04 December 2010

Gipper's Greatest Hits: 1980 Reagan - Carter Presidential Debate

October 28, 1980 - Cleveland, Ohio


"There you go again..."



03 December 2010

TGIF Rock-n-Roll Oldies: 10cc 1975


10cc were an English art rock band initially consisting of four musicians: Graham Gouldman, Eric Stewart, Kevin Godley and Lol Creme.

For the most part, 10cc featured two strong songwriting teams, one 'commercial' and one 'artistic'. Both teams however injected sharp wit to lyrically-dextrous and musically varied songs. Stewart and Gouldman were predominantly pop-song-writers, who created most of the band's accessible songs. 

In contrast, Godley and Creme -who went on after the band's breakups to make a series of records together- were the predominantly experimental half of 10cc, featuring an Art School sensibility and cinematic inspired writing. However, every member was a multi-instrumentalist, singer, writer, and producer. 


"Donna", released as the first 10cc single, was chosen by BBC Radio 1 disc jockey Tony Blackburn as his Record of the Week, helping to launch it into the Top 30. The song peaked at #2 in the UK in October 1972. A similar 50's influence/ can be found in many of the band's pop songs, on-through 1977's American radio standard "The Things We Do for Love".
After a series of moderate hits the band signed a major deal with Mercury Records- the catalyst for the deal was one song – "I'm Not in Love". 

The band's producer recalled: "At that point in time we were... struggling. We were absolutely skint, the lot of us, we were really struggling seriously, and Philips Phonogram wanted to do a deal with us. They wanted to buy Jonathan King's contract. I rang them. I said come and have a listen to what we've done, come and have a listen to this track. 

And they came up and they freaked, and they said "This is a masterpiece. How much money, what do you want? What sort of a contract do you want? We'll do anything, we'll sign it".

On the strength of that one song, 10cc did a five-year deal with them for five albums and paid a serious amount of money. The Original Soundtrack, an LP which was already complete, was released just weeks later. The album went on to both a critical and commercial success.

It is also notable for its opening track, Godley & Creme's "Une Nuit A Paris (One Night In Paris)", an eight-minute, multi-part "mini-operetta" that is thought to have been an influence on "Bohemian Rhapsody" by Queen. Its melody can also be heard in the overture to Andrew Lloyd Webber's 1986 musical "Phantom of the Opera". 

"I'm Not in Love" then gave the band their second UK #1 in June 1975. The song also provided them with their first US chart success when the song reached #2....


Wikipedia   

Previous RR Rock-n-Roll Oldies features -here-


02 December 2010

SHOCKER: European Banks took Hundreds-of-Billion$ in US Federal Aid. . . and We're Still Not Done Bailing Them Out

Carrying their military burden for 65 years apparently not enough to prop up the self-indulgent socialist superstate... 


After a $90B Ireland bailout by the European Central Bank that -like Greece- was substantially underwritten by the United States via the IMF, a new Federal Reserve report released late yesterday revealed multi-trillions-of-dollars has also been paid in bailouts to US and many foreign banks in the midst of the financial crisis:
New documents show that the most loan and other aid for U.S. institutions over time went to Citigroup ($2.2 trillion), followed by Merrill Lynch ($2.1 trillion), Morgan Stanley ($2 trillion), Bear Stearns ($960 billion), Bank of America ($887 billion), Goldman Sachs ($615 billion), JPMorgan Chase ($178 billion) and Wells Fargo ($154 billion). Merrill Lynch was later acquired by Bank of America, while Bear Stearns collapsed and was sold to JPMorgan. 

Foreign banks also benefited from the Fed's aid. They included Swiss bank UBS, which borrowed more than $165 billion, Deutsche Bank ($97 billion) and the Royal Bank of Scotland ($92 billion). 

Many of the individual loans the banks took were worth billions and had short durations but were paid back and renewed many times. Among the largest recipients were foreign central banks, such as the European Central Bank, Bank of England and the Bank of Japan. They borrowed huge amounts of dollars from the Fed to assist their own banks.
......
Barclays, a British bank, tapped the same facility 49 times. Its individual loans ranged from $300 million to $15 billion. 


And here's the kicker: the Obama Administration is now talking about sending still more IMF funds in an effort to stave off a collapse of the Euro... this from the same Obama that says we can't afford to uphold the Bush tax cuts...
Reuters reported at midday that an unnamed U.S. official said the U.S. would be willing to have the IMF give more money to support the European Financial Stability Facility. The U.S. is the IMF's biggest stakeholder. 

The EFSF is a 440 billion euro fund the Europeans put together as part of a broader 750 billion euros rescue package in May during the Greek debt crisis. The IMF has already pledged up to 250 billion euros.


But some conservatives -like Rep Mike Pence (R-Indiana)- are standing up and saying enough-is-enough: we don't have any money, the Chinese are on the brink of cutting us off, and the Fed had better lay off of that printing press before it explodes... that, or the dollar implodes:

Rep. Mike Pence (R., Ind.) said he would strongly oppose any attempts by the Obama administration to increase its contribution to the rescue fund aimed at mitigating the sovereign debt contagion affecting an increasing number of European countries. 

The lawmakers' comments came several hours after Reuters reported that a U.S. official in Europe had said that the administration was considering a larger IMF contribution to the EU bailout fund. 

A bigger fund would likely include a larger financial contribution from the IMF, which now is committed to spending as much as EUR250 billion on euro-zone rescue loans.


And if you haven't caught it by now... let Nigel Farange of the UK Independence Party tell you just what he thinks of the whole project as the Euro slides into the tank, just like he did while comprehensively dressing-down most of the top Eurocrats in Brussels... Conservative Hideout 2.0 has that clip -here- and it's a gem. 



01 December 2010

The Fab One: TAXMAN!

If you try to drive, I will tax Main Street...


Today we have Dear Leader 'negotiating' with the GOP re. precisely who gets fleeced after January 1st... this on top of $670B in wreckless Obama tax increases already.  

And if he does succeed in allowing Bush tax cuts to expire on the entrepreneurial class that Reagan said 'create most or all of the job growth' in the US -but whom Obama plainly considers class enemies- the feeble American economy will sure-as-you're-born be plunging straight into cardiac-arrest mode...

 Washington Examiner (highlights RR):

The Obama administration is sending in high-ranking mediators in hopes of ending its stalemate with congressional Republicans over extending the Bush-era tax cuts. 
.......
The disagreement between the two parties over who should continue to get a tax cut has turned into a high-stakes game of chicken, with neither side willing to budge. 

Most Democrats want the current tax cuts extended to individuals earning less than $200,000 or couples making less than $250,000. Republicans are insisting the cuts be extended to everyone, saying it would help revive the fragile economy. 

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said that if the new round of negotiations fails to produce an agreement, he will introduce a bill that would extend tax cuts only to the lower-income taxpayers.


Of course Obama is blaming his desire to bleed those he perceives as "rich" on the dubious ambition of reducing a federal deficit he and his own congressional allies tripled in just one year... this while ignoring clear historical precedent that proves total revenues could grow significantly under the real stimulus of a tax cut on those who employ people in this country.

Peter Ferrera (ex. Reagan WH Office of Policy Administration) writing in American Spectator (highlights RR) labels Obamanomics' revenue-side schemes Tax Piracy... while ineffectual and even deeply damaging:
...President Obama has consistently followed exactly the opposite of every plank of Reaganomics. As a consequence, we can rightly expect that America will now suffer exactly the opposite results, unless those economic policies are quickly overturned by new Congressional majorities. 

In 1983, President Reagan's third year, his tax rate cuts became fully effective, and real GDP zoomed upward over the first 4 quarters of recovery by 7.7%. That recovery flowered into a generation-long, 25-year economic boom, interrupted only by two short, shallow recessions, following President Bush's budget deal increasing tax rates in 1990, and the 9/11 terror attack in 2001. 

Art Laffer and Steve Moore have rightly called this Reagan boom "the greatest period of wealth creation in the history of the planet." Indeed, more wealth was created in America during this 25 year boom, from 1983 to 2007, than in all the prior 200 years of American history, from George Washington to Jimmy Carter, combined. That is why Steve Forbes has rightly called it an "economic Golden Age." 

The mirror image opposite of this economic performance would be the natural, logical result of following the mirror image opposite of Reagan's economic program, including the counterproductive incentive effects of Obama's comprehensive federal tax rate increases, the costs and burdens of Obama's reregulation hitting next year, and the continued drain of private sector resources due to President Obama's supposedly stimulative spending increases and deficits. 

Laffer explains: 
[W]hen the U.S. economy comes to 2011, the train's going to come off the tracks…. The tax boundary that will occur on January 1, 2011 tells me that GDP growth in 2010 will be some 6% to 8% higher than GDP growth in 2011. 
A year on year decline from trend of some 6% to 8% in GDP growth would represent a larger collapse than occurred in 2008 and early 2009. We see signs of that already even in this year's economy, which, again just the opposite of Reagan's performance, should be the peak economic year in President Obama's reign of error. 

Economic growth is in a tailspin, falling from 5% in the fourth quarter of 2009, to 3.7% in the first quarter this year, to 1.6% in the second quarter. Unemployment is rising again, with the economy continuing to lose jobs every month. 

The stock market has been long stalled, mired 30% below its record highs over 14000 in the Dow. This weak economy couldn't be a worse time to raise Federal tax rates across the board. 

With President Obama's current economic policies, the probability of a renewed, double-dip recession is over 100%...


The GOP caving to this politically-feeble would-be redistributor would be a very bad sign of things to come... let's hope Boehner, Cantor, and McConnell can stick to the proven Reaganite principles they must uphold without exception if there's any hope still of turning this ship away from the falls.

More background on Reaganomics -which gave this country eight of the best years it's ever seen- vs Obamanomics... a comprehensively flawed set of policies that has America careening towards the fate of the Weimar Republic -here-

-Pookie's Toons-

30 November 2010

WikiLeaks Site Under Massive Cyber-Attack; Assange May Face Charges from AG Holder

Talk about pushing your luck... Julian Assange 
now wants to release docs stolen from a major US bank


The WikiLeaks site has come under an extended seige today... it's about time, good grief:
The WikiLeaks website said it came under a forceful Internet-based attack on Tuesday morning, making some of the content, including the controversial “Cablegate” documents, inaccessible for hours to users in the U.S. and Europe. 

The site appears to have responded by switching its main hosting base from Sweden to the U.S., making it available again. On Tuesday, traffic to the site went to Amazon.com Inc.’s server-for-rent service, based in the U.S. 

The site, which distributed a trove of U.S. diplomatic documents on Sunday, said in a Twitter message on Tuesday morning that it was under a “distributed denial of service attack,” a method commonly used by hackers to slow down or bring down sites. WikiLeaks didn’t identify the attackers. 

“We are currently under a DDOS attack,” according to one tweet early Tuesday. Shortly after 9 a.m., another tweet was sent, saying, “DDOS attack now exceeding 10 Gigabits a second.” The site, which is devoted to releasing anonymously submitted documents, also came under attack Sunday, but Tuesday’s attack appeared to be more powerful.

And endangering troops and US security is not enough for this cyber-vermin, it seems: now he's threatening to take down a major US bank...

Cubachi via Riehl:
However, Assange an admitted anarchist who loves to commit crisis, is not done. 

As if he hasn’t wreaked havoc enough, now Assange told Forbes magazine that his next expose will be on big businesses and a major American bank. He claims it’ll be comparable to Enron. 

Nice to know that the media loves to glorify this character....

After Rep Peter King (R-NY) and others suggested we should charge Assange under the Espionage Act and label WikiLeaks a terrorist organization, generally-useless Eric Holder is actually threatening to go after him... 
Federal authorities are investigating whether WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange violated criminal laws in the group's release of government documents, including possible charges under the Espionage Act, sources familiar with the inquiry said Monday.

But other observers looking to assign blame here -such as the ultraliberal Washington Post- are even more shocked to see Obama doing nothing to prevent this rolling disaster. Seems he welcomes still more opportunity (Cloward-Piven) by having the nation in a perpetual state of turmoil and crisis... what other explanation as he sits on his rear watching this freak rape our national security over-and-over again:
What action did the Obama administration take to prevent the impending release of such volatile information?

State Department legal adviser Harold Koh sent a strongly worded letter urging WikiLeaks to cease publishing classified materials. I'm sure that made Assange think twice. 

Is the Obama administration going to do anything - anything at all - to stop these serial disclosures of our nation's most closely guarded secrets? 

Just this past week, the federal government took decisive action to shut down more than 70 Web sites that were disseminating pirated music and movies. Hollywood is safe, but WikiLeaks is free to disseminate classified documents without consequence. 

With this latest release, Assange may now have illegally disclosed more classified information than anyone in American history. He is in likely violation of the Espionage Act and arguably is providing material support for terrorism. 

But unlike leakers who came before him, Assange has done more than release information; he has created a virtual system for the ongoing collection and dissemination of America's secrets.

The very existence of WikiLeaks is a threat to national security. Unless something is done, WikiLeaks will only grow more brazen - and our unwillingness to stop it will embolden others to reveal classified information using the unlawful medium Assange has built...

Perhaps somebody ought to tap ole Julian on the shoulder right about now and make sure he's aware that there's an organization called the CIA that's in the business of neutralizing those who pose a threat to US national security... just sayin.

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