue.”

Herman Cain on abortion, Take 2: “As to my political policy view on abortion, I am 100 percent pro-life. End of story.”

End of story? I think not.