Why the U.S. dollar still reigns supreme
As noted last week when I went to post, it was clear Newt Gingrich’s poll numbers would begin to suffer as he was under attack from his fellow Republicans seeking the party nomination. A Gallup national poll now has Gingrich at 26 percent, Mitt Romney at 24 percent, when just a week earlier, Gingrich had a 14-point lead in the same survey. A CNN/ORC national poll had Gingrich and Romney tied at 28. A Washington Post/ABC News national survey had Gingrich and Romney tied at 30.
CBS News national poll*:
Gingrich 20
Romney 20
Paul 10 (the previous month, Herman Cain was on top…remember him? The pizza guy. Mr. 9-9-9. Didn’t tell his wife he was paying another woman a rather sizable stipend…]
*Among those identifying themselves as Republican primary voters, 79% said it was still too early to declare a preference.
Iowa State Gazette poll of likely Republican caucus goers:
Paul 28
Gingrich 25
Romney 18
Rasmussen Survey…Iowa
Romney 25
Paul 20
Gingrich 17
Public Policy poll…Iowa
Paul 23
Romney 20*
Gingrich 14 [Most news organizations don’t like the way Public Policy polls are conducted and thus don’t play up their data.]
*Romney gained the endorsement of the Des Moines Register.
Newt Gingrich’s attacks on the judiciary are nuts. Or as George Will comments in the Washington Post:
“Gingrich radiates impatience with impediments to allowing majorities to sweep aside judicial determinations displeasing to those majorities. He does not, however, trust democratic political processes to produce, over time, presidents who will nominate, and Senate majorities that will confirm, judges whose views he approves.
“Although not a historian, Gingrich plays one on television, where he recently cited Franklin Roosevelt (and Jefferson, Jackson and Lincoln) as ‘just like’ him in being ‘prepared to take on the judiciary.’ Roosevelt, infuriated by Supreme Court decisions declaring various progressive policies incompatible with the Constitution’s architecture of limited government, tried to ‘pack’ the court by enlarging it and attempted to purge from Congress some Democrats who opposed him. Voters, who generally respect the court much more than other government institutions, reelected those Democrats and so thoroughly rebuked FDR’s overreaching that Congress lacked a liberal legislating majority for a generation.
“To teach courts the virtue of modesty, President Gingrich would attempt to abolish some courts and impeach judges whose decisions annoy him – decisions he says he might ignore while urging congress to do likewise. He favors compelling judges to appear before Congress to justify decisions ‘out of sync’ with majorities, and he would sic police or marshals on judges who resist congressional coercion. Never mind that judges always explain themselves in written opinions, concurrences and dissents.
“Gingrich’s unsurprising descent into sinister radicalism – intimidation of courts – is redundant evidence that he is not merely the least conservative candidate, he is thoroughly anti-conservative. He disdains the central conservative virtue, prudence, and exemplifies progressivism’s defining attribute – impatience with impediments to the political branches’ wielding of untrammeled power. He exalts the will of the majority of the moment, at least as he, tribune of the vox populi, interprets it.”
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is not ruling out a possible veep slot on a Romney ticket. It seems pretty clear to me he could provide the shot in the arm needed come next summer and fall as no one would be a more effective attack dog, allowing Romney to take the high road, if he chose.
Former President George H.W. Bush endorsed Romney, with Bush saying of rival Rick Perry, governor of Mr. Bush’s home state, he “doesn’t seem to be going anywhere.” Bush called Romney “mature and reasonable – not a bomb-thrower.” Of Gingrich, he said, “I’m not his biggest advocate.”
Regarding President Obama, an AP/GfK survey had 52% saying Obama should be voted out of office; 43% said he deserved a second term. But the above referenced Washington Post/ABC News poll has the president’s approval rating rising to 49 percent, the highest since March, excluding the bump from the killing of Osama bin Laden.
[In the same survey, approval of Republicans in Congress is at 20 percent, while Democrats are at 27 percent. Incredibly, Republican support for the GOP has plunged from 63 percent in April to just 38 percent today, while Democrats’ approval of their own representatives in Congress is down to 51 percent.]
In a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll, in general-election matchups, President Obama edges Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich by identical 50-48 margins.
[In a separate Gallup Poll, only 11% of adults give Congress good marks, the lowest job approval rating for the body since Gallup started asking the question in 1974.]
In an outtake of Obama’s interview on “60 Minutes” with Steve Croft, Croft asked Obama to reflect on his presidency to date and at one point Obama goes:
“The issue here is not going to be a list of accomplishments. As you said yourself, Steve, you know, I would put our legislative and foreign-policy accomplishments in our first two years against any president – with the possible exceptions of Johnson, FDR and Lincoln – just in terms of what we’ve gotten done in modern history. But, you know, but when it comes to the economy, we’ve got a lot more work to do.”
As the Wall Street Journal opined:
“You’ve got to love the ‘possible’ in that sentence about FDR and Lincoln. Perhaps Mr. Obama would have dropped the diminishing modifier if old Abe hadn’t taken so darn long to free the salves or win the Civil War. It’s also notable that poor George Washington didn’t make the Obama cut. Historians may consider Washington to be America’s ‘indispensable man,’ but he never did campaign on a promise to lower sea levels.
“Ego aside – or super duper ego aside – Mr. Obama’s claims are instructive because they explicitly reject any connection between his ‘accomplishments’ and the economy that Americans elected him to fix. Might Mr. Obama’s appetites for more government – for more LBJ-style accomplishments – have something to do with the weak recovery?
“The New York Times reported in November that Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner told Mr. Obama shortly after the election in 2008 that ‘Your legacy is going to be preventing the second Great Depression.’ Mr. Obama responded, ‘That’s not enough for me.’
“At this point, we’d settle for Chester A. Arthur or Martin Van Buren.”
Speaking of super duper egos, Donald Trump has left the Republican Party to register as an independent, thus setting himself up to run for president as a third party candidate should he so choose.
The FBI reported that violent crime continued to decline in America, down 6.4% in the first half of the year, compared with a year ago, with murders down 5.7% and rapes falling 5.1%. While more sophisticated policing methods have been a huge help, one of the preeminent criminologists, Prof. James Alan Fox of Northeastern University, cites the proliferation of technology, such as security cameras, as playing a major role.
But, the killings of law-enforcement officers rose 14% over the same six-month period.
U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood refuses to back the National Transportation Safety Board’s proposal to prohibit drivers from talking on cellphones. Yet another reason why LaHood will go down in history as one of the very worst cabinet officials of any administration.
And how can I be so harsh? Because this is the same bumbling fool who has himself pushed to reduce driver distraction and a year ago, said a ban on cellphone use on the road may be necessary.
I should say I’m not in the best mood on this topic because on Wednesday night in my town, at 6:00 p.m., a 60-year-old woman crossing the street in our downtown area was struck and killed by a man driving an SUV. She was crushed to death. There was “a lot” of blood all over the street, as one story had it.
This is exactly what I have half-facetiously written about since I started this column. That one day I’ll meet my end in downtown Summit, innocently crossing the street. There is no word as yet whether the driver was ‘distracted,’ but seeing as this occurred about 30 yards from where I had my office for 11 years, I know the location well and he had to be.
When I posted that as part of the $1 trillion spending bill, the incandescent bulb was saved, I didn’t realize the protection ends Sept. 30, 2012. Let’s see, if I’m not hit by an SUV crossing the street and live about another 25 years, and I blow through six bulbs a year (I don’t use many lights in my place), that’s 150 bulbs I need to buy, minus the 70 or so I already have.
One of the great men of the 20th Century died, Vaclav Havel, the dissident playwright turned politician who led the nonviolent “Velvet Revolution” in Czechoslovakia in December 1989. In just four months, Havel went from being in prison (sent there a fourth time) to becoming the first democratically elected president of his country.
He later oversaw the peaceful breakup into the Czech Republic and Slovakia; Havel then being elected president of the former two times while overseeing his new country’s admittance into NATO in 1999 and then, eventually, the European Union (Havel left office in 2003, months before the country joined the EU in 2004).
Havel was elected Czechoslovakia’ president by the country’s still-communist parliament on Dec. 29, 1989. Three days later he told the nation in a televised New Year’s address:
“Out of gifted and sovereign people, the regime made us little screws in a monstrously big, rattling and stinking machine….
“We have become morally ill because we are used to saying one thing and thinking another. We have learned not to believe in anything, not to care about each other…Love, friendship, mercy, humility, or forgiveness have lost their depths and dimension…They represent some sort of psychological curiosity, or they appear as long-lost wanderers from faraway times.”
Havel, from his 1985 essay “An Anatomy of Reticence”:
“A state that denies its citizens their basic rights becomes a danger to its neighbors as well: internal arbitrary rule will be reflected in arbitrary external relations. The suppression of public opinion, the abolition of public competition for power and its public exercise opens the way for the state power to arm itself in any way it seems fit…A state that does not hesitate to lie to its own people will not hesitate to lie to other states.”
Havel also famously said:
“Truth and love must prevail over lies and hatred.”
-
Pray for the men and women of our armed forces…and all the fallen.
God bless America.
-
Gold closed at $1608
Oil, $99.86
Returns for the week 12/19-12/23
Dow Jones +3.6% [12294]
S&P 500 +3.7% [1265]
S&P MidCap +3.4%
Russell 2000 +3.6%
Nasdaq +2.5% [2618]
Returns for the period 1/1/11-12/23/11
Dow Jones +6.2%
S&P 500 +0.6%
S&P MidCap -2.5%
Russell 2000 -4.5%
Nasdaq -1.3%
Bulls 48.4
Bears 30.5 [Source: Chartcraft / Investors Intelligence]
CBS News national poll*:
Gingrich 20
Romney 20
Paul 10 (the previous month, Herman Cain was on top…remember him? The pizza guy. Mr. 9-9-9. Didn’t tell his wife he was paying another woman a rather sizable stipend…]
*Among those identifying themselves as Republican primary voters, 79% said it was still too early to declare a preference.
Iowa State Gazette poll of likely Republican caucus goers:
Paul 28
Gingrich 25
Romney 18
Rasmussen Survey…Iowa
Romney 25
Paul 20
Gingrich 17
Public Policy poll…Iowa
Paul 23
Romney 20*
Gingrich 14 [Most news organizations don’t like the way Public Policy polls are conducted and thus don’t play up their data.]
*Romney gained the endorsement of the Des Moines Register.
Newt Gingrich’s attacks on the judiciary are nuts. Or as George Will comments in the Washington Post:
“Gingrich radiates impatience with impediments to allowing majorities to sweep aside judicial determinations displeasing to those majorities. He does not, however, trust democratic political processes to produce, over time, presidents who will nominate, and Senate majorities that will confirm, judges whose views he approves.
“Although not a historian, Gingrich plays one on television, where he recently cited Franklin Roosevelt (and Jefferson, Jackson and Lincoln) as ‘just like’ him in being ‘prepared to take on the judiciary.’ Roosevelt, infuriated by Supreme Court decisions declaring various progressive policies incompatible with the Constitution’s architecture of limited government, tried to ‘pack’ the court by enlarging it and attempted to purge from Congress some Democrats who opposed him. Voters, who generally respect the court much more than other government institutions, reelected those Democrats and so thoroughly rebuked FDR’s overreaching that Congress lacked a liberal legislating majority for a generation.
“To teach courts the virtue of modesty, President Gingrich would attempt to abolish some courts and impeach judges whose decisions annoy him – decisions he says he might ignore while urging congress to do likewise. He favors compelling judges to appear before Congress to justify decisions ‘out of sync’ with majorities, and he would sic police or marshals on judges who resist congressional coercion. Never mind that judges always explain themselves in written opinions, concurrences and dissents.
“Gingrich’s unsurprising descent into sinister radicalism – intimidation of courts – is redundant evidence that he is not merely the least conservative candidate, he is thoroughly anti-conservative. He disdains the central conservative virtue, prudence, and exemplifies progressivism’s defining attribute – impatience with impediments to the political branches’ wielding of untrammeled power. He exalts the will of the majority of the moment, at least as he, tribune of the vox populi, interprets it.”
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is not ruling out a possible veep slot on a Romney ticket. It seems pretty clear to me he could provide the shot in the arm needed come next summer and fall as no one would be a more effective attack dog, allowing Romney to take the high road, if he chose.
Former President George H.W. Bush endorsed Romney, with Bush saying of rival Rick Perry, governor of Mr. Bush’s home state, he “doesn’t seem to be going anywhere.” Bush called Romney “mature and reasonable – not a bomb-thrower.” Of Gingrich, he said, “I’m not his biggest advocate.”
Regarding President Obama, an AP/GfK survey had 52% saying Obama should be voted out of office; 43% said he deserved a second term. But the above referenced Washington Post/ABC News poll has the president’s approval rating rising to 49 percent, the highest since March, excluding the bump from the killing of Osama bin Laden.
[In the same survey, approval of Republicans in Congress is at 20 percent, while Democrats are at 27 percent. Incredibly, Republican support for the GOP has plunged from 63 percent in April to just 38 percent today, while Democrats’ approval of their own representatives in Congress is down to 51 percent.]
In a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll, in general-election matchups, President Obama edges Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich by identical 50-48 margins.
[In a separate Gallup Poll, only 11% of adults give Congress good marks, the lowest job approval rating for the body since Gallup started asking the question in 1974.]
In an outtake of Obama’s interview on “60 Minutes” with Steve Croft, Croft asked Obama to reflect on his presidency to date and at one point Obama goes:
“The issue here is not going to be a list of accomplishments. As you said yourself, Steve, you know, I would put our legislative and foreign-policy accomplishments in our first two years against any president – with the possible exceptions of Johnson, FDR and Lincoln – just in terms of what we’ve gotten done in modern history. But, you know, but when it comes to the economy, we’ve got a lot more work to do.”
As the Wall Street Journal opined:
“You’ve got to love the ‘possible’ in that sentence about FDR and Lincoln. Perhaps Mr. Obama would have dropped the diminishing modifier if old Abe hadn’t taken so darn long to free the salves or win the Civil War. It’s also notable that poor George Washington didn’t make the Obama cut. Historians may consider Washington to be America’s ‘indispensable man,’ but he never did campaign on a promise to lower sea levels.
“Ego aside – or super duper ego aside – Mr. Obama’s claims are instructive because they explicitly reject any connection between his ‘accomplishments’ and the economy that Americans elected him to fix. Might Mr. Obama’s appetites for more government – for more LBJ-style accomplishments – have something to do with the weak recovery?
“The New York Times reported in November that Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner told Mr. Obama shortly after the election in 2008 that ‘Your legacy is going to be preventing the second Great Depression.’ Mr. Obama responded, ‘That’s not enough for me.’
“At this point, we’d settle for Chester A. Arthur or Martin Van Buren.”
Speaking of super duper egos, Donald Trump has left the Republican Party to register as an independent, thus setting himself up to run for president as a third party candidate should he so choose.
The FBI reported that violent crime continued to decline in America, down 6.4% in the first half of the year, compared with a year ago, with murders down 5.7% and rapes falling 5.1%. While more sophisticated policing methods have been a huge help, one of the preeminent criminologists, Prof. James Alan Fox of Northeastern University, cites the proliferation of technology, such as security cameras, as playing a major role.
But, the killings of law-enforcement officers rose 14% over the same six-month period.
U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood refuses to back the National Transportation Safety Board’s proposal to prohibit drivers from talking on cellphones. Yet another reason why LaHood will go down in history as one of the very worst cabinet officials of any administration.
And how can I be so harsh? Because this is the same bumbling fool who has himself pushed to reduce driver distraction and a year ago, said a ban on cellphone use on the road may be necessary.
I should say I’m not in the best mood on this topic because on Wednesday night in my town, at 6:00 p.m., a 60-year-old woman crossing the street in our downtown area was struck and killed by a man driving an SUV. She was crushed to death. There was “a lot” of blood all over the street, as one story had it.
This is exactly what I have half-facetiously written about since I started this column. That one day I’ll meet my end in downtown Summit, innocently crossing the street. There is no word as yet whether the driver was ‘distracted,’ but seeing as this occurred about 30 yards from where I had my office for 11 years, I know the location well and he had to be.
When I posted that as part of the $1 trillion spending bill, the incandescent bulb was saved, I didn’t realize the protection ends Sept. 30, 2012. Let’s see, if I’m not hit by an SUV crossing the street and live about another 25 years, and I blow through six bulbs a year (I don’t use many lights in my place), that’s 150 bulbs I need to buy, minus the 70 or so I already have.
One of the great men of the 20th Century died, Vaclav Havel, the dissident playwright turned politician who led the nonviolent “Velvet Revolution” in Czechoslovakia in December 1989. In just four months, Havel went from being in prison (sent there a fourth time) to becoming the first democratically elected president of his country.
He later oversaw the peaceful breakup into the Czech Republic and Slovakia; Havel then being elected president of the former two times while overseeing his new country’s admittance into NATO in 1999 and then, eventually, the European Union (Havel left office in 2003, months before the country joined the EU in 2004).
Havel was elected Czechoslovakia’ president by the country’s still-communist parliament on Dec. 29, 1989. Three days later he told the nation in a televised New Year’s address:
“Out of gifted and sovereign people, the regime made us little screws in a monstrously big, rattling and stinking machine….
“We have become morally ill because we are used to saying one thing and thinking another. We have learned not to believe in anything, not to care about each other…Love, friendship, mercy, humility, or forgiveness have lost their depths and dimension…They represent some sort of psychological curiosity, or they appear as long-lost wanderers from faraway times.”
Havel, from his 1985 essay “An Anatomy of Reticence”:
“A state that denies its citizens their basic rights becomes a danger to its neighbors as well: internal arbitrary rule will be reflected in arbitrary external relations. The suppression of public opinion, the abolition of public competition for power and its public exercise opens the way for the state power to arm itself in any way it seems fit…A state that does not hesitate to lie to its own people will not hesitate to lie to other states.”
Havel also famously said:
“Truth and love must prevail over lies and hatred.”
-
Pray for the men and women of our armed forces…and all the fallen.
God bless America.
-
Gold closed at $1608
Oil, $99.86
Returns for the week 12/19-12/23
Dow Jones +3.6% [12294]
S&P 500 +3.7% [1265]
S&P MidCap +3.4%
Russell 2000 +3.6%
Nasdaq +2.5% [2618]
Returns for the period 1/1/11-12/23/11
Dow Jones +6.2%
S&P 500 +0.6%
S&P MidCap -2.5%
Russell 2000 -4.5%
Nasdaq -1.3%
Bulls 48.4
Bears 30.5 [Source: Chartcraft / Investors Intelligence]