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Is it $260 billion or 2% of GDP?

Posted by Silvio Canto, Jr. on Monday, August 14, 2006 12:53:00 PM
 

What does a $260 billion budget deficit mean?

On its face, it is a lot of money. However, is it really a big number? How bad is it:

"This year, the new report says, the deficit will be $260 billion, or $111 billion less than the CBO estimated in March. For 2006, the government deficit will be 2 percent of gross domestic product, down from the old baseline prediction for 2006 of 2.6 percent." (If a Deficit Falls in the Forest, Do You Hear It? by Amity Shlaes)

Is it $260 billion or 2% of GDP? It is both and that's why these numbers are so misunderstood.

By any historical standard, 2% of GDP is actually very good:

"The U.S. deficit is worth comparing, for starters, with the data for European nations. In the Maastricht Treaty of 1992, European leaders set a deficit goal of 3 percent of GDP. EU member countries have had trouble meeting that target since.

A shortfall of 2 percent of GDP is also news in the U.S. context. Sure, there was the surplus in the second half of the 1990s.

But 2 percent is below the average for the federal deficit between 1980 and 1995."

What about our current deficit compared to other wars:

"The 2 percent figure stands out when you compare it
with the deficit level in other periods of war.

In 1944, as the U.S. poured its energy into winning World War II, the federal deficit widened to 22.7 percent of GDP.

In 1968, the year of the Tet Offensive in the Vietnam War, the deficit was 2.9 percent of GDP.

Much of the narrowing of the deficit in the 1990s -- and even the surplus of the late 1990s -- came because of reductions in military spending following the end of the Cold War. This was the short-lived peace dividend. The late 1990s boom also played a role: It brought in hundreds of billions more than forecast."

Both sides play politics with economic numbers. Yet, it is unfair to say that the Bush administration is running historical deficits.

Again, $260 billion is a lot of money. Yet, 2% of a $13 trillion GDP is not running historic deficits! 
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Who is Raul Castro?

Posted by Silvio Canto, Jr. on Friday, August 11, 2006 10:05:46 AM
 
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/2746/629/1600/4_21_castros_fidel_raul.jpg
Lieutenant General Ion Mihai Pacepa is the highest-ranking official ever to have defected from the former Soviet bloc.

On Christmas Day of 1989, Romanian Dictator Ceausescu and his wife were sentenced to death at the end of a trial where most of the accusations had come almost word-for-word out of Pacepa’s book Red Horizons.

Today, Pacepa wrote "Who Is Raúl Castro?A tyrant only a brother could love". This is how Pacepa remembers Raul Castro:

"Raúl was always under the influence — of alcohol and self-importance.

Raúl is generally perceived as a colorless minister of defense, but he has also been the brutal head of one of Communism’s most criminal institutions: the Cuban political police.

I met him in that capacity. He was cruel and ruthless. Fidel may have conceived the terror that has kept Cuba in the Communist fold, but Raúl has been the butcher.

He has been instrumental in the killing and terrorizing of thousands of Cubans, and there is no question in my mind but that he would fight tooth and nail to preserve his powers.

Otherwise, sooner or later Raúl would have to account for his crimes, and I do not know him to be suicidal.

In 2005, Fidel was furious when Forbes Magazine estimated his fortune at $500 million.

This year, the magazine upped his worth to $900 million.

Particularly in view of Cuba’s penury, this amount is surely more than enough for Raúl to bribe his political cronies and buy any new allies he needs.

Raúl may try to also portray himself as a peaceloving angel.

But Andropov’s age of secrecy is gone.

I pray that others who know Raúl as well as I knew Ceausescu will come forward and disrobe the Cuban tyrant, allowing the world to see him naked, the way he truly is: an assassin and international terrorist who made a fortune from the illegal sale of arms, drugs, and human beings."

This is a remarkable article. It confirms my own view that Raul won't last long.
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We must stay on offense!

Posted by Silvio Canto, Jr. on Friday, August 11, 2006 9:59:34 AM
 

George P. Shultz was Pres. Reagan's secretary of state from 1982 to 1989. He recently spoke at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University.

Like many of us, Shultz sees the big picture, i.e. we are at war with people who want to blow up our cities and kill our children! As we learned on Thursday morning, they are creative and determined!

Shultz's "Sustaining Our Resolve" is more relevant today than ever:

"During the first phase of this war, going back certainly to the 1970s, we were essentially passive. We were hit by increasing numbers of terrorist acts, but, though there was a gradual buildup of concern, we did nothing significant in response to these attacks.

Then September 11 woke America up. We reacted powerfully, putting in place a different philosophy and taking a great variety of actions to implement that philosophy."

No one is saying that the military option is the only option. We need to win the hearts and minds of people in the Middle East. However, you cannot win the hearts and minds of people who blow up airplanes.

Some people refer to this as World War 3. I agree with that because of the international battlefield. However, this war is more like the Cold War because it will last for many years.

The Cold War started with Truman and ended with the first Bush. This war started with Bush and will go for several presidencies.

At this point, it is critical that we hang in and keep our resolve.

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What is Ted Kennedy saying?

Posted by Silvio Canto, Jr. on Friday, August 11, 2006 9:57:48 AM
 
Why can't Ted Kennedy sit back, smell the roses and give the police the credit? No.

Ted has to find some way of criticizing the Bush administration:

"Ted Kennedy chimed in that "it is clear that our misguided policies are making America more hated in the world and making the war on terrorism harder to win."

Mr. Kennedy somehow overlooked that the foiled plan was nearly identical to the "Bojinka" plot led by Ramzi Yousef and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to blow up airliners over the Pacific Ocean in 1995.

Did the Clinton Administration's "misguided policies" invite that plot?

And if the Iraq war is a diversion and provocation, just what policies would Senators Reid and Kennedy have us "focus" on?"

It's a shame that the Democrats have to play partisan politics over everything. It really shows the total and complete lack of seriousness among Democrats.

These guys have lost 7 of the last 10 presidential elections. Do you wonder why?

I like Bad Timing BY DANIEL HENNINGER:

"This isn't the moment for a politics based on comics turning the president and vice president into joke material. The national mood may not be right now for extended blogospheric daisy chains of smack-the-enemy or cool wordplays with people's names. This isn't a game anymore. Not after yesterday's news.

What the Democratic Party needs more than anything for the way forward is adult supervision. Who's going to provide that? Bill Clinton? Joe Biden? Howard Dean? Not likely."

I like Democrats as Myopic Doves, Again By Charles Krauthammer:

"Lamont's alternative to the Bush Iran policy is to "bring in allies'' and ``use carrots as well as sticks."

Where has this man been? Negotiators with Iran have had carrots coming out of their ears in three years of fruitless negotiations.

Allies? We let the British, French and Germans negotiate with Iran for those three years, only to have Iran brazenly begin accelerated uranium enrichment that continues to this day.

Lamont seems to think that we should just sit down with the Iranians and show them why going nuclear is not a good idea.

This recalls Sen. William Borah's immortal reaction in September 1939 upon hearing that Hitler had invaded Poland to start World War II:

"Lord, if only I could have talked with Hitler, all this might have been avoided.''

This naivete in the service of endless accommodationism recalls also the flaccid foreign policy of the post-Vietnam Democratic left.

It lost the day -- it lost the country -- to Ronald Reagan and a muscular foreign policy that in the end won the Cold War."

Yesterday, good police work saved 2 or 3,000 people. Can't we celebrate that and stop playing politics?

Also, we have not been hit since 9-11. Maybe we are just lucky. Or maybe the Bush administration's policies, such as NSA surveillance, are working.


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The baby milk terrorists!

Posted by Silvio Canto, Jr. on Thursday, August 10, 2006 12:45:45 PM
 
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/2746/629/1600/0810061000_M_081006_terror_usairport.1.jpg


The plot was huge. It would have killed many innocents. Normally, these planes carry 200 passengers across the Atlantic.

So it's possible that this plot could have killed 1200 people!

Do the math. 200 passengers per aircraft.

This is not the first time that terrorists have planned to blow up US airplanes.


Let's go back to 1997, or 6 years before we invaded Iraq:

"The White House Commission on Aviation Safety and Security, led by Vice President Al Gore, issues its final report, which highlights the risk of terrorist attacks in the US. The report references Operation Bojinka, the failed plot to bomb twelve American airliners out of the sky over the Pacific Ocean, and calls for increased aviation security. The commission reports that [it] believes that terrorist attacks on civil aviation are directed at the United States, and that there should be an ongoing federal commitment to reducing the threats that they pose."

You can read it all at Complete 911 Timeline.

Keep this in mind. In 1997, or 6 years before we invaded Iraq, the terrorists were planning to blow up US airplanes.

So much for the theory that they got mad at us because we invaded Iraq!

Here is the bottom line.

Every day, there are people in this planet who get up and plan to blow up a Western city or kill innocent Westerners. They will do anything or use any technique available to them.

Baby milk is now a terrorist weapon!

They want to kill people. Do I need to be more specific?

You can not reason with people who use baby milk to blow up airplanes. You kill them or they will blow up your wife and children.

Do you get it Democrats? Do you get it liberals? Do you get it Europe?

Pres. Bush is fighting a war for our civilization. If Gore had won the 2000 election, he'd be doing the same thing. The big difference is that Republicans would have been a lot more responsible opposition in contrast to the childish behavior from the Democrats.

This is not about Democrats or Republicans. This is about defending the homeland from people who use baby milk to blow up airplanes.

When will some people get it?



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Davis, Lieberman and BDS

Posted by Silvio Canto, Jr. on Wednesday, August 09, 2006 9:34:40 AM
 

Lanny Davis worked in the Clinton White House and supported Joe Lieberman. He has just written Liberal McCarthyism :

"The far right does not have a monopoly on bigotry and hatred and sanctimony."

Davis is right to a point. Indeed, there were many anti-Clinton wackos. I recall that period and did not support the right wing excesses either.

Davis is wrong on this. I have never seen anything close to Bush Derangement Syndrome, a disease identified By Charles Krauthammer in 2003:

"the acute onset of paranoia in otherwise normal people in reaction to the policies, the presidency -- nay -- the very existence of George W. Bush."

BDS drives good people to believe anything, as long as the idea is promoted by someone who hates Bush.

The Connecticut primary turned into ground zero for the BDS virus. Ned Lamont is a shallow candidate who hates Bush but has very little else to say. He is the classic BDS-er!

Martin Peretz is editor in chief of The New Republic. Check out The "peace" Democrats are back :

"But he does have one issue, and it is Iraq. He grasps little of the complexities of his issue, but then this, too, is true of the genus of the peace candidate. Peace candidates know only one thing, and that is why people vote for them. I know the type well. I was present at its creation."

Jed Babbin is the author of Inside the Asylum about the UN and Showdown about China. Check out
Democrats' Danse Macabre:

"Throughout the Clinton years, the Dems' hid behind Clinton's "don't worry, be happy" smile. The good times rolled on while the danger of Islamic terrorism grew.

Now, almost five years into a war, their entire 2006 national defense strategy is contained in Alfred E. Neuman's "What, me worry?"

That fact disturbs the Dems not at all, because they have no constituency other than the most rabid antiwar Bush haters."

Why does the left hate Senator Lieberman? Because Lieberman does not hate Pres. Bush. It's as simple as that. 

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The case for President Giuliani

Posted by Silvio Canto, Jr. on Tuesday, August 08, 2006 9:43:50 AM
 

Giuliani was on O'Reilly last week. He was great. He looked confident and strong. He was specially good on national security:

"I don't think you can take the military option off the table," he said.

"You don't have to wave that flag, but you have to leave that there as a possibility."

In a swipe at the Democratic Party, which often finds itself attempting to shore up its national security credentials, the former mayor said having an American president that is viewed as "so much of an internationalist they'll never exercise that option" would not be good for the country." (New York Sun)

Can Rudy win the nomination? Today, I would say no. Next year, who knows?

First, the 2008 election will be about national security not domestic issues. This is Giuliani's best card. He is a tough leader.

Second, abortion may not be an issue in 2008. Roe v Wade will be overturned and abortion will be sent back to the states. In a few years, abortion policy will be an issue in statehouses not presidential elections.

The bottom line is this: I would vote for Giuliani, specially if he is running against a candidate from the modern Democrat party.

Giuliani understands the big issue of our time. The Democrats do not have the stomach to deal with terrorism.

Abortion is a major concern. However, I am more immediately concerned with a terrorist group blowing up a US city.

He is not my first choice. But I'm OK with him.

P.S. I hear a lot of talk about Rudy! Check out Draft Rudy Giuliani for President.



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The fake photos

Posted by Silvio Canto, Jr. on Monday, August 07, 2006 11:37:17 AM
 
Now, we hear that Reuters drops freelance Lebanese photographer over image:

"The photograph by Adnan Hajj, which was published on news Web sites on Saturday, showed thick black smoke rising above buildings in the Lebanese capital after an Israeli air raid in the war with the Shi'ite Islamic group Hizbollah, now in its fourth week.

Reuters withdrew the doctored image on Sunday and replaced it with the unaltered photograph after several news blogs said it had been manipulated using Photoshop software to show more smoke."

The good news is that the bloggers picked up another media mistake.

Blogger Little Green Footballs is on top of this story! He is the one who noticed that the photos were a little strange, to say the least!

Who is going to apologize to Israel?

Who is going to go on Al Jazeera and say that the pictures were "doctored"?

Let's give Reuters credit for withdrawing the picture. However, the damage is done. By the way, there may be more than one picture. The Power Line has additional information!

Sooner or later, Western democracies will realize that we are fighting people that will do anything, and I mean anything, to win. They will blow up their own people, use friendly reporters and make every claim that they can get away.


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47 years of lies and more lies

Posted by Silvio Canto, Jr. on Friday, August 04, 2006 10:48:07 AM
 
Luis M. Garcia is author of Child of the Revolution: Growing up in Castro's Cuba, published last month by Allen & Unwin. Today, he writes about our native Cuba and the lies associated with with the Castro dictatorship.

Check out A nation that dares not speak the truth.

1) What about Cuba's standard of living?

"In fact, during the late 1950s, Cuba had a relatively large and growing middle class, heavily unionised workforce, and farmhand wages that were higher on average than for similar workers in France, Belgium and even West Germany, according to the International Labor Organisation. There were huge economic and social inequalities, of course, but these were no different to the inequalities found in much of Europe at the time and in the rest of Latin America."

2) What about health care?

"There have been some real achievements in this field. But before Castro, Cuba had a good health system by Latin American standards. In other words, Castro started from a high base.

Cuba's infant mortality rate of 32 per 1000 live births in 1957 was the lowest in Latin America and the 13th lowest in the world, as detailed by Cuban-American author Humberto Fontova.

Cuba ranked ahead of countries such as France, Belgium, Japan, Austria and Spain, all of which would eventually pass Cuba in this indicator. Today, Cuba ranks 24th in the world on this measure."

3. What about free education for all?

"Compared with the rest of Latin America, Cuba has always been among the most literate countries in the region. It ranked fourth among Latin American countries in the late '50s. Since 1959, the literacy rate has increased from 76 per cent to 96 per cent last year, which is mighty impressive but not unique. Panama, which ranked just behind Cuba in this indicator during the '50s, has matched Cuba's improvement when measured in percentage terms, as the US Department of State confirms."

4) Everybody loves Castro and the revolution.

"Who knows? Castro has never tested his popularity with Cubans via secret, multi-party elections. Hundreds of thousands of Cubans still turn up to hear Castro speak in Havana's Plaza de la Revolucion, but then again, huge crowds turned up to cheer Nicolae Ceausescu, the Romanian dictator, just days before he was toppled and executed in late 1989 in a popular uprising. And millions rallied in support of Francisco Franco in Spain just months before his long and agonising death."

Of course, we are not surprised to see Fidel and Raul Castro lie to stay in power. However, it's sad how so many others buy into the lie because they hate the US.
I guess that some leftists hate the US more than they care about the truth or the Cuban people.

The truth will eventually prevail. History will show that Castro destroyed Cuba.

We are not saying that Cuba was perfect in 1959. Yet, no one had to leave Cuba in a raft before Castro. Sadly, many have died leaving Cuba since Fidelismo was imposed on the island.

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Where is the mayor of Mexico City?

Posted by Silvio Canto, Jr. on Thursday, August 03, 2006 10:41:05 PM
 

Mexico is slowly drifting into social unrest. Today, Reuters had this headline Leftists block Mexico stock market, tempers rise:

"Thousands of leftists screaming election fraud blockaded Mexico's stock market building on Thursday in a demonstration that failed to halt trading but brought tempers closer to the breaking point on the fifth day of mass protests.

The exchange, a symbol of free market economics in Mexico, stands on the elegant Reforma boulevard that was seized on Sunday by supporters of leftist presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.

About 3,000 protesters sat and lay down in front of the gleaming black dome and tower and an adjacent skyscraper housing foreign bank headquarters early on Thursday, preventing employees from entering for most of the morning."

Where is law and order in Mexico City?

Indeed, people have the right of assembly. They have the right to march and say whatever they want to say.

At the same, people have the right to go to their jobs or drive without premeditated traffic jams.

Who do these PRD-istas think that they are? Their behavior is out of line and will do serious harm to AMLO's cause.

In the meantime, where in the world is the mayor of Mexico City? He is failing miserably!



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Who is really killing civilians?

Posted by Silvio Canto, Jr. on Thursday, August 03, 2006 10:00:32 AM
 
Is it possible that terrorists would use civilians as human shields? Yes it is.

Is it possible that they would use their own dead for PR reasons? Absolutely.

After all, who are we talking about? We are talking about people who wrap bombs around children and send them to blow up innocents.

We are talking about terrorists.

Rush Limbaugh is on this case and made a wonderful presentation yesterday:

News Agencies Angrily Respond to Rush,As Yet More Evidence Points to Qana Hoax

Check out this paragraph:

"May I call your attention to Nic Robertson, Miss Carroll, of CNN, who admitted that he was led around early on in this war by Hezbo press officers? He was shown what buildings to shoot, what buildings he couldn't shoot, and this was made public by Howard Kurtz on CNN on their Sunday morning show Reliable Sources. Interestingly, the CNN show Reliable Sources does not get put on CNN International. Miss Carroll, while you are an offender in this case, you don't even hold a candle to the BBC. By the way, Richard Engle of NBC I think has admitted the same thing, that the Hezbos are parading them around with press officers and showing them certain things. It is silly to deny."

Read it or listen to it.

Rush is right about the way that the international media attacks Israel but overlooks Hezbollah.

Of course, no one defends civilian deaths. Yet, it is clear to me that the Israelis are not trying to kill civilians.

On the other hand, Hezbollah is.

In fact, the Israeli Air Force could turn Beirut into pieces and blow up every building in that city.

They are not doing it. Why? Because they are targeting terrorists rather than civilians.

Does Hezbollah show the same consideration when they fire missiles at Israeli towns? Do they warn civilians to get out before their missiles rain on Israeli territory?

Check out THE THEATER OF JIHAD by Michelle Malkin.

Check out Civilian Shields By Christopher Orlet.



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Lopez-Obrador's traffic jam

Posted by Silvio Canto, Jr. on Wednesday, August 02, 2006 4:08:47 PM
 
Reuters has a headline: Mexico leftist under fire as vote protests drag on

According to Reuters, and some conversations that I've had with contacts in Mexico City, the residents are getting sick and tired of AMLO's traffic jams.

AMLO may have met his match in DF's drivers.

I lived in Mexico City years ago. I found that the city was great except that the traffic was so intense.

Also, my personal experience is that Mexico City residents change their personality during traffic jams.

Nice men became abusive and nice women became hysterical behind the wheel of an automobile.

My message to AMLO: Get your "populistas" off the streets.

Or, AMLO may discover that a recount is going to be the least of his problems.
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Those Castro brothers!

Posted by Silvio Canto, Jr. on Wednesday, August 02, 2006 10:29:02 AM

The Wall Street Journal has a good editorial today:

The Fabulous Castro Boys :

"Raúl is aware of the political risks of creating more private economic space, and we would expect political repression to continue as he tried to consolidate his own control once his brother dies. Yet, as the world saw after the collapse of Communism in Europe, freedom movements are hard to contain once unleashed. Ask Mikhail Gorbachev. Raúl would probably attempt to imitate the Chinese model of opening up to foreign investment and private Cuban business while keeping strict political control."



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Let me tell you about Fidel Castro

Posted by Silvio Canto, Jr. on Tuesday, August 01, 2006 6:20:23 PM
 

First of all, let's cut the nonsense about President Castro. This man was never elected. It is an insult to call him president of Cuba.

He is Fidel Castro, dictator of Cuba.

Castro is a sick man. However, you can write his eventual obituary with the images of political prisons, rafts and poverty.

Castro has a pending appointment in hell, where he will spend a considerable amount of his next life.

Check out these pictures: http://blogforcuba.typepad.com/my_weblog/2006/08/while_we_wait.html



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Castro is a coward!

Posted by Silvio Canto, Jr. on Tuesday, August 01, 2006 6:19:25 PM
 

Andres Oppenheimer saw Castro in Argentina and wrote Castro's image of bravery doesn't match reality.

Castro is a coward:

"Unlike every other Latin American and Caribbean leader, Castro has not had the guts to allow a free election in 47 years;

Unlike all other Latin American and Caribbean leaders, Castro is the only leader in the region who doesn't have the courage to allow independent political parties. In his island, only one party -- his -- is allowed, and whoever doesn't join it is suspected of being an "anti-social" element. According to the latest Amnesty International report, there are nearly 70 prisoners of conscience in Cuban prisons, while Human Rights Watch puts the figure at 306.

Unlike all other regional leaders, Castro doesn't have the confidence to allow a single independent newspaper, radio or television station, or to allow people with different ideas to even appear on Cuban media. Cuba's laws specifically bar anybody in Cuba from publishing "non-authorized news" abroad, making those who do it liable to "enemy propaganda" charges that carry several years in prison."

Castro is afraid of press conferences:

"When Miami's Channel 41 reporter Juan Manuel Cao asked him at an improvised press conference in Argentina about Hilda Molina, a renowned Cuban doctor who is being denied a permit to visit Argentina to see her son and grandchildren, an infuriated Castro asked the reporter, "Who is paying you?" and later accused him of being "a mercenary" for President Bush."

We know who this man is. He is a coward and a liar. I'm sorry but I cannot say anything good about this despicable character.

Read the full article. 

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