Bitcoin price today: ticks down below $90k amid risk-off mood; key US data awaited
Mitt Romney swept five states on Tuesday – Connecticut, Rhode Island, Delaware, Pennsylvania and New York – and Newt Gingrich dropped out (or will, officially, on Tuesday, in case anyone gives a hoot).
Editorial / Wall Street Journal
“(Mitt Romney) is now closer to realizing the ambition he has so long pursued: He has an even-money chance to become America’s 45th president. He’s more likely to fulfill that ambition if he overcomes his cautious nature and runs a campaign that is equal to America’s current political moment….
“The temptation will be to assume the public has decided to fire the incumbent and so run a campaign to become the safe alternative. Take no policy risk, stress Mr. Romney’s biography, his attractive family and the seven habits of highly effective businessmen, and then hammer away on the economy.
“It’s possible, if job creation sputters again or Europe goes into bond-market arrest, that this kind of campaign will be enough to win. It’s also possible – more likely in our view – that this will play into Mr. Obama’s strengths of personal likability and Oval Office experience, especially if the economy keeps chugging on its current slow-growth path. Mr. Romney will have to make a case not merely against Mr. Obama’s failings but also for why he has the better plan to restore prosperity….
“(Mr. Obama’s) diversionary re-election strategy will be a combination of class warfare, more government subsidies (free student loans!), and personal attacks on Mr. Romney for being wealthy. Mr. Romney will need allies who can rebut these attacks….
“One of Mr. Romney’s trickiest challenges will be how to handle Mr. Obama’s, err, veracity. More than any President we’ve seen, this incumbent is willing to say things that aren’t in the area code of the truth. Thus he gives himself credit for the natural gas drilling boom, the deficits are still Mr. Bush’s fault, Mr. Obama has never raised taxes, and ‘green jobs’ in his dream economy are blooming by the millions.
“Mr. Romney can’t let the President get away with this, or Mr. Obama will conjure a vision of unreality that enough voters might believe….(Romney) needs his version of Reagan’s ‘there he goes again.’”
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Following is some commentary on issues that point to the decline in America that I have mentioned before, whether it’s the fact some of our military leaders flat out suck, or the total lack of character exhibited by many of our neighbors, as best exploited by social media these days.
I’ve had it. I’ve also noted from time to time, as much as some don’t want to hear it, that America is overrated…deeply so, these days.
I’m also sick of some of the apologists, especially when it comes to the military. I’ll put my own support for the institution up against anyone’s. But if the military doesn’t get a handle on the bad behavior we have been witnessing (which didn’t seem to occur when the likes of Colin Powell and Norman Schwarzkopf were leading the way, to cite some modern examples), then there is going to be a deep backlash, which I would say is already simmering beneath the surface.
Read the below editorial on hazing, for example. And, more broadly, look at the scandals in the Secret Service, the General Services Administration, the John Edwards trial where it is still incredible how close we came to electing one of the primo dirtballs of our time (and how dangerous that would have been).
On a lesser extent, look at “Death Race 2012.” This was a case that has recently surfaced here in New Jersey where some of our state troopers escorted dozens of high-performance autos, such as Lamborghinis and Porsches, at speeds in excess of 100 mph on three of our major highways down to Atlantic City! Incredibly dangerous. State troopers in front and back., lights flashing. What the hell are some people thinking these days?! [Governor Christie’s initial response also sucked in this matter. Something like, ‘People do stupid things. We’ll investigate and move on.’ No, Governor. Throw your substantial weight around, get in the troopers’ faces and say enough is enough!]
And so….
Andrew J. Bacevich / Washington Post
“For too long now, command accountability for our troops’ misconduct in wartime has been more theoretical than real. The latest scandal to erupt in Afghanistan – photographs of American soldiers amusing themselves with dismembered Taliban corpses – suggests that it’s past time to confront this problem.
“On the question of accountability, the military’s ethic is clear: With authority comes responsibility. More specifically, commanders bear responsibility for everything that happens within their jurisdiction. This decree supposedly applies to high-ranking generals as much as lowly lieutenants.
“Once upon a time, the standard for implementing this code was straightforward: Win, and you gain fame and fortune; fail to win, and you’re toast. As commander in chief during the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln enforced this standard ruthlessly. As a result, Ulysses S. Grant and William T. Sherman achieved a measure of immortality. Meanwhile, Irvin McDowell, George McClellan, John Pope, Ambrose Burnside, Joseph Hooker and George Meade, among a host of other mediocrities, found themselves unemployed or consigned to lesser positions.
“In the post-9/11 era, President George W. Bush abandoned this standard. In 2003, Gen. Tommy Franks presided over a campaign in Iraq that dispersed a pathetic local army even as Franks neglected to consider what might ensue. The answer was not long in coming: chaos and a far uglier and more costly conflict than Americans had bargained for.
“Historians will probably place Franks in the company of Burnside and Hooker rather than Grant and Sherman. Yet, for whatever reason, Bush glossed over his field commander’s shortcomings, ordained him a great leader [Ed. as did butt-boy Sean Hannity] and awarded him the Medal of Freedom. Franks had neither won nor lost his war; he had merely mismanaged it and then moved on, washing his hands of the mess. Here was a troubling precedent.
“War induces barbarism, and the Iraq war proved no exception. Soon enough, egregious transgressions by U.S. troops surfaced. Abu Ghraib provides one especially notorious example; the massacre at Haditha another. But there were others, now mostly forgotten, at least by Americans – among them the Iraq insurgency’s equivalent of the Boston Massacre. In Fallujah on April 28, 2003, with Franks still in command, U.S. troops opened fire on Iraqi demonstrators, killing more than a dozen and wounding several dozen more.
“The Pentagon declared each of these an aberration. In each instance, extensive investigation singled out a handful of minions for punishment. In each, senior commanders escaped unscathed. (Abu Ghraib is the partial exception that proves the rule: In the scandal’s aftermath, a female Army Reserve brigadier general – not quite a member of the club – lost her star, a fate thus far shared with no male counterpart and no regular officer.)…
“The best way to stanch (the) outpouring of embarrassing news from Afghanistan is to bring our soldiers home, an option that many Americans find increasingly attractive. In the interim, however, we should reassert a standard of command responsibility that Lincoln would have understood. Yes, when soldiers behave badly, the harsh hand of discipline should fall on individual perpetrators. Yet soldier misconduct expresses professional malpractice at all levels. This epidemic will subside only once we recognize that….
“(No) leader is irreplaceable – sometimes nothing beats replacing a few near the top to focus the attention of the rest. For an American military well into a second exhausting decade of continuous war, this is one of those times.”
Editorial / Army Times
“Hazing has been around since the first person short-sheeted his roommate’s bunk.
“But what starts as a seemingly harmless prank too often gets out of hand and people are publicly humiliated, hurt and sometimes die.
“The Army has had several recent cases that show how out of control hazing can become.
“Eight soldiers have been accused of bullying Pvt. Danny Chen, a Chinese-American who fatally shot himself, allegedly after suffering racial taunts and physical abuse from soldiers in his company.
“A battery commander, first sergeant, platoon sergeant and squad leader were found responsible for hazing Army Spc. Brushaun Anderson, who killed himself in Iraq in 2010, according to Stars and Stripes.
“Three noncommissioned officers and a specialist in the 1st Squadron 9th Cavalry Regiment’s ‘Crazy’ Troop have been court-martialed for a raunchy sexual assault – in effect, a rape – that they considered a rite of initiation.
“In a hearing on hazing in the ranks, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno told lawmakers that it had gotten out of control and that it owed to ‘a leadership failure.’
“Odierno is spot on. Hazing will only continue if it is tolerated by Army leadership.
“Because even seemingly harmless hazing has, on occasion, turned to abuse, soldiers – from the top down – need to understand that hazing is never OK. Period. That has to be part of every soldier’s training, and that training needs to make clear it is every soldier’s duty to report hazing up their chain of command.
“Some soldiers may believe that hazing belongs as part of Army culture and tradition. Nothing could be further from the truth.”
Daniel Henninger / Wall Street Journal
“The reign of indiscretion has been a long time coming. Some say it arrived in the late 1960s or early ‘70s, when constraints on behavior eased. But the new age’s booster rocket, the thing that finally killed discretion, was social media….
“Going further than one should is one thing, but why the compulsion always to record it in a media format that can be distributed to the whole world? Such is the allure and power of indiscretion….
“A big part of the Greatest Generation’s mystique was its instinct to self-protect. On balance, they were discreet. Countless intelligence veterans of World War II and the Cold War, for example, have gone to their graves without a public peep about their successes. But when the current generation takes down Osama bin Laden, it releases a photograph of itself in the Situation Room and provides operational details of the Navy Seals’ attack plan to the media the next day. That was indiscreet.
“The mortgage-securities bubble was fraught with systemic misfeasance. At its core, though, a liar loan was an act of indiscretion, on both sides of the deal. ‘Honey, do you really think we should be taking out a loan this big?’ ‘Why not ?!?!’ Yeah, said lenders from Countrywide and mortgage packagers from Citibank, why not?....
“The straightforward truth is that much unusual behavior can be tolerated and absorbed by a free society if discretion is putting speed bumps in the path of excess. It beats hitting the wall.”
Victor Davis Hanson / New York Post…on the perception that America is in “inevitable decline.”
“The manifest symptoms of decline – frustration with the Mideast, military retrenchment, exorbitant energy costs and financial insolvency – are choices we make but need not make in the future.
“If our students are burdened with oppressive loans, why do so many university rec centers look like spas? Student cellphones and cars are indistinguishable from those of the faculty.
“The underclass suffers more from obesity than malnutrition; our national epidemic is not unaffordable protein but rather a surfeit of even cheaper sweets….
“Children don’t suffer from lack of Internet access, but from wasting hours on video games and less-than-instructional Web sites….
“The problem isn’t that government workers are underpaid but that so many seem to think mind readers, clowns and prostitutes come with the job….
“Over the last half-century, bizarre new words entered the American vocabulary – triple-dipping, Botox, liposuction, jet set, cost-of-living adjustment – that don’t reflect a deprived citizenry. In 1980, a knee or hip replacement was experimental surgery for the 1 percent; now it’s a Medicare entitlement….
“As America re-examines its military, entitlements, energy sources and popular culture, it will learn that our ‘decline’ isn’t due to material shortages but rather arises from moral confusion over how to master the vast riches we’ve created. If decline is fighting just two wars at a time rather than three, just budgeting what we did in 2008, tapping a bit more oil offshore or having our colleges offer more grammar courses and fewer rock-climbing walls, then by all means bring it on.”
Peggy Noonan / Wall Street Journal
“People in politics talk about the right track/wrong track numbers as an indicator of public mood. This week Gallup had a poll showing only 24% of Americans feel we’re on the right track as a nation. That’s a historic low. Political professionals tend, understandably, to think it’s all about the economy – unemployment, foreclosures, we’re going in the wrong direction. I’ve long thought that public dissatisfaction is about more than the economy, that it’s also about our culture, or rather the flat, brute, highly sexualized thing we call our culture.
“Now I’d go a step beyond that. I think more and more people are worried about the American character – who we are and what kind of adults we are raising.
“Every story that has broken through the past few weeks has been about who we are as a people. And they are all disturbing.
“A tourist is beaten in Baltimore. Young people surround him and laugh. He’s pummeled, stripped and robbed. No one helps. They’re too busy taping it on their smartphones. That’s how we heard their laughter. The video is on YouTube along with the latest McDonald’s beat-down and the latest store surveillance tapes of flash mobs. Groups of teenagers swarm into stores, rob everything they can, and run out. The phenomenon is on the rise across the country. Police now have a nickname for it: ‘flash robs.’
“That’s just the young, you say. Juvenile delinquency is as old as history.
“Let’s turn to adults.
“Also starring on YouTube this week was the sobbing woman. She’s the poor traveler who began to cry great heaving sobs when a Transportation Security Administration agent at the Madison, Wis., airport either patted her down or felt her up, depending on your viewpoint and experience. Jim Hoft of TheGatewayPundit.com recorded it, and like all the rest of the videos it hurts to watch. When the TSA agent – an adult, a middle aged woman – was done, she just walked away, leaving the passenger alone and uncomforted, like a tourist in Baltimore.
“There is the General Services Administration scandal. An agency devoted to efficiency is outed as an agency of mindless bread-and-circuses indulgence….
“(The GSA’s) leaders didn’t even pretend to have a sense of mission and responsibility. They reminded me of the story a year ago of the dizzy captain of a U.S. Navy ship who made off-color videos and played them for his crew. He wasn’t interested in the burdens of leadership – the need to be the adult, the uncool one, the one who maintains standards. No one at GSA seemed interested in playing the part of the grown-up, either….
“There’s the Secret Service scandal….
“What’s terrible about this story is that for anyone who’s ever seen the Secret Service up close it’s impossible to believe. The Secret Service are the best of the best. That has been their reputation because that has been their reality. They have always been tough, disciplined and mature. They are men, and they have the most extraordinary job: take the bullet.
“Remember when Reagan was shot? That was Secret Service agent Tim McCarthy who stood there like a stone wall, and took one right in the gut. Jerry Parr pushed Reagan into the car, and Mr. Parr was one steely-eyed agent. Reagan coughed up a little blood, and Mr. Parr immediately saw its color was a little too dark. He barked the order to change direction and get to the hospital, not the White House, and saved Reagan’s life. From Robert Caro’s ‘Passage of Power,’ on Secret Service agent Rufus Youngblood, Nov. 22, 1963: ‘there was a sharp, cracking sound,’ and Youngblood, ‘whirling in his seat,’ grabbed Vice President Lyndon Johnson and threw him to the floor of the car, ‘shielding his body with his own.’
“In any presidential party, the Secret Service guys are the ones who are mature, who you can count on, who’ll keep their heads. They have judgment, they’re by the book unless they have to rewrite it on a second’s notice. And they wore suits, like adults.
“This week I saw a picture of agents in Colombia. They were in T-shirts, wrinkled khakis and sneakers. They looked like a bunch of mooks, like slobs, like children with muscles.
“Special thanks to the person who invented casual Friday. Now it’s casual everyday in America. But when you lower standards people don’t decide to give you more, they give you less….
“The leveling or deterioration of public behavior has got to be worrying people who have enough years on them to judge with some perspective.
“Something seems to be going terribly wrong.
“Maybe we have to stop and think about this.”
---
--The Supreme Court held oral arguments on a provision of Arizona’s tough immigration law that some say points to a partial victory for the state. In a recent Quinnipiac poll, 62% of respondents said the Supreme Court should uphold the Arizona law, while 27% wanted it struck down. 45% of Latino respondents wanted the court to uphold it as well, while 43% hoped it would be overturned. [Michael McGough / Los Angeles Times]
Separately, a study by the nonpartisan Pew Hispanic Center says that between 2005 and 2010, 1.4 million Mexicans migrated north of the border, and 1.4 million returned to Mexico. Smaller families in Mexico and issues with the U.S. economy are the chief causes of the net zero number.
--Hey kids…looking for a good trade? How about learning to become a nuclear weapons technician?
From Kate Brannen of Defense News:
“In about five years, every scientist with experience designing and testing nuclear weapons will have retired from the U.S. government.”
There are no more than 15 scientists left who were responsible for the design of a warhead that’s in the existing stockpile, according to the undersecretary for nuclear security.
Of course if you aren’t designing or testing new weapons, as some in Congress say we must do to keep our edge, you don’t have a need for the scientists, right?
But how do we know that with natural degradation our nukes would still work?
--According to the trade publication Talkers, Rush Limbaugh, despite his “slut” controversy, remains No. 1, followed by Sean Hannity, Michael Savage, Ed Schultz and Laura Ingraham.
--According to an annual survey issued by the Institute for Economics & Peace, the “most peaceful” state in the nation is Maine, while Louisiana placed last for the 11th year in a row, when looking at five criteria…number of homicides per 100,000 people; number of violent crimes; incarceration rate; number of police employees; and availability of small arms. [Vermont, New Hampshire, Minnesota and Utah round out the top five; Arizona, Florida, Nevada and Tennessee occupy Nos. 46-49.]
--More bad behavior. Jesse Washington / AP:
“It had all the makings of a feel-good hockey moment – except the guy who scored the goal was black.
“Soon after Joel Ward eliminated the defending Stanley Cup champion Boston Bruins on Wednesday with a Game 7 overtime goal for the Washington Capitals, Twitter erupted in a shower of n-words and other racial insults.
“ ‘Go play basketball, hockey is a white sport,’ ‘4th line black trash’ and ‘white power’ were some of the nicer phrases tweeted by angry Boston fans. One said that the fact that a black player scored ‘makes this loss hurt a lot more.’”
Thankfully, the Bruins issued a statement.
“These classless, ignorant views are in no way a reflection of anyone associated with the Bruins organization.”
Nice job, tweeters, and all those out in social media land who hide anonymously.
--Former Liberian President Charles Taylor became the first head of state since World War II to be convicted of war crimes. Taylor, the warlord-turned-president, was responsible for more than 50,000 deaths for arming Sierra Leone rebels in exchange for “blood diamonds” mined and then smuggled across the border. The rebels were known for savage mutilations, such as hacking off hands or arms above the elbow. At least Taylor’s conviction sends a signal to the likes of Bashar Assad.
--What was Vogue thinking last year when it profiled Asma al-Assad, Bashar’s wife and first lady?! Joan Juliet Buck began her profile, “The 35-year-old first lady’s central mission is to change the mindset of six million Syrians under 18, encourage them to engage in what she calls ‘active citizenship.’”
Oh brother. It was the March 2011 issue and hit the stands just as Bashar was launching his crackdown. Vogue titled the profile “A Rose in the Desert.”
The article has been scrubbed from the magazine’s site. Poof!
--Finally, last Saturday I drove from Johnson City, Tenn. to Asheville, N.C. and stopped at the North Carolina Welcome Center across the border, a beautiful spot as these things go. Some centers/rest stops have plaques on local history and I hope you take a minute to actually read them. Pennsylvania’s turnpike has some good ones, for example.
So I read this plaque on Liston B. Ramsey, 1919-2001. Ramsey served 19 terms in the North Carolina House of Representatives, including four terms as speaker (1981-89).
A Madison County, N.C. Mountain Man
Who knew that poor is a matter of spirit,
Not just lack of wealth
That love of home is a matter of family and community,
Not just place
That leadership is a matter of service and commitment,
Not just influence
I can just imagine what Mr. Ramsey would say today about much of what I have above; the bad behavior, the lack of ethics, and failure to understand the true meaning of service and commitment.
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Pray for the men and women of our armed forces…and all the fallen.
God bless America.
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Gold closed at $1664
Oil, $104.93
Returns for the week 4/23-4/27
Dow Jones +1.5% [13228]
S&P 500 +1.8% [1403]
S&P MidCap +2.4%
Russell 2000 +2.7%
Nasdaq +2.3% [3069]
Returns for the period 1/1/12-4/27/12
Dow Jones +8.3%
S&P 500 +11.6%
S&P MidCap +13.7%
Russell 2000 +11.4%
Nasdaq +17.8%
Bulls 41.9
Bears 23.7 [Investors Intelligence]
Have a great week. I appreciate your support.
Don’t forget to get your official StocksandNews.com iPad app. Recommended by 6 out of 49 doctors in a recent survey.
Editorial / Wall Street Journal
“(Mitt Romney) is now closer to realizing the ambition he has so long pursued: He has an even-money chance to become America’s 45th president. He’s more likely to fulfill that ambition if he overcomes his cautious nature and runs a campaign that is equal to America’s current political moment….
“The temptation will be to assume the public has decided to fire the incumbent and so run a campaign to become the safe alternative. Take no policy risk, stress Mr. Romney’s biography, his attractive family and the seven habits of highly effective businessmen, and then hammer away on the economy.
“It’s possible, if job creation sputters again or Europe goes into bond-market arrest, that this kind of campaign will be enough to win. It’s also possible – more likely in our view – that this will play into Mr. Obama’s strengths of personal likability and Oval Office experience, especially if the economy keeps chugging on its current slow-growth path. Mr. Romney will have to make a case not merely against Mr. Obama’s failings but also for why he has the better plan to restore prosperity….
“(Mr. Obama’s) diversionary re-election strategy will be a combination of class warfare, more government subsidies (free student loans!), and personal attacks on Mr. Romney for being wealthy. Mr. Romney will need allies who can rebut these attacks….
“One of Mr. Romney’s trickiest challenges will be how to handle Mr. Obama’s, err, veracity. More than any President we’ve seen, this incumbent is willing to say things that aren’t in the area code of the truth. Thus he gives himself credit for the natural gas drilling boom, the deficits are still Mr. Bush’s fault, Mr. Obama has never raised taxes, and ‘green jobs’ in his dream economy are blooming by the millions.
“Mr. Romney can’t let the President get away with this, or Mr. Obama will conjure a vision of unreality that enough voters might believe….(Romney) needs his version of Reagan’s ‘there he goes again.’”
---
Following is some commentary on issues that point to the decline in America that I have mentioned before, whether it’s the fact some of our military leaders flat out suck, or the total lack of character exhibited by many of our neighbors, as best exploited by social media these days.
I’ve had it. I’ve also noted from time to time, as much as some don’t want to hear it, that America is overrated…deeply so, these days.
I’m also sick of some of the apologists, especially when it comes to the military. I’ll put my own support for the institution up against anyone’s. But if the military doesn’t get a handle on the bad behavior we have been witnessing (which didn’t seem to occur when the likes of Colin Powell and Norman Schwarzkopf were leading the way, to cite some modern examples), then there is going to be a deep backlash, which I would say is already simmering beneath the surface.
Read the below editorial on hazing, for example. And, more broadly, look at the scandals in the Secret Service, the General Services Administration, the John Edwards trial where it is still incredible how close we came to electing one of the primo dirtballs of our time (and how dangerous that would have been).
On a lesser extent, look at “Death Race 2012.” This was a case that has recently surfaced here in New Jersey where some of our state troopers escorted dozens of high-performance autos, such as Lamborghinis and Porsches, at speeds in excess of 100 mph on three of our major highways down to Atlantic City! Incredibly dangerous. State troopers in front and back., lights flashing. What the hell are some people thinking these days?! [Governor Christie’s initial response also sucked in this matter. Something like, ‘People do stupid things. We’ll investigate and move on.’ No, Governor. Throw your substantial weight around, get in the troopers’ faces and say enough is enough!]
And so….
Andrew J. Bacevich / Washington Post
“For too long now, command accountability for our troops’ misconduct in wartime has been more theoretical than real. The latest scandal to erupt in Afghanistan – photographs of American soldiers amusing themselves with dismembered Taliban corpses – suggests that it’s past time to confront this problem.
“On the question of accountability, the military’s ethic is clear: With authority comes responsibility. More specifically, commanders bear responsibility for everything that happens within their jurisdiction. This decree supposedly applies to high-ranking generals as much as lowly lieutenants.
“Once upon a time, the standard for implementing this code was straightforward: Win, and you gain fame and fortune; fail to win, and you’re toast. As commander in chief during the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln enforced this standard ruthlessly. As a result, Ulysses S. Grant and William T. Sherman achieved a measure of immortality. Meanwhile, Irvin McDowell, George McClellan, John Pope, Ambrose Burnside, Joseph Hooker and George Meade, among a host of other mediocrities, found themselves unemployed or consigned to lesser positions.
“In the post-9/11 era, President George W. Bush abandoned this standard. In 2003, Gen. Tommy Franks presided over a campaign in Iraq that dispersed a pathetic local army even as Franks neglected to consider what might ensue. The answer was not long in coming: chaos and a far uglier and more costly conflict than Americans had bargained for.
“Historians will probably place Franks in the company of Burnside and Hooker rather than Grant and Sherman. Yet, for whatever reason, Bush glossed over his field commander’s shortcomings, ordained him a great leader [Ed. as did butt-boy Sean Hannity] and awarded him the Medal of Freedom. Franks had neither won nor lost his war; he had merely mismanaged it and then moved on, washing his hands of the mess. Here was a troubling precedent.
“War induces barbarism, and the Iraq war proved no exception. Soon enough, egregious transgressions by U.S. troops surfaced. Abu Ghraib provides one especially notorious example; the massacre at Haditha another. But there were others, now mostly forgotten, at least by Americans – among them the Iraq insurgency’s equivalent of the Boston Massacre. In Fallujah on April 28, 2003, with Franks still in command, U.S. troops opened fire on Iraqi demonstrators, killing more than a dozen and wounding several dozen more.
“The Pentagon declared each of these an aberration. In each instance, extensive investigation singled out a handful of minions for punishment. In each, senior commanders escaped unscathed. (Abu Ghraib is the partial exception that proves the rule: In the scandal’s aftermath, a female Army Reserve brigadier general – not quite a member of the club – lost her star, a fate thus far shared with no male counterpart and no regular officer.)…
“The best way to stanch (the) outpouring of embarrassing news from Afghanistan is to bring our soldiers home, an option that many Americans find increasingly attractive. In the interim, however, we should reassert a standard of command responsibility that Lincoln would have understood. Yes, when soldiers behave badly, the harsh hand of discipline should fall on individual perpetrators. Yet soldier misconduct expresses professional malpractice at all levels. This epidemic will subside only once we recognize that….
“(No) leader is irreplaceable – sometimes nothing beats replacing a few near the top to focus the attention of the rest. For an American military well into a second exhausting decade of continuous war, this is one of those times.”
Editorial / Army Times
“Hazing has been around since the first person short-sheeted his roommate’s bunk.
“But what starts as a seemingly harmless prank too often gets out of hand and people are publicly humiliated, hurt and sometimes die.
“The Army has had several recent cases that show how out of control hazing can become.
“Eight soldiers have been accused of bullying Pvt. Danny Chen, a Chinese-American who fatally shot himself, allegedly after suffering racial taunts and physical abuse from soldiers in his company.
“A battery commander, first sergeant, platoon sergeant and squad leader were found responsible for hazing Army Spc. Brushaun Anderson, who killed himself in Iraq in 2010, according to Stars and Stripes.
“Three noncommissioned officers and a specialist in the 1st Squadron 9th Cavalry Regiment’s ‘Crazy’ Troop have been court-martialed for a raunchy sexual assault – in effect, a rape – that they considered a rite of initiation.
“In a hearing on hazing in the ranks, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno told lawmakers that it had gotten out of control and that it owed to ‘a leadership failure.’
“Odierno is spot on. Hazing will only continue if it is tolerated by Army leadership.
“Because even seemingly harmless hazing has, on occasion, turned to abuse, soldiers – from the top down – need to understand that hazing is never OK. Period. That has to be part of every soldier’s training, and that training needs to make clear it is every soldier’s duty to report hazing up their chain of command.
“Some soldiers may believe that hazing belongs as part of Army culture and tradition. Nothing could be further from the truth.”
Daniel Henninger / Wall Street Journal
“The reign of indiscretion has been a long time coming. Some say it arrived in the late 1960s or early ‘70s, when constraints on behavior eased. But the new age’s booster rocket, the thing that finally killed discretion, was social media….
“Going further than one should is one thing, but why the compulsion always to record it in a media format that can be distributed to the whole world? Such is the allure and power of indiscretion….
“A big part of the Greatest Generation’s mystique was its instinct to self-protect. On balance, they were discreet. Countless intelligence veterans of World War II and the Cold War, for example, have gone to their graves without a public peep about their successes. But when the current generation takes down Osama bin Laden, it releases a photograph of itself in the Situation Room and provides operational details of the Navy Seals’ attack plan to the media the next day. That was indiscreet.
“The mortgage-securities bubble was fraught with systemic misfeasance. At its core, though, a liar loan was an act of indiscretion, on both sides of the deal. ‘Honey, do you really think we should be taking out a loan this big?’ ‘Why not ?!?!’ Yeah, said lenders from Countrywide and mortgage packagers from Citibank, why not?....
“The straightforward truth is that much unusual behavior can be tolerated and absorbed by a free society if discretion is putting speed bumps in the path of excess. It beats hitting the wall.”
Victor Davis Hanson / New York Post…on the perception that America is in “inevitable decline.”
“The manifest symptoms of decline – frustration with the Mideast, military retrenchment, exorbitant energy costs and financial insolvency – are choices we make but need not make in the future.
“If our students are burdened with oppressive loans, why do so many university rec centers look like spas? Student cellphones and cars are indistinguishable from those of the faculty.
“The underclass suffers more from obesity than malnutrition; our national epidemic is not unaffordable protein but rather a surfeit of even cheaper sweets….
“Children don’t suffer from lack of Internet access, but from wasting hours on video games and less-than-instructional Web sites….
“The problem isn’t that government workers are underpaid but that so many seem to think mind readers, clowns and prostitutes come with the job….
“Over the last half-century, bizarre new words entered the American vocabulary – triple-dipping, Botox, liposuction, jet set, cost-of-living adjustment – that don’t reflect a deprived citizenry. In 1980, a knee or hip replacement was experimental surgery for the 1 percent; now it’s a Medicare entitlement….
“As America re-examines its military, entitlements, energy sources and popular culture, it will learn that our ‘decline’ isn’t due to material shortages but rather arises from moral confusion over how to master the vast riches we’ve created. If decline is fighting just two wars at a time rather than three, just budgeting what we did in 2008, tapping a bit more oil offshore or having our colleges offer more grammar courses and fewer rock-climbing walls, then by all means bring it on.”
Peggy Noonan / Wall Street Journal
“People in politics talk about the right track/wrong track numbers as an indicator of public mood. This week Gallup had a poll showing only 24% of Americans feel we’re on the right track as a nation. That’s a historic low. Political professionals tend, understandably, to think it’s all about the economy – unemployment, foreclosures, we’re going in the wrong direction. I’ve long thought that public dissatisfaction is about more than the economy, that it’s also about our culture, or rather the flat, brute, highly sexualized thing we call our culture.
“Now I’d go a step beyond that. I think more and more people are worried about the American character – who we are and what kind of adults we are raising.
“Every story that has broken through the past few weeks has been about who we are as a people. And they are all disturbing.
“A tourist is beaten in Baltimore. Young people surround him and laugh. He’s pummeled, stripped and robbed. No one helps. They’re too busy taping it on their smartphones. That’s how we heard their laughter. The video is on YouTube along with the latest McDonald’s beat-down and the latest store surveillance tapes of flash mobs. Groups of teenagers swarm into stores, rob everything they can, and run out. The phenomenon is on the rise across the country. Police now have a nickname for it: ‘flash robs.’
“That’s just the young, you say. Juvenile delinquency is as old as history.
“Let’s turn to adults.
“Also starring on YouTube this week was the sobbing woman. She’s the poor traveler who began to cry great heaving sobs when a Transportation Security Administration agent at the Madison, Wis., airport either patted her down or felt her up, depending on your viewpoint and experience. Jim Hoft of TheGatewayPundit.com recorded it, and like all the rest of the videos it hurts to watch. When the TSA agent – an adult, a middle aged woman – was done, she just walked away, leaving the passenger alone and uncomforted, like a tourist in Baltimore.
“There is the General Services Administration scandal. An agency devoted to efficiency is outed as an agency of mindless bread-and-circuses indulgence….
“(The GSA’s) leaders didn’t even pretend to have a sense of mission and responsibility. They reminded me of the story a year ago of the dizzy captain of a U.S. Navy ship who made off-color videos and played them for his crew. He wasn’t interested in the burdens of leadership – the need to be the adult, the uncool one, the one who maintains standards. No one at GSA seemed interested in playing the part of the grown-up, either….
“There’s the Secret Service scandal….
“What’s terrible about this story is that for anyone who’s ever seen the Secret Service up close it’s impossible to believe. The Secret Service are the best of the best. That has been their reputation because that has been their reality. They have always been tough, disciplined and mature. They are men, and they have the most extraordinary job: take the bullet.
“Remember when Reagan was shot? That was Secret Service agent Tim McCarthy who stood there like a stone wall, and took one right in the gut. Jerry Parr pushed Reagan into the car, and Mr. Parr was one steely-eyed agent. Reagan coughed up a little blood, and Mr. Parr immediately saw its color was a little too dark. He barked the order to change direction and get to the hospital, not the White House, and saved Reagan’s life. From Robert Caro’s ‘Passage of Power,’ on Secret Service agent Rufus Youngblood, Nov. 22, 1963: ‘there was a sharp, cracking sound,’ and Youngblood, ‘whirling in his seat,’ grabbed Vice President Lyndon Johnson and threw him to the floor of the car, ‘shielding his body with his own.’
“In any presidential party, the Secret Service guys are the ones who are mature, who you can count on, who’ll keep their heads. They have judgment, they’re by the book unless they have to rewrite it on a second’s notice. And they wore suits, like adults.
“This week I saw a picture of agents in Colombia. They were in T-shirts, wrinkled khakis and sneakers. They looked like a bunch of mooks, like slobs, like children with muscles.
“Special thanks to the person who invented casual Friday. Now it’s casual everyday in America. But when you lower standards people don’t decide to give you more, they give you less….
“The leveling or deterioration of public behavior has got to be worrying people who have enough years on them to judge with some perspective.
“Something seems to be going terribly wrong.
“Maybe we have to stop and think about this.”
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--The Supreme Court held oral arguments on a provision of Arizona’s tough immigration law that some say points to a partial victory for the state. In a recent Quinnipiac poll, 62% of respondents said the Supreme Court should uphold the Arizona law, while 27% wanted it struck down. 45% of Latino respondents wanted the court to uphold it as well, while 43% hoped it would be overturned. [Michael McGough / Los Angeles Times]
Separately, a study by the nonpartisan Pew Hispanic Center says that between 2005 and 2010, 1.4 million Mexicans migrated north of the border, and 1.4 million returned to Mexico. Smaller families in Mexico and issues with the U.S. economy are the chief causes of the net zero number.
--Hey kids…looking for a good trade? How about learning to become a nuclear weapons technician?
From Kate Brannen of Defense News:
“In about five years, every scientist with experience designing and testing nuclear weapons will have retired from the U.S. government.”
There are no more than 15 scientists left who were responsible for the design of a warhead that’s in the existing stockpile, according to the undersecretary for nuclear security.
Of course if you aren’t designing or testing new weapons, as some in Congress say we must do to keep our edge, you don’t have a need for the scientists, right?
But how do we know that with natural degradation our nukes would still work?
--According to the trade publication Talkers, Rush Limbaugh, despite his “slut” controversy, remains No. 1, followed by Sean Hannity, Michael Savage, Ed Schultz and Laura Ingraham.
--According to an annual survey issued by the Institute for Economics & Peace, the “most peaceful” state in the nation is Maine, while Louisiana placed last for the 11th year in a row, when looking at five criteria…number of homicides per 100,000 people; number of violent crimes; incarceration rate; number of police employees; and availability of small arms. [Vermont, New Hampshire, Minnesota and Utah round out the top five; Arizona, Florida, Nevada and Tennessee occupy Nos. 46-49.]
--More bad behavior. Jesse Washington / AP:
“It had all the makings of a feel-good hockey moment – except the guy who scored the goal was black.
“Soon after Joel Ward eliminated the defending Stanley Cup champion Boston Bruins on Wednesday with a Game 7 overtime goal for the Washington Capitals, Twitter erupted in a shower of n-words and other racial insults.
“ ‘Go play basketball, hockey is a white sport,’ ‘4th line black trash’ and ‘white power’ were some of the nicer phrases tweeted by angry Boston fans. One said that the fact that a black player scored ‘makes this loss hurt a lot more.’”
Thankfully, the Bruins issued a statement.
“These classless, ignorant views are in no way a reflection of anyone associated with the Bruins organization.”
Nice job, tweeters, and all those out in social media land who hide anonymously.
--Former Liberian President Charles Taylor became the first head of state since World War II to be convicted of war crimes. Taylor, the warlord-turned-president, was responsible for more than 50,000 deaths for arming Sierra Leone rebels in exchange for “blood diamonds” mined and then smuggled across the border. The rebels were known for savage mutilations, such as hacking off hands or arms above the elbow. At least Taylor’s conviction sends a signal to the likes of Bashar Assad.
--What was Vogue thinking last year when it profiled Asma al-Assad, Bashar’s wife and first lady?! Joan Juliet Buck began her profile, “The 35-year-old first lady’s central mission is to change the mindset of six million Syrians under 18, encourage them to engage in what she calls ‘active citizenship.’”
Oh brother. It was the March 2011 issue and hit the stands just as Bashar was launching his crackdown. Vogue titled the profile “A Rose in the Desert.”
The article has been scrubbed from the magazine’s site. Poof!
--Finally, last Saturday I drove from Johnson City, Tenn. to Asheville, N.C. and stopped at the North Carolina Welcome Center across the border, a beautiful spot as these things go. Some centers/rest stops have plaques on local history and I hope you take a minute to actually read them. Pennsylvania’s turnpike has some good ones, for example.
So I read this plaque on Liston B. Ramsey, 1919-2001. Ramsey served 19 terms in the North Carolina House of Representatives, including four terms as speaker (1981-89).
A Madison County, N.C. Mountain Man
Who knew that poor is a matter of spirit,
Not just lack of wealth
That love of home is a matter of family and community,
Not just place
That leadership is a matter of service and commitment,
Not just influence
I can just imagine what Mr. Ramsey would say today about much of what I have above; the bad behavior, the lack of ethics, and failure to understand the true meaning of service and commitment.
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Pray for the men and women of our armed forces…and all the fallen.
God bless America.
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Gold closed at $1664
Oil, $104.93
Returns for the week 4/23-4/27
Dow Jones +1.5% [13228]
S&P 500 +1.8% [1403]
S&P MidCap +2.4%
Russell 2000 +2.7%
Nasdaq +2.3% [3069]
Returns for the period 1/1/12-4/27/12
Dow Jones +8.3%
S&P 500 +11.6%
S&P MidCap +13.7%
Russell 2000 +11.4%
Nasdaq +17.8%
Bulls 41.9
Bears 23.7 [Investors Intelligence]
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