Happy Cinco de Mayo! My efforts to move the LinkSwarm back to it’s usual Friday position by posting early have failed, so I’m trying to get it there by letting it drift back one day later each time…
Bill Clinton gave 542 speeches between 2001 and 2013. He made $104.9 million. http://t.co/ZYap4lAEs2 pic.twitter.com/EaKT5yIdDq
— Chris Cillizza (@TheFix) May 5, 2015
Tags:2016 Election, 2016 Presidential Race, Austin, Austin American Statesman, Ben Carson, Border Controls, Bosch Fawstin, Carly Fiorina, Charlie Hebdo, Clinton Foundation, Communism, Crime, Democrats, drug lords, Elections, Everytown for Gun Safety, Garland, Garland Shooting, genocide, gun control, Hewlett-Packard, Hillary Clinton, Hillary Clinton Scandals, Holodomor, Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, Jalisco, Laurence Tribe, LinkSwarm, Media Watch, Mexico, Mike Huckabee, Military, New Generation drug cartel, ObamaCare, Regulation, Republicans, Russia, Texas, Ukraine, Yezidis
Posted in Austin, Border Control, Communism, Crime, Democrats, Economics, Elections, Foreign Policy, Global Warming, Guns, Jihad, Media Watch, Military, ObamaCare, Regulation, Republicans, Social Justice Warriors, Texas, Uncategorized | No Comments »
Just a quick reminder that today is Victims of Communism Day, the day when we remember the 100 million plus victims of the 20th century’s most deadly totalitarian ideology.
Tags:Communism, genocide, Victims of Communism Day
Posted in Communism | No Comments »
With Russia still fighting it’s thinly disguised proxy war in Ukraine, other former Soviet states have to be nervous. That’s why Lithuania is reintroducing conscription.
To my mind, all of the Baltic countries should go to a universal service model like Switzerland or Israel: Everyone does a stint in the military, and everyone has an assault rifle at home (with a good smattering of handheld antitank weapons amidst the civilian populace as well).
The Baltic countries should all make it as hard as possible for Russia to occupy any parts of their country. Indeed, I would suggest that right now, disguised Ukrainian special forces units should be attacking critical infrastructure (rail lines, bridges, transmission lines, pipelines, etc.) all across Russia.
Evidence suggests that Putin regards the economic damage being done to Russia by sanctions as an acceptable cost for digesting part of the Ukraine. That cost needs to keep rising to deter both present and future aggression.
Tags:Baltic States, Communism, conscription, Foreign Policy, Lithuania, Military, Russia, Ukraine
Posted in Communism, Foreign Policy, Military | No Comments »
Thanks to the Magic Power of #Socialism™, in Venezuela a 36-pack of condoms now costs as much as an iPhone:
Venezuelans who already must line up for hours to buy chicken, sugar, medicines and other basic products in short supply now face a new indignity: Condoms are hard to find and nearly impossible to afford….
On the auction website MercadoLibre, used by Venezuelans to obtain scarce goods, a 36-pack of Trojans sells for 4,760 bolivars ($755 at the official exchange rate), close to the country’s minimum monthly wage of 5,600 bolivars.
It take a special kind of socialist magic to make your people too poor to have sex.
In other Venezuela news:
One wonders if The Road to Serfdom or Economics in One lesson have ever been translated into Spanish…
Tags:condoms, Economics, Foreign Policy, Henrique Capriles, hyperinflation, Nicolas Maduro, socialism, Venezuela
Posted in Communism, Economics, Foreign Policy | No Comments »
Greece’s far left-wing Syriza Party has won a big victory there, claiming about half the seats in Parliament.
What does it mean? I took a stab at analyzing it before. Even with a majority, there’s a good chance Syriza will have to continue meeting the EU’s demands (which means pretending to impose austerity measures) if they want mean old Aunt Angela to keep loaning them money. Remember: Greece has never practiced real austerity. Not once since the European Debt Crisis hit has Greece balanced its budget, and its deficit for 2014 was 12.2% of GDP.
But even the fake austerity imposed has been too much for the Greek people, who collectively want a cushy welfare state but don’t want to pay the sky-high taxes required to pay for it. Promising people something for nothing has been the left’s popular electoral strategy for more than a century, but reality can only be held off for so long. Germany is not due for a federal election, so it’s entirely possible Merkel might still underwrite another bailout or two if Syriza is willing to continue the farce. A Greece shorn of the Euro would still be broke and badly in debt, and newly Drachma-backed securities would likely be toxic investments for all but the most speculative of bond traders. (Perhaps Syriza should investigate how well that printing money thing is working out for Venezuela.) “Forgive our debts or we won’t let you give us more loans!” is a proposition Merkel would probably find quite easy to refuse, and I suspect the risk of a Greek exit from the Euro is already priced into European markets. If Syriza insists on anything more than (possibly) a token debt haircut, the EU will probably be willing to call their bluff.
It’s generally best for the driver of a 1974 Ford Pinto to avoid engaging in a game of chicken with a Tiger tank…
Tags:Angela Merkel, European Debt Crisis, Foreign Policy, Germany, Greece, PIIGS, socialism, Syriza, Welfare State
Posted in Budget, Communism, Foreign Policy, Welfare State | No Comments »
It was about time to do another update on Venezuela’s failing socialist economy when I dropped by Hot Air and saw that Ed Morrissey had already done all the heavy lifting for me:
“The currency in what should be the richest country in South America has collapsed, as well as its economy, under the dual weight of falling crude prices and the Chavista socialism that has been choking the country for more than a decade.”
More:
Venezuela’s Chavista policies have always ignored economic reality. Socialism is a fantasy economic system, especially as implemented by Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro.
The difference between Venezuela and the nanny-state petro-economy in Norway is that the latter preserves itself by respecting private property and foreign investment. From the beginning, Hugo Chavez attacked both, nationalizing oil production and criminalizing private investors as part of his “Bolivarian” revolution. When it did that, it chased off the talent needed to run oil production and the investment needed for all other kinds of goods and services. For a short period of time, their oil revenue allowed it to succeed in ignorance. When that failed, Chavez and now Maduro reacted to those predictable consequences by predictably imposing all sorts of rationing mechanisms which only decreased incentives for production and investment, especially in the legitimate economy. Now that the price of oil has collapsed, so has the official Venezuelan economy — and a populace used to a high standard of living now endures massive shortages and ever-increasing oppression to cover it up.
Morrissey, in turn, quotes a big chunk of this Matt O’Brien piece in the Washington Post:
Venezuela’s government is running a 14 percent of gross domestic product deficit right now, a fiscal hole so big that there’s only one way to fill it: the printing press. But that just traded one economic problem—too little money—for the opposite one. After all, paying people with newly-printed money only makes that money lose value, and prices go parabolic. It’s no wonder then that Venezuela’s inflation rate is officially 64 percent, is really something like 179 percent, and could get up to 1,000 percent, according to Bank of America, if Venezuela doesn’t change its byzantine currency controls.
What he said. Er, both of them.
Tags:Budget, hyperinflation, inflation, oil industry, socialism, Venezuela, Welfare State
Posted in Budget, Communism, Welfare State | No Comments »
Enjoy a Monday LinkSwarm to get your week started:
“There is a new anti-Semitism in France,” he told me. “We have the old anti-Semitism, and I’m obviously not downplaying it, that comes from the extreme right, but this new anti-Semitism comes from the difficult neighborhoods, from immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa, who have turned anger about Gaza into something very dangerous. Israel and Palestine are just a pretext. There is something far more profound taking place now.”
In discussing the attacks on French synagogues and Jewish-owned businesses this summer, during the Gaza war, he said, “It is legitimate to criticize the politics of Israel. This criticism exists in Israel itself. But this is not what we are talking about in France. This is radical criticism of the very existence of Israel, which is anti-Semitic. There is an incontestable link between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. Behind anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism.”
A majority of the GOP gains since then have come from the Democrats’ near-total collapse in one set of districts: the largely blue-collar places in which the white share of the population exceeds the national average, and the portion of whites with at least a four-year college degree is less that the national average. While Republicans held a 20-seat lead in the districts that fit that description in the 111th Congress, the party has swelled that advantage to a crushing 125 seats today. That 105-seat expansion of the GOP margin in these districts by itself accounts for about three-quarters of the 136-seat swing from the Democrats’ 77-seat majority in 2009 to the 59-seat majority Republicans enjoy in the Congress convening now.
Evidently American movie goers want to see modern American soldiers as heroes rather than psychotic killers. Who knew? @iowahawkblog
— BattleSwarm (@BattleSwarmBlog) January 18, 2015
Tags:American Sniper, Anwar al-Awlaki, Belgium, Bobby Jindal, Democrats, feminism, France, genocide, Germany, Global Warming, Islam, Jihad, LinkSwarm, Medicaid, Mexico, ObamaCare, Paris, R. J. Rummel, Republicans, Rick Perry, socialism, technology, Texas, Venuzuala
Posted in Communism, Democrats, Global Warming, Jihad, ObamaCare, Republicans, Texas, Waste and Fraud | No Comments »
Time waits for no man, so here’s your first LinkSwarm of the new year:
Tags:Democrats, Ferguson, Foreign Policy, France, Gerard Depardieu, Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, Jihad, Johnny Depp, LinkSwarm, New York City, NSFW, ObamaCare, Social Justice Warriors, Venezuela
Posted in Communism, Crime, Democrats, Foreign Policy, Jihad, ObamaCare, video | No Comments »
You might not know from scanning the headlines of what the mainstream media wants to focus on, but there’s been a lot of liberal meltdown this week, among the MSM themselves especially:
And I’m not covering the CROmnibus debacle yet because I haven’t even read the summary of the summary of the summary of what’s in that monster…
Tags:#GamerGate, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Border Controls, Charles Cook, feminism, Gawker, Hitler, Instapundit, Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, Jihad, Joe Biden, Jonah Goldberg, Jonathan Gruber, LinkSwarm, Media Watch, Megan McArdle, National Socialism, ObamaCare, pension crisis, rape, Social Justice Warriors, Social Security
Posted in Border Control, Budget, Communism, Crime, Democrats, Media Watch, ObamaCare, Welfare State | 1 Comment »
There’s been a lot of talk of how low oil prices are screwing Russia, but Venezuela is, if anything, more screwed thanks to the Magic Power of Socialism™:
U.S. currency is vital to Venezuela, which imports as much as 80% of what it consumes; 96% of its exports are petroleum products…In effect, the one-third decline in the price of oil means that the state oil company must either raise or divert enough production because Venezuela effectively owes China 67 million barrels of oil, roughly 27 million more than it did before, for this loan alone. And there are billions of dollars in other loans to consider.
And the outlook for the immediate future is equally grim:
Venezuela’s economy is expected to contract in 2014 and 2015, and even though it’s already recognized as the 14th least competitive economy in the world (according to the World Economic Forum) and the eighth-worst economy for doing business (according to The World Bank), [President Nicolas] Maduro’s laws seem to discourage private investments even more. The new laws reinforce bureaucracy and the difficulty of doing business in the country, particularly in the area of taxes.
“Increasing numbers of low-income Venezuelans are souring on Maduro as they suffer a declining economy, the highest inflation in the Americas, chronic shortages of basic goods and one of the world’s highest murder rates.”
If Venezuela’s economy collapses, they might take Cuba down with them, since the Castro brothers are so heavily dependent on Venezuelan oil subsidies to prop up their own moribund economy.
Compounding Venezuela’s crises is the fact that it’s probably going to default on its bonds. So they’re finally reaching the point in socialism where the run out of other people’s money. Next to that singular problem, U.S. sanctions on government Venezuelan officials for killing protestors are a trivial irritation…
Tags:Cuba, Economics, Foreign Policy, hyperinflation, inflation, Nicolas Maduro, socialism, Venezuela
Posted in Budget, Communism, Foreign Policy, Welfare State | 1 Comment »
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