California’s Central Valley: Zimbabwe West?

ED MORRISSEY…. HotAir

Until recently, California’s Central Valley was one of the nation’s most productive agricultural regions.  Not only did it feed itself, the state of California, and the entire country, it also produced exports to other nations.  That kind of enterprise employed a lot of people in Central California, from farm hands to wholesalers, and created a high standard of living.

That continued right up to the moment that the federal government got more concerned over the Delta smelt, a small, inedible fish, than feeding people.  A court order cut off water deliveries for seven months out of the year to the Central Valley at the same time a drought hit, and the combination turned a once-fertile breadbasket to the world into a Dust Bowl — or as Investors Business Daily suggests, a government-initiated agricultural disaster on the same order as Zimbabwe today or Ukraine in the 1930s.   Monica Showalter reports that the region that once fed the world now faces widespread hunger as a result:

Local newspapers and Fresno County officials are trying to rally Facebook users to vote for Fresno in a corporate contest sponsored by Wal-Mart for $1 million in charity food donations for the hungry. Fresno, a city of 505,000, has taken the national lead because 24.1% of Fresno’s families are going hungry.

Civic spirit is good, but something big is wrong here. Fresno is the agricultural capital of America. More food per acre in more variety can be grown in the fertile Central Valley surrounding this community than on any other land in America — perhaps in the world.

Yet far from being a paradise, Fresno is starting to resemble Zimbabwe or 1930s Ukraine, a victim of a famine machine that is entirely man-made, not by red communists this time, but by greens.

State and federal officials, driven by the agenda of environmental extremists, have made it extremely difficult for the valley’s farms, introducing costly environmental regulations and cutting off critical water supplies to save the Delta smelt, a bait fish. It’s all driving the economy to collapse.

In the southwest part of the Central Valley, water allotments as low as 10% of normal have created a visible dust bowl. The knock-on effect can be seen in cities like Fresno, where November’s unemployment among the packers, cannery workers and professional fields that make agriculture productive stands at 16.9%.

It isn’t just Fresno, although it appears to have taken the worst of the crisis.  Besides Fresno, four other Central Valley cities got listed in the bottom ten of MarketWatch’s 2010 survey on the worst places to do business in the US.  Fresno came in dead last at 102 on the list.

The collapse has another element to it for Californians as well.  The state has a huge budget shortfall, currently estimated around $26 billion, and cannot afford to expand safety-net programs to help the Central Valley.  One reason the budget hole is so large is because of the lack of revenue from normally-robust agricultural production in that region.  Instead of being a net revenue producer, the Central Valley threatens to become a sinkhole of welfare spending that will hasten the bankruptcy of the nation’s largest state, and an economy that would normally rank among the top 10 in the world if considered as a nation unto itself.

This is entirely the result of federal government intervention in agriculture, which might be understandable if it was intended to help agriculture.  Instead, it comes as a hostile act to both the people of the region and Americans as a whole.  Thanks to the collapse of the Central Valley, food prices will increase as we have to import more from countries with much less strict environmental controls, which is merely an inconvenience.  The starvation that has begun is more than an inconvenience — it is a national embarrassment, and a moral outrage.

Christmas crap shoot...

Understanding Assange

Mike Walker, Colonel USMC, retired

Julian Assange is typically presented as either brilliant devil or hero.  The closer truth is that he is a very clever and spoiled adolescent who never grew up.  He is much more a mentally unstable lost soul than an evil ogre or shining messiah.

Unfortunately, cleverness has allowed his childish conspiracy visions to overcome the rational behavior required of a responsible member of any society.  Julian the child throws tantrums and acts out.  He is the eternal enfant terrible hidden behind a well-tailored suit, a disarmingly juvenile smile, and an adult vocabulary. 

Julian is the boy-man for whom the rules do not apply.  Everyone who gets in his way is the enemy.  In fact, everyone who gets in his way is not only the enemy, they are, without exception, connected to the giant cabal aimed directly at Julian Assange.  So is it any wonder he is now likely to go to jail for sexually driven crimes in sexually liberal Sweden?  No rules apply to Julian other than Julian’s, evidently to include his physicals needs.  He is in constant rebellion against a paranoid perception of unfairness caused by societal authority in any form.

Therefore Julian is doomed and a passing phenomenon.  He has and will continue to get his Andy Warhol moments of fame, but in the great scheme of things, his successes are unsustainable in the face of his self-destructive egoism.  For Julian Assange, the world does revolve around him.  Julian is endlessly needy making it hard to believe he is Australian.  He should be more the object of pity than anger and we should all feel a bit indebted to him.

We should be grateful that the tool that laid bare a great weakness in our 21st century information systems was such a deeply flawed individual.  Think of the future damage that could have been wrought by a truly sinister force if Julian Assange had not forced the adults to divert their attention and clean up a mess that this child as much found as created.

Semper Fi,

Mike

Blue State Corruption

Red state/Blue state maps after November 2

Even the NY Times sees that "Blue States" are  on the edge of a cliff, that many will see horrendous economic hardship in the very near future, states like California, Illinois, and New York. Debt derived from "compassionate" spending is a very real threat and there is a time to pay the piper.

Everyone knows individuals who do not handle their resources wisely. They will spend like there is no tomorrow and help forestall the inevitable by refinancing repeatedly. At some point there is no more wiggle room and bankruptcy/foreclosure comes home to roost. That is where the "Blue states" are. They have bought into the idea that you can spend your way out of reversals and that huge bond obligations can be put off indefinitely. With lower than expected income and huge growing debt they'll have no other way out than to declare insolvency... yikes! Didn't all those spend liberals geniuses in Sacramento see this coming? The hardest hit are the bluest of states, states with a majority of brilliant liberal financial planners assembled as their form of government.

Most "Blue state" elected officials view the events that surrounded the Wall Street collapses and bail outs as criminal activity by unscrupulous bond traders, CEOs and investors. Their question, "How could financial professionals not see the obvious unless they are inherently criminal?" My question, "How could state financial professionals not see the obvious unless they are inherently corrupt?'

Bobzhuman...

Julian Assange... Ah, to be the toast of the town! What an honor. "Hey, Julian, I loved the way that you poked a stick in Uncle Sam's eye!" 

You notice that he has no interest in leaking info about Russia's adventures in Georgia or China's in Taiwan. He would immediately be executed in some covert way... The US is a safe place to make your mark...

A word from Mike Walker, retired USMC Colonel in intelligence...

Secretary of State Clinton Should Resign?  What a laugh!

It isn’t every morning that I get to wake up, turn on the news and end up with a good chuckle and a smile on my face.  But I have to thank Julian “Mr. Wikileaks” Assange for that early Holiday gift.

Now I do not know if dear Julian is just plain stupid, a world-class hypocrite, thinks the rest of us are simpletons, or some combination of the three but one thing is for sure, he is a public fool.

Newsflash to Julian: 

There are more international spies per square foot in United Nations Headquarters in New York City than anyplace in world.  That piece of real estate will beat out the CIA Headquarters in Langley , MSS HQ in Peking , or SVR HQ in Moscow for sheer concentration of spies.  Heck, some of the national delegations at the UN not only have their entire delegation engaged in intelligence collection but have the full staff of their state-run TV, radio, and print organizations busy at espionage work as well.

So Julian, you can bash the United States and Secretary of State Clinton to your heart’s content but this former intelligence officer ain’t buying your “Hate America ” line of bunk.

But good luck in Sweden , Mate!

Joseph Stalin the murderer of the best and brightest of Poland at Katyn...

Hard to believe that it would take so long to admit something that everyone knew already. Every Pole knows this for a fact, not as an urban legion but the horror of having so many of your loved ones massacred on a frozen lake. Read the article from the AP....

MOSCOW –  The World War II Katyn massacres were committed on the direct order of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, Russia's lower house of parliament said Friday — a statement hailed by Polish officials.

The 1940 massacre of around 20,000 Polish officers and other prominent citizens in western Russia by Soviet secret police has long soured relations between the two countries. President Dmitry Medvedev will visit Poland in early December.

Soviet propaganda for decades blamed the killings on the Nazis, but post-Soviet Russia previously acknowledged they were carried out by the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs, or NKVD — Stalin's much feared secret police.

The statement passed by the State Duma appears aimed as a step toward Russia definitively breaking with its Soviet legacy.

Some observers have expressed alarm in recent years that Russia may be quietly rehabilitating Stalin. Last year, a quote praising Stalin was restored to the decoration of one of Moscow's busiest subway stations; this year, Moscow's mayor proposed allowing posters depicting Stalin as part of the annual celebrations of the defeat of Nazi Germany.

"This historic document is important not only for Russian-Polish relations — much more it is important for us ourselves," said Konstantin Kosachev, chairman of the Duma's foreign relations committee, according to the news agency ITAR-Tass.

Russia has turned over scores of volumes of documents this year about Katyn to the Polish government.

"Published materials, held in secret archives for many years, not only reveal the scale of this awful tragedy but show that the Katyn crime was committed on the direct order of Stalin and other Soviet leaders," says the statement, which also expresses "deep sympathy for the victims of this unjustified repression."

Communist legislators tried to amend the statement to remove the naming of Stalin, but were defeated.

"The falsification of history that we are fighting against in other countries is also taking place in our country, and today we could see it with our own eyes," Kosachev said of the amendment attempt. Russian officials frequently use the term "falsification of history" to attack perceived attempts to underplay the importance of the Red Army in the fight against Nazi Germany.

The head of the Polish parliament's foreign affairs committee, Andrzej Halicki, said he considered the Duma's statement to be a breakthrough.

"I am happy that such a process of reconciliation and truth is taking place," he said. "It is the first such act that proves that our relations and discussions are sincere."

However, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, head of the conservative opposition Law and Justice party, said he still wants Russia to offer a full apology and compensation.

A U.S. historian who wrote a book about Katyn, hailed the Duma decision.

"I think this is part of a long process in which ultimately the Russian people will have to come to grips with their past," Allen Paul, who authored "Katyn: Stalin's Massacre and the Triumph of Truth," told The Associated Press.

___

Associated Press writer Vanessa Gera in Warsaw contributed to this report.

Two takes on North Korea....

Charles Krauthammer on NKorea...

Last night I predicted that the administration would do exactly the wrong thing and call ... for a return to the Six-Party talks. Well sure enough, our envoy to North Korea, who's now in Beijing, last night called for, yes, a return to the talks.

This is after he had a meeting with the Chinese and he announced that it was extremely successful, that we and the Chinese had agreed ... on the need for -- strong measures? Retaliation? Sanctions? No. On the need for multilateralism. ...

To return to the talks is exactly the wrong thing because it's exactly why -- if there's any logic at all to what's happened -- that's why Pyongyang has been doing this: (a) the attack with the artillery, and (b) the revelation earlier this last week of this vast, advanced facility for uranium enrichment.

The point is this is a regime in transition, a regime in a succession crisis, that is in economic disaster. The people are starving. It needs [outside] aid because we and the South Koreans and the Japanese have correctly cut it off years ago, and this is the way it [North Korea] beckons us into negotiations where, again, it will offer a phony agreement on some kind of halting of perhaps the uranium or plutonium program, and we will once again subsidize them. ...

I think everybody understands that the only outcome of this eventually that will be considered a success is if the regime eventually implodes and collapses of its own inefficiency and irrationality -- in fact lunacy in the way it governs itself.

And one way to do that is not to continue what we have been doing for 16 years -- [which] is negotiating and periodically caving in to threats like this, or attacks like this, with carrots, meaning keeping the economy of that state, which is really teetering on the edge of collapse, keeping it going...

___________________________________________________________________________________

Mike Walker on China and NKorea...

All,

Here is a report from the AP:

BEIJING – When North Korea tested a nuclear device last year, China issued bland criticism and urged Pyongyang to resume diplomacy. After a South Korean navy ship was sunk, most likely by a NorthKorean torpedo, Beijing sent its sympathies but called the evidence inconclusive.

Now that North Korea has unleashed an artillery barrage on a South Korean island that killed four people — including two civilians — and raised tensions in the heavily armed region, Beijing again appears unwilling to rein in its neighbor.

For all China's growing international might, its tolerance of North Korea's wayward behavior shows how differently Beijing sees the world — or at least its corner of it.

"There is zero chance of China, either in open or in private, putting major substantive pressure on North Korea," said Shi Yinhong, professor of international relations at Beijing's Renmin University.

If major damage is inflicted on South Korea from the irrational and deadly actions of North Korea, either literally or economically, the long-term damage will ultimately fall on China.

North Korea only exists  state because China makes it so.  

While most of the world is working to build a better future, such as the emerging powers in India and Brazil, China looks foolishly backwards.  Its relationship to North Korea is neither progressive nor enlightened, it is a throw back to a failed "kowtow" relationship going back to the days of decadent Chinese emperors and ever subservient Korean kings.  

What China seems incapable of seeing is that it cannot sponsor, however covertly, a horrific war in East Asia without severe consequences any more than the Japanese militarist could exploit their power a century ago.  Both courses were and are doomed to tragic failure.

China is at a crossroad.  It either advances the world forward in peace or helps to plunge it once more in to darkness and relentless warfare.  The sad reality is that China is an immature power.  It has no history of treating other nations as equals and is struggling, too often unsuccessfully, with the concept of equality of nations and races in East Asia.  To paraphrase Churchill, it seems that if you live in East Asia then the Chinese must either be at your feet or at your throat.  

It does not have to be that way but only the Chinese can make that choice.

Mike

Smallness... and very scary. This was the third person in line for four years to govern the US in case something were to happen the President and Vice President! She has always thrown these type of "playground" comments out. Remember her references to violence against gays when anyone opposed same sex marriages or her describing Tea Party activitists with Nazi symbols, etc.

John Boehner, caught up in historic election results that propelled his party into a dominate position in Congress and himself as the Majority Speaker was caught up in a moment of emotions...

Pelosi's response? Not so empathetic.

“You know what? He is known to cry. He cries sometimes when we’re having a debate on bills,” Pelosi said.

“If I cry, it’s about the personal loss of a friend or something like that. But when it comes to politics – no, I don’t cry,” she added. “I would never think of crying about any loss of an office, because that’s always a possibility, and if you’re professional, then you deal with it professionally."


Why would she need to say anything? Where are the adults? I guess this her definition of professionalism...

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1110/45425.html#ixzz15w2SKH00

Victor Davis Hanson

The George W. Bush Fixation

Obama’s fixation on his predecessor could consume his presidency.

B      Obama remains fixated on George W. Bush. For nearly two years, President Obama and his team have prefaced their explanations for the tough economy, the tough finances, and the tough situation abroad with a “Bush did it” chorus. Apparently, they believed that most of our problems, here and abroad, either started with George W. Bush, or at least would not transcend him.

At first, it was an easy enough habit to fall into. Things were not in great shape in January 2009 when Obama took over. More important, Obama started out with a nearly 70 percent approval rating. By contrast, Bush, like the punching bag Harry Truman, left office with an approval rating in the low 30s.

Obama’s serial fixation on his predecessor made little sense when he first took office — and it has now become a disastrous misreading of political realities.

Recent polls reflect that Bush and Obama are now just about even in popularity. Obama’s supporters in the House have suffered the worst shellacking since 1938. The president got out of Washington on a foreign tour immediately after the election — only to be cold-shouldered by fair-weather foreign leaders who sensed weakness. Bush, meanwhile, is basking in endless media exposure as he expounds on his best-selling memoir — appearing above the partisan fray, past and present.

Voters two years ago elected Obama for a variety of reasons — from unhappiness with Bush and Iraq to the landmark novelty of seeing our first black president. The financial meltdown of September 2008 ended for good John McCain’s small lead in the polls. That panic also reminded voters of their unease with the Bush deficits and his expansion of government.

Unfortunately, Obama misread all that, and ended up trumping many of the things that Bush did to alienate voters.

Deficits of $500 billion soared to $1.4 trillion. Vast but unfunded Bush programs like Medicare prescription-drug benefits and No Child Left Behind soon were overshadowed by even bigger ones like Obamacare. An initial Bush bailout evolved into a gargantuan stimulus and serial government takeovers.

The result, fair or not, was that Bush’s financial felonies began to look like misdemeanors in comparison. Tea Party voters saw the Obama medicine as worse than the original Bush disease.

There was the same obsession with — and misreading of — Bush in foreign affairs. The public was turned off by the violence and costs in Iraq — but otherwise not especially concerned about Bush’s largely traditional foreign policy or his anti-terrorism protocols. Too bad a Bush-obsessed Obama was again blind to that simple fact. So when Iraq became largely quiet as Obama entered office, the entire “Bush did it” refrain was rendered obsolete and should have been dropped.

The anti-war Obama had campaigned on closing Guantanamo, ending tribunals and renditions, and critiquing the Patriot Act and Predator-drone attacks. But once Iraq was taken out of the equation, Obama quickly discovered that these old bogeymen Bush policies were both useful and relatively popular. So he was forced to keep or expand them. Obama’s flip-flop only confused Americans: Why, in hypocritical fashion, was he now embracing the Bush legacy that he used to demonize constantly?

When Obama tried to chart a new and much-heralded “reset-button” foreign policy in loud opposition to Bush’s, the irony continued. Most Americans did not want to try the accused architect of 9/11, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, in a civilian court replete with legal gymnastics. They did not think that announcing artificial deadlines for troop withdrawals in wartime was an especially bright idea.

They also did not expect that the much-heralded antidote to Bush’s swagger and “Dead or Alive” Texanisms would include bowing to Saudi princes and Chinese dictators, apologizing abroad for America’s purported sins, or spreading mythologies about the Islamic world’s contribution to the Western Renaissance and Enlightenment.

Just because Bush turned off Europe over Iraq did not mean that an “I’m not Bush” Obama could not turn it off even more by printing billions of dollars, urging European countries to borrow more in reckless American style, and downplaying old alliances with everyone from Britain to Poland.

So here is a polite suggestion for President Obama: After nearly two years of governance, free up your policies to either succeed or fail on their own merits without chaining them to the Bush past. In a word: Let go of a now-smiling and relatively rehabilitated Bush — before such a fixation consumes you and your presidency.

— Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and the author, most recently, of The Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern. © 2010 Tribune Media Services, Inc.

RealClearPolitics - Video - Krauthammer: Ghailani Verdict "Huge Embarrassment" For Obama Admin

Tolerance, Intolerance, al Qaeda, and Moral Cowardice

Mike Walker, Colonel USMC (retired)

All,


In the coming days, please compare the outcry in the "enlightened" West as well as the Islamic world and so-called "Muslim Street" over the "proposed threat" to burn a Quran in the United States that never happened vice the wholesale slaughter of an Arab Christian congregation celebrating Mass in Baghdad last week or the mass murder of Sunni Muslims as they worshipped God in their mosques in Pehsawar District, Pakistan this week. Both attacks were claimed by an erstwhile Islamic group called al Qaeda.


This follows the brutal killings of Sufi Muslims in July in Karachi and Ahmadi Muslims in May in Lehore. Sufi's follow and existential path to God and their followers have written, over the centuries, some the greatest poetry the Islamic world has ever seen. The Ahmadi are an eccentric Islamic sect but are also the only Muslim group that are pacifists in the Quaker Christian sense.


All these barbaric acts were made allegedly in the name of God by supposed followers of God who call themselves member of al Qaeda. This is a lie. These are not just acts in the eyes of God. They are great sins. Al Qaeda likes to use the word "Satan" in labeling its enemies. If any group in the world today deserves the label "The Great Stan" it is al Qaeda. Al Qaeda is an abomination before God, the Almighty.


If the world's Islamic leaders are not willing to say once and for all that al Qaeda and its supporters are both evil and bad Muslims, there is little hope for the future. The leaders of the Islamic world must openly say that the members of al Qaeda are fasiq, and that their teachings, such as preaching the killing Muslims and Christians in their places of worship, are bid'ah, damnable innovations and a perversion of Islam.


The members of al Qaeda should be sentenced to death as apostates just as the Quran commands. The supporters of al Qaeda should be publicly excoriated as violators of the Quran, the word of God, and as fajir, sinners before Allah.


Further, the non-Muslim world along with the Muslim world can no longer sit quietly as these horrors take place. They must speak out clearly and forcefully against this form of religious extremism. This is a moment when people of good conscience, regardless of their belief or non-belief, must make a stand and speak out.


Speaking out in one unified voice is worth more than dozen battalions on the battlefield. If we are not willing to exert the moral courage to prove the pen mightier than the sword then the sword is all we will have left to wield.


As Edmund Burke well said on different occasions:


"I take toleration to be a part of religion. I do not know which I would sacrifice; I would keep them both: it is not necessary that I should sacrifice either."


"When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle."


The good must now associate for anything less is intolerance in its ugliest form and can only lead to ever greater deaths of innocents.


Semper Fi,


Mike

An Interesting Comparison... Mike Walker, Colonel USMC (retired)

All,

President Obama had often been compared to JFK and, most notably by Time Magazine, to FDR.

You be the judge:

FDR    

Age 23             Graduates “Cum Laude” from Harvard, President of the “Harvard Crimson newspaper”

Age 26             Leaves Columbia Law School early having already passed the NY Bar

Age 27             Lawyer with “top drawer” Wall Street Investment Bank

Age 28            Elected to NY State Senate in 1910

Age 31            Appointed Assistant Secretary of the Navy in 1913.  Oversees the largest expansion of the US Navy in history up to that time during WWI.  Sails on destroyers in U-boat infested Atlantic waters to assess first hand US Naval forces performance in wartime.

Age 38            Nominated as the democratic Vice Presidential Candidate in the 1920 election.  The ticket loses badly.

Age 39            Contracts polio beginning a multi-year battle with a crippling illness.  Continues to practice law.

Age 47            Elected Governor of NY in 1929.  NY at that time was the most important, populous, and wealthiest state in the union.

Age 50            Elected President of the United States.  Leads America through the Great Depression and World II.  Forever remember for his unstinting courage, positivism, and unifying optimism symbolized by the quote, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.”

JFK

Age 23            Graduates from Harvard in 1940, lettered as member of the varsity swim team, spent time at Princeton and London School of Economics. Had already traveled across Europe as well as the USSR.   Graduating thesis on European appeasement of Nazi Germany.  Writes bestseller “Why England Slept”

Age 24            Leaves graduate business school at Stanford.  Joins US Navy prior to Pearl Harbor attack.  Initially served in naval intelligence 

Age 26            Served in South Pacific as a PT boat commander.  On 7 December 1942, Kennedy commands PT 109, one of 8 PT boats that defeat a superior Japanese force off Guadalcanal.  Kennedy is later personally decorated for heroism for his performance in the Pacific

Age 29            Elected to his first of three terms to the US House of Representatives.  During his time in the House, the Marshall Plan is passed along with several key laws that lead to the post-war economic boom

Age 35            Elected for the first of two times to the US Senate

Age 38            Along with Ted Sorenson writes “Profiles in Courage” which wins the Pulitzer Prize in 1955

Age 43            Elected President of the United States

Barack Obama

Age 21             Graduates from Columbia University in 1983

Age 22             Works for the Business International Corporation in NYC that supports US interests abroad

Age 23             Worked for NYC-centered university public interest group aligned with Ralph Nader

Age 24             Becomes a community organizer in Chicago

Age 27             Enters Harvard Law School.  Serves as editor of the “Harvard Law Review”

Age 30              Graduates “Cum Laude” from Harvard Law School in 1991

Age 32              Finishes two years as a Visiting Fellow at the University of Chicago Law School in 1993

Age 34              Publishes “My Father’s Dreams”

Age 36              Ends a four period of practicing law and serving in management at a Chicago law firm.  Also active in key leadership roles in several Chicago foundations

Age 36              Elected to the first of two terms in Illinois State Senate in 1996

Age 43              Elected to the US Senate in 2004

Age 47              Elected President of the United States

Semper Fi,

Mike