Take it from someone else.... Crude oil

Iran Confirms Supertanker for 90-Day Crude Storage TEHRAN (FNA)- Iran has booked a supertanker to store up to 270,000 tons of crude oil for up to 90 days, adding to the more than 28 million barrels of oil floating outside its main export terminal, shipbrokers said on Tuesday.

Shipping sources said that National Iranian Tanker Company (NITC), had booked the Very Large Crude Carrier (VLCC) Universal Prime for delivery into the Middle East during June 3-6.

"They are taking the vessel for 90 days, and they are still floating their inquiry in the market, requesting more tonnage for the purpose of storage," a shipping source familiar with NITC's tonnage inquiry said.

Iran already has 13 VLCCs being used for floating storages, shipping sources said last week.

Shipbrokers said that NITC, a subsidiary of state-owned oil firm National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC), has booked three suezmax tankers, the Eastway, Headway and Gateway, for delivery on May 15.

Shipbrokers in Asia said the double-sided, single-hulled crude oil tankers, owned and operated by Tanker Pacific that has its corporate headquarters in Singapore, were booked for about $44,000 each.

The use of tankers for crude oil storage also comes at a time when Iran's Bandar Abbas refinery starts maintenance on a 110,000 barrels per day (bpd) crude distillation unit (CDU), scheduled to last for about 30 days.

The CDU at the 225,000-bpd Bandar Abbas refinery is the second crude unit to go on maintenance at the complex this year, as Iran looks to boost the plant's capacity to 320,000 bpd.

Its been a while

Let's look at oil.

Why? Well my wife (rightly) chastised my older son for calling Hillary a "pig" in front of my daughter. The thing is, he shouldn't have called her a "pig" at all. She is not. That is a cheap assault on her gender -- if we are being honest, it is a statement about her looks, not her policies or character, and hence a sexist comment.

So for the record, she is NOT a "pig." Evil ... maybe. Singularly dishonest and reprehensible, for sure. Completely unfit for duty as anything other than a vermin control officer ... certainly. But not a "pig." So let's get that out of the way.

She is also pandering to the ignorant: taxing the oil companies for their windfall profits is populist and wrong. The pain felt by motorists all over the world is due to a classic financial bubble. Remember when the call was for insane tech valuations? The new paradigm. So too with oil. Oil demand has increased ... but at a rate lower than the increase in actual world production over the last year, and this includes the notion of increased Chinese demand. This means one thing, and one thing only: there is no inherent reason why oil prices should have doubled. The Saudis are correct! There is no need to increase production.

Now, I understand that Americans are paying $4.00 gas at the pumps ... how can this be? It is because traders in oil, speculators, hedge funds, hedging airlines, oil companies are betting that the price will be higher next month. As anyone who understands anything about bookies and betting knows, the more that people bet one way, the shorter the odds become -- translated, that means higher prices become self-fulfilling prophesies. The history books are full of these conditions: tulips, South Seas, tech stocks, housing (multiple times), credit ... and oil. Remember gold went to $800 before falling back to $300. Now it is $1000-ish and demand for gold for industrial uses has fallen.

There are supertankers lined up in the Gulf, chartered by the governments of oil producing nations, full to the brim with oil. And they are sitting there. Why? Because while the price of oil is reputed to be North of $130, there are not enough buyers for it at that price. Sure the futures price suggests that this is the "correct" price. Sure demand is reputed to support this price. So too did Southern California house flippers believe that property was a one-way thing: there is a limited amount of property ... buy now while you still can. And of course, they are now into negative equity. Note, that there IS a limited amount of supertanker space available ... and if prices do not fall soon, to move the excess capacity stored, they WILL run out of space, or have to shut down the pumps. Or sell it cheaper to find a buyer.

That is, if "spot oil" starts to diverge significantly from "forward oil" or the futures, you will see holders of long positions start to "square it up." That is a nice way of saying that you will see an almighty collapse in oil prices. Too many fat men trying to squeeze through a narrow door. Oil collapses, dollar goes up, commodity prices poop the bed. Count on it.

PT Barnum -- Hil-liar's other job

I would like to say that I am astounded ... but alas, cannot. You see, the news media in the U.S. seems unable to come to grips with the truth about Hil-liar. Even the hubris that accompanies her campaign name ... "Hillary." It even pains me to write it. Every other candidate, in almost every public election in any country that I can think of, has had the humility (even when the candidate was most decidedly not humble) to use their surname on the campaign. Some wag in her campaign decided that she was enough of a household name to run under "Hillary." Probably Hil-liar herself, a notorious details OCD controller.

What does this tell us about her? Certainly a narcissist ... but on a larger scale, what does this mean and how does this play out? To start with, it explains a lot about her attitudes over the years, ignoring laws, constitutional rights, decency and permitting marital excess that beggar's belief. She simply does not think that the "Rules" apply to her. After all, she is Hil-liar.

It explains how she can continue to run in this campaign even though it is now a statistical certainty that she will be defeated by Obugger. She either honestly thinks that she should be the nominee, despite the "voice of the people" -- she hears those "voices" differently -- despite mathematics, despite the need for unity within the Democratic Party. Why not? After all, she is Hil-liar. And the media, in their short-sightedness, agree with her.

It explains how she can stand up and try and tell the nation that West Virginia is a measure of the pulse, the heartbeat of the average American voter. She did an absolutely Hitler-esque jig (famous propaganda cooked up by Britian) concerning her come from behind win in Indiana, and seemed to imply that this was the case in WV. Folks, this is adding two plus two and coming up with 14, not just five -- a lie of staggering proportions. She was double digits ahead in Indiana since before electricity was invented. But she could not resist a boast based on phony political-spin, she lied. She lied when she did not need to -- and that is her character in a nutshell. Remember the snipers? Even more unbelievable are pundits from both sides who seem to agree with her as to the pulse of America and ignore the rest. Why not? After all, she is Hil-liar.

Two talkshow hosts (who I normally respect, but in this case seem to have misplaced their heads "where it does not shine") in Boston are parading stats such as "no Democrat has won the White House without West Virginia in the past 100 years," as though this was talismanic of something. "It shows that [Obugger] cannot win the white vote." "[Obugger] only appeals to leftie Liberals, Cambridge granolas, and whacko Hollywood types." "He's a coastal phenom." "Obugger has played the race card."

Bullshit. Number one, Obugger did not play the first race card in this campaign, Bill Clinton did. AND, the fact of the matter, as ANYONE who has a sense and shred of honesty will tell you, is this: non-coastal White America of IS racist. (Note: a generalization is the ONLY way to characterize a group of individuals, it is emphatically NOT a mistake, and by its very nature my statement applies only to the masses, not any given individual.) Who are these people that I accuse of being racist? I accuse the ill-or-uneducated whites making less than $50,000 per year with less than a four-year college degree. And that is the bulk of America from coast to coast.

These the are "goobers" that the "elites" believe should be deprived of the vote. Hil-liar actually thinks this way -- just like Obugger -- but has not been caught saying so. Hil-liar's constituency is these people. The scared, illiterate, gameshow and soap watching, older white women and (to a lesser degree) men of the Heartland. Obugger was right: they cling to their guns and religion. They do so, because everything else has gone to shit. They live in a post-industrial society, their factory jobs now in Chengdu, their cars over 10 years old, their vacation spots on Lake Erie boarded up, Liberals threatening their guns, gas costing too much to run their "trucks", health care too expensive to consider going to the doc to see about that lump, dental care right out of the question .... And Hil-liar comes along ... looks like them (she dresses for the part, not that she was ever snazzy), she changes her accent to sound like them, simplifies her syntax "so's they kin unnerstand her," tells them that the whole mess is not their fault and that she will fix it for them. She relieves them of their responsibility for their own fates -- a role traditionally assumed by the various churches and religions. And, voila, you get "faithful" Clintonistas, ignorant, willing to forget, ignore and disbelieve every sordid fact of Hil-liar's life, willing to see this singularly dishonest, self-serving, politician again occupy the White House. Hil-liar's people. Goobers.

Then comes one Jeremiah Wright ... Obugger's preacher (a position that, in the light of the above discourse, carries abnormal weight amongst White America, a fact Coastals just don't "get") and he starts spewing the vilest hate and fantasy seen in quite a few years, outside of Rosie O'Donnell.

He hits EVERY single fear button these "White Folk" have. He plays to their worst nightmares, their innermost fears, and keeps it coming. Instead of shutting this moron down, refusing him airtime, the media parades this endlessly in front of the fearful cowering masses, already predisposed to vote for Hil-liar, coz' she's white and (as the numbers support) a woman. After the "God Damn America," tirade ... every older than 40 white woman in podunk, with a tattered existence, no real prospect of security (as psychologists will tell you, the main fear in their lives ... is long term security) will run for the polling booth to vote for Hil-liar. Obugger is BLACK. Wright, his pastor, is BLACK. "Those people" are showing their true cards, they HATE us. They hate White America, "those ungrateful bastards!!!" "After all we have done for them, what with affirmative action and all ... and that is what they really think...!" Wright has succeeded in scaring White America. He has also single-handedly almost scuppered the best chance Black America will have in a generation of seeing a black man in the White House as President ... and not a Secret Service Agent. For someone "dedicated" to the advancement of Black America, that seems a little odd. But not if he was paid by Hil-liar's campaign. Or does someone have some interesting negatives?

The media -- which I have always accused of being fundamentally pro-Hil-liar play along with the Wright-hysteria. They don't allow common sense to creep in. They stoke the fires. Why? It is no secret that the owners of most of the powerful mass-media in the United States are pro-Hil-liar ... and Obugger might just be ... Muslim. They are afraid too; in some bizarre and ultimately ironic way they are little different than those grannies in Indiana. Obugger might really be serious about appeasing Hamas and Hezbollah or ... God forbid, Iran. Hil-liar won't ... they hope.

Of course, politics is deception: telling enough lies to get yourself into power, then doing just enough to ensure that you stay there. Nothing honest about it. Obugger is using the Deval Patrick (a good friend) method: smile and say, "together we can." Do what? I am terrified of what the "what" may be. Income redistribution, for sure, check. Idiotic foreign policy blunders, check. Increased spending for the unwed mothers of our ghettos, check. Cutting the military, check. Pouring money into the cesspool of health care, check. Allowing every frikkin Jose or Manuel from the greater Americas to flood our country and overwhelm its infrastructure, check. I fear all of that. And more. But I fear this less than I fear the worst congenital liar to tread the floorboards of the political stage ... perhaps ever ... Hil-liar.

Look, say Obugger defeats McCooter (as in "old coot") and gets in. Do you really think that America is going to let these things happen? Maybe at first, but as Obugger's full neo-commie manifesto is laid out, there will be revolt. There will be tax strikes. There will be demonstrations of unheard-of proportions. People will finally demand a meritocracy, and do away with programs that put illiterate teachers in our schools because they are minorities. People will demand an end to the public support of bastard factories across our country. In short, if the worst fears of Obugger turn out to be fact --- then we have won our country back. I mean that for every hard-working American, black, white, hispanic, asian ... everyone who wants to make something of themselves, to get ahead.

The fall-out? For at least a generation, we will be free of the specter of Liberal insanity threatening our welfare. Remember Carter? What happened next? 12 years of Republican domination -- and the end of the Cold War. You reckon Carter could have done that? Remember what happened in 1994? No? Let me remind you that Bill (the Liar) Clinton tried to impose a greater liberal nation on us in the first two years of his administration (Hil-Liar featuring her failed healthcare) and as a result we "enjoyed" the Gingrich (not a nice person) revolution. Bill saw the writing on the wall and sensibly did not undo the programs and policies of the Reagan/Bush era, although you can bet Hil-liar was desperate to. The Clinton "good times" was built on the Reagan/Bush policies of 1980-1992.

The fall out would include a roll back of the Warren Court. A repudiation of the failed socialist policies and secularism that have come close to ruining our country -- ironically, the same policies that have put our White Americans "in the soup."

And of course, Barack might turn out to be the worst nightmare of neo-cons and black nationalists alike (not to mention Hil-liar '012) ... he might actually be a good President. He is extremely intelligent. He got to where he is despite overwhelming odds (affirmative action notwithstanding). He may be a better politician than anyone has given him credit for: how do you defeat the Clinton juggernaut that had Hil-liar the nominee-presumptive since 2004? Nay since 2000? When EVERY political sage predicted Hil-liar's unopposed sweep to the White House (that's you Jay). Unqualified, you say? I'd say that this unreal defeat of Goliath is very David-esque, and serves to act as a strong qualification. When was the last time a community activist has become President? Look at the backgrounds of the Presidents of the last 100 years. Products of the "Elite" -- all of them, except for one Ronald Wilson Reagan. Jeez. What a statement.

A good Obugger presidency would also eliminate the union-based Democratic party as a force and possibly reshape American politics, fundamentally. Independents will have found a home, and White America might have to form a new party or Go Red. Vote Republican. Now that's a thought.

Oh Tidings of Economic ... chaos.

Just a thought ... do you think that if Hil-liar jumps on some lunatic liberal bandwagon, makes a film and then does some speeches, that she too can win a Nobel Prize? I mean, wouldn't that just take the biscuit?

Back to the World Economy....

6 large(ish) American public companies have gone "Chapter" in the last 15 days or so (Tropicana Entertainment, Linens n Things, Kimbal Hill , and some others, banks too). You know things are bad when casinos go Chapter 11.

The debt of 174 US public companies is trading at "Distress Levels" with spreads over 1000bp over Treasuries.

And credit card debt has jumped almost 7% in Q1 '08 to almost a trillion dollars. Or almost $6,000 for every American between the ages of 18 and 65. Good news for the banks that are receiving interest rates of 18% on the debt, but bad news for those institutions relying on getting paid back that principal: personal bankruptcies are climbing at a frightening rate.

Vallejo, CA, a smallish city of 100,000 or so inhabitants just declared Chapter 9 seeking protection. Why? The usual: its revenues no longer match its spending (typically spending on schools eat up the lion's share of small town revenues). How did this come to pass? Property prices have tanked, sending the chief source of revenue -- property tax -- into a tailspin. And as we all know, when you get used to a certain level of spending, it is very hard to wean yourself from earlier extravagance. And teachers are not going to let you take away their perks and bennies, the PTA won't think about poor Johnny and Sarah having to pay for their school lunches or the football team go without the newest HDD video gear. Today, the various municipal unions came back to the bargaining table ... they were afraid to lose their contracts entirely. Those contracts contained clauses guaranteeing 20%+ pay increases over three years.

And hundreds of California towns and cities are now in the same boat. And California is not alone in this "jam" either. Just about every zone of inflated housing prices will feel the same pinch -- all along the "Sunbelt" -- Florida, Texas, Arizona have all had astounding property value spikes. And the local governments shared in the new-found wealth ... except that it was bubble wealth, fool's gold, hocus-pocus, the Emperor's Clothes. As soon as people stopped believing the there was always someone who would buy their $1,000,000 3 br "ranch" for $1,200,000, the rot set in. But spending -- the politician's universal salve -- had already expanded to soak up "surplus" wealth. It had to, otherwise the town next door would have better schools and higher property prices...!

Think we are out of the woods? I doubt it. Goldman Sachs (who called the sub-prime mess and sold their holdings, positioning themselves to make windfall profits while Citi and Merrill thought there was always going to be a "bid") believe that the housing market has a way to go yet. Goldman figures a national retrenchment of property prices of 25% or so -- and we have seen barely 15% -- and places like California can see far higher price deflation. Maybe 50% depending on the area. And all this while at least 10 million households are already into negative equity. Can you say "default?"

Think that oil is a one-way street? Think you'll see $200 oil? Think again. You see, that price is predicated on China: China's thirst for oil is staggering. And that thirst is predicated on an ever-increasing global demand for Chinese goods and a Chinese economy that is growing at 8-10% p.a. But with the U.S. economy about to merde-the-bed, and the UK and many parts of EU close behind, that level of growth might be over-optimistic. A fall in demand for Chinese goods might lead to over capacity (its already there) by the Fall, and that will cause some problems ... and a drop in oil demand. And what happens when too many fat men try to squeeze through the exit door of their long positions? Something similar to housing prices in San Jose, Ca., but worse and faster. We may be reaching a point where the demand elasticity of oil becomes a little less elastic.

But don't expect lower oil prices to translate to anything that the US consumer can use right now. It can't and won't. Many U.S. households are spending over 10% of their disposable income on energy. And that was before the latest price rises have been calculated in. It may be higher now. Do you suppose that anyone is buying SUVs? No, neither do I. Which in turn means that GM, Chrysler and Ford are about to poop the bed again. Their single most profitable vehicles are about to become large paper weights. Stinking albatrosses. The talk of the town in the United States is the shock of the $100 fill-up. Welcome to the real world. Worse, as we all know GM is a pension company that happens to make automobiles ... and GM's other twin, GMAC is finance company. Just how viable do you think that their position is?

And do you think that the EU will escape this perfect storm? Really? As the UK slides down the tubes of Vallejo, CA -- Mr. Brown is a frikkin idiot, and his taxation-crazy Labour party will preside over this coming financial tsunami -- Europe will not escape. It can't. Spain is merrily sliding into its own morass of over-construction, debt and inflated pricing. France is not far behind -- how many holiday homes can you build or pay for when the foreigners who bought them are going bankrupt at home? Spot the overpriced market there.... How will the French Government pay to appease its restive Muslim hordes in the Banlieus? With what taxes squeezed from what stones? You have to sell goods and services to tax.

Eastern Europe is entirely focused on selling goods and services to a healthy and thriving Western Europe. That's bad news for them, their lot looks increasingly dire. All of a sudden an oil-rich Russian patron does not sound so bad. You can count on improving ties with Russia for them. Speaking of which -- Europe is completely addicted to the heroin of Russian natural gas ... who wants to bet that this particular situation will be left unexploited given an economic slump in Europe?

Not done yet.

Let's look at some really gloomy possibilities: China implodes. IF, all of a sudden, the millions upon millions of Chinese who have moved out of the country to the cities and factories to improve their lives suddenly find themselves out of work. Without jobs and that golden ring that was so recently dangled in front of them. What then? Unrest? Sure. Serious unrest? Uh huh. Chaos? Possibly. But screw them, what might the Chinese Government do? This is where things might really get interesting. Need some cash? How about selling U.S. Treasuries? Or, if executing a major clamp down and some millions of Chinese get squished in the wheels of the Red Army, might one President Barack Obama like to stand up for the rights of the oppressed? Sounds possible if not probable.... The Chinese might wave container loads of U.S. government paper in our faces ... "you want us to sell these?"

For the financially illiterate, that means global financial Armageddon. Prices for U.S. paper go to par with Kleenex and interest rates sky high. I mean 100% and easily higher. Credit completely ceases for all intents and purposes and everyone with debt defaults. Our financial institutions collapse, property collapses, trade credit ceases, and the global economy shrinks by 2/3.... Oil? You couldn't give it away. Who would need it? To run what?

But, I hear you say, the EU is disconnected from the financial cesspit that is American greed and overspending. Ya think? Who else holds American paper? And if all investments in the US go belly up, and America ceases to be an economic engine, do you think that you want to hold Euro-paper? Nah, I didn't think so. Also, did you happen to catch the recent reports on EU-land output? Not exactly storming growth ... in fact, the U.S. looks comparatively robust!

So while the Chinese might threaten a sell-off, the consequences would be too dire for even them to consider. But it would give them unbelievable leverage to do whatever they wanted to in terms of securing whatever position they felt like. Oil -- sure just take it. That's OK with us. Tibet? Where is that? Taiwan? Huh? Isn't that some kind of game like dominoes?

Societe Generale -- not that the French are particularly financially astute -- have an investment banking arm, as do most large banks. They have called for a reduction of equities in their portfolios to 30% and under. Their holdings of AAA bonds (govie and equity) has been raised to 50%. They feel that nothing will be safe in the impending melt-down. Nothing. They are forecasting an equity collapse of 50-75%. Wonder where gold fits into this?

So the recent equity recovery -- maybe the worst is over - could be what we used to call a "dead cat bounce." I sure as hell would not be lunging into a long equity position for at least 6 months to see how this all plays out. Perhaps longer.

Let's think for a moment about triggers for chaos. An invasion of Iran would certainly cause a "Rolaids" moment. Actually, just about any hostile act to or by Israel could set something unpleasant rolling -- love what Hamas and Hezbollah are doing? Wanna bet that they can still kill some Israelis? Or that the Israelis can kill some of them? The Lebanese must be crying at their great city of Beirut being laid to waste again by Shi-ite morons financed by Iran.

The dollar could also be the deciding factor: it is ironic indeed that America should be hostage to the Saudis and Chinese in the determination of "whither the dollar?" The Saudis need a stronger dollar to make sure that the price of oil does not rise too much, because all that does is to cause a still weaker dollar, driving down U.S. demand, and perversely, their dollar-based revenues. China has no wish to see a weaker dollar, because it makes Chinese goods more expensive, decreasing demand for their plastic trash that American love so much and that keeps its factories full. A stronger dollar, however, just means more U.S. paper -- which by now must be seen as worthless to them. A claim on debt that can never be repaid.

But the U.S. Government, likes a weak dollar because it boosts U.S. exports and curtails imports. Nothing like paying back debt with debased currency!! But too weak and the dollar will go into free-fall as people try to sell or hedge their U.S. exposure. What if nobody accepted the dollar anymore as tender for goods and services? What if we had to buy our oil in Euros?

And the fact of the matter is that the dollar is already seriously undervalued on a purchasing power parity basis.... If we could only shake our Chinese junk goods habit. Or outsourcing everything for miniscule gains. What did I hear on the radio this morning? "Summer means outdoors ... and Wal-Mart." Parse that: in the Summer we will go outdoors and need equipment. We will buy that equipment from Wal-Mart (being the lowest cost vendor), which will in turn buy said goods from China or some other "developing nation." Thereby exacerbating our trade deficit, weakening the dollar, increasing China's store of U.S. Treasuries to pay for the goods we cannot afford. Just great. "Wal-Mart, for a better quality of life."

Uh, huh.

Liberalism is an Economic Virus

The word "virus" is from the Latin virus, meaning toxin or poison. Viruses don't have reproductive bodies of their own, they use the equipment of their host to replicate themselves. Transmission of viruses can be vertical (mother to child) or horizontal (as in person to person). The effect on mankind of viruses can best be described by a simple list of viral diseases: Spanish Flu; AIDS; Ebola; rabies; yellow fever, smallpox; the Black Death; polio; various STDs; hepatitis (B&C); herpes; many cancers; norovirus; measles ... in short, a hit parade of death to individual humans and whole societies.

I would like to introduce a new virus, deadly as any of the above, for your consideration. The target host is a healthy, functioning economy. Its effect is to kill that economy. It spreads, but only so long as the host does nothing to prevent the illness in the first place, or refuses to vaccinate itself. The culprit is Liberalism, as pernicious and deadly a virus as the world has ever seen, killing whole economies, societies and civilizations as surely as a more traditional virus kills humans.

You see, a healthy economy produces goods and services in a dynamic fashion, adapting to market conditions, "pruning itself of dead wood," moving as necessary. A healthy economy has a small surplus of economic bounty or health that is used to ensure that its constituent parts -- its people -- remain useful and active participants. That is public spending. It is not only healthy, it is needed to provide a productive environment for the working and productive people. In any healthy economy, there are always going to be some people that cannot be productive or useful in a significant way: they do not add to the general overall economic endeavor, they act as a drag on it.

Enter politics -- the petri dish for infection. Certain pieces of dead wood (the initial virus vectors), convince potentially productive members of the body public that they would be better off in the non-productive environment, life would be easier and what's more, they are entitled to a non-productive life, all paid for by the healthy economy. After all, as anyone can see, there is plenty left over that the productive members of the body public don't use. That is the introduction of the virus -- it then multiplies rapidly. The more members that become unproductive, the more secure the viral politician from removal by the ballot box.

The dead-wood viral politicians notice that in fact certain productive members of the body public are extremely efficient and produce far in excess of what they require for their own comfort. So they tell the infected "let's relieve them of that burden, let's set some sort of required level of excess contribution reflecting that person's efficiency." Taxation. Entitlement programs, etc. The virus has taken hold and induced a fever in the body public. In some instances this is contained and the fever subsides and the body public then manages the infection similar to a chronic illness.

But most often, the virus also seizes control of the central nervous system of the body public - -the news media and educational systems. This is similar to the virus in a human body overwhelming the immune system, sometimes a slow battle, other times an Ebola-like explosion of insanity. Either way, the march of the disease at this point becomes inevitable. If there were a vaccine -- a scrupulously constructed and protected Constitution for example -- the illness might still be contained. But as is often the case, the Liberalism virus also seizes control of the judiciary, through the aegis of its long dormant control of education.

People-members of the body public simply do not know better -- they cannot fight off the infection because they do not know that they are even infected, control of the media ensures that. It spreads vertically -- whole families have voted Democratic for generations, simply because their union (secondary infections) and parents have always done so. It becomes common wisdom to act in a fashion that can only hasten the death of the body public, indeed the members proceed to vote to reject a vaccine and inoculate themselves with ever-more virulent versions of the disease that is killing them: vote Obama or Clinton -- Marburg or Ebola? You die either way.

In the later stages of the disease, the body public experiences a phenomenon whereby the healthiest and most productive members become subject to the rages of Liberalism in its most virulent form: taxation to support the unproductive and wasteful, supported by the tyranny of the ballot box -- Liberal viral vetors manage to convince enough of the ignorant (but otherwise productive) and the clearly toxic (entitlement recipients and illegal immigrants) that they have the solution, tax the productive, tax the efficient, tax anyone that can make your life easier. Steal by power of the ballot box. Vote left and your life will be easier.

This marks the terminal stage of the disease. As the productive members of the body public start to amputate themselves from the diseased main corpus through immigration, tax shelters, retirement, asset protection strategies, the taxation base -- the lifeblood of the disease -- shrinks. It has to shrink anyway due to an aging population, but the effect is exacerbated through proactive actions of its healthy and productive members to remain disease-free. As the taxation base shrinks, the diseased element of the body public executes a viral escalation: they raise taxes, rather than cut down the deadly hemorrhagic fever of unrestricted public spending. This in turn causes yet more of the productive and healthy elements of the body public to shut down, making the deficit yet worse.

This eventually leads to a collapse. Sometimes the body public recovers in a different form, a cataclysmic metamorphosis into a new shape. Chile. At other times, an undead body self locomotors around the great universe -- Venezuela, Cuba. Sometimes the body is in a state of rigor mortis, but not quite dead: most of Europe.

There are secondary infections that characterize the disease: e.g., unbridled illegal immigration -- an infection of opportunity that can strike the killing blow. Remember AIDs does not kill in of itself, it simply disables the body's ability to fight off debilitating illnesses that can drain the body to death ... quickly. Military folly: when in doubt, attack something. History is replete with examples of this one ... wag the dog. Failure to impose reason over fantasy and fanaticism -- the rise of Western Islam.

When the body public dies -- the economic vitality is so drained that it cannot defend itself, the virus, true to form, finds another host. To be sure, the virus is attempting to infect other healthy bodies all along, but eventually the college professors, the journalists, the junk science mongers decamp to healthier climes. Having totally ruined their country of origin.

Look at Europe now. If you are young, smart and otherwise intelligent, you get the heck out of Dodge -- you can't find young ambitious Dutch and French university graduates that want to stay in their own land. But are they infected? Maybe they are not, but their politicians are, the electorate are and in the process have created moribund societies that will collapse inwards in the shortest possible period of time. They have a generation to go before the vast teeming ignorance that is modern Islam buries them -- an opportunistic infection allowed into the body public by the virus of socialism, of which American Liberalism is but a genetic mutation, but with its origin in the rotting corpse that is Europe.

Will America inoculate itself? Will the body public come to its senses and build a wall. Get rid of entitlements, shut down the bastard factories, cut taxes, give tax breaks to the productive and efficient to breed new members of a healthy body public? There is no candidate currently running for office that has this promise. They are all infected, it is only a question of to what degree. But there are signs of stirring: the productive still outnumber the diseased. Perhaps with the secondary illness in the credit and equity markets we have seen the perils that lie ahead. We were strong enough (at least I think) to weather this assault. Perhaps it is like a person that has a heart attack and suddenly realizes that he cannot eat Big Macs and hope to balance that with a Diet Coke.

But also look at Islam ... the virus of Liberalism (socialism) does not do too well there. They have powerful vaccines that we no longer use: religion (itself an alternatively benign or highly dangerous virus). A counter virus. A DNA-bomb. You show your Liberal head in Afghanistan. Try it. Just let me get away from you, say a 10 second headstart, 15 seconds if they have any napalm.

Interestingly, the paradigm of the viral infection is remarkably apt. There are few viral drugs that really work. There is no use in taking antibiotics -- they may only help with the secondary infections -- and they won't clear up the viral assault. We need to get our own immune system up and running to combat this chronic viral disease. And we can develop vaccines for new mutations, although we may not be able to totally rid ourselves of the root virus. Remember, if there is gangrene, you've got to do the painful solution. It won't be pretty. But in the long run, a healthy U.S. economy can support many programs and guest workers. A sick one just pays interest to China.

Stick a Fork in Her.

She is done. Piping hot out of the oven. Over. Cooked. Baked. Crispy. Fried. Toast. The little popper thingy has popped out of her swollen carcass.

You see, with 85% of precincts reporting, Obama has smoked her in North Carolina by a solid 16% of the votes. And Hil-liar has only managed to clear a 4 point swing in Indiana -- where she was counting on a landslide. Even though Rush Limbaugh's operation Chaos instructed Rebooblicans to cross over and vote for Hil-liar, just to mess things up. Turns out, the cross-overs voted for Obama in the same percentage as registered Democrats. Only the independents went solidly for Obama.

So what does this mean? It means that she CANNOT get enough pledged delegates to win. It means her hopes on a tidal wave of momentum pointing to her candidacy isn't there: the superdelegates will have to come out for Obama. Count on it. Starting tomorrow. She might drag this on, hoping to so damage Obugger that he cannot win in November, thereby clearing the path for her in 2012. But, that may backfire too.

Just put an apple in her mouth, a cherry on top.

Global Warming?

Yessir folks, it is here to stay. And we are going to spend $1 trillion and put millions out of work to "defend" against it. But let's have another brief look at "warming" that is "settled" scientific fact....

What is settled fact is that there has been no "warming" of the Earth in the past 10 years -- by anyone's measure. Even the IPCC's. At all. Yes, there has been glacier retreat -- demonstrable retreat and less arctic (as opposed to Antarctic) summer pack ice. That may be evidence of "change" but is not necessarily indicative of ANYTHING else. As previously stated, Greenland was not named such by Vikings with a delicious sense of irony -- and the population of the planet at that time was less than that of say, England today -- and what CO2 emissions?

In "fact," a reputable scientific institute has just come out and published a study that warns of a "temporary cooling" of the U.S. and Europe due to shifting oceanic currents that might last another 10 years or so. So let me see ... 10 years of cooling following 10 years of no increase to slight cooling would equate, on average, to 20 years of cooling.... OK, I got it. We are in grave risk of further global warming because of the CO2 and other emissions, while we (unfortunately?) enjoy a temporary cooling.

In "fact," The Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences in Kiel, Germany, stated that the temperature of the entire globe might stabilize for a while during the next decade. But only temporarily. The UK Met Office's Richard Wood is similarly keen to warn us of being too quick to dismiss the threat of global warming:``[t]hose natural climate variations could be stronger than the global-warming trend over the next 10-year period,'' Wood said in an interview. ``Without knowing that, you might erroneously think there's no global warming going on.'' You're right Mr. Wood. I just might erroneously think that. Thank you for reminding me.

Noel Keenlyside, a Leibniz associate, warns that cyclical or temporary fluctuations or variences may mask the warming trend in the short term. Wood agrees, saying, ``[n]atural variations over the next 10 years might be heading in the cold direction,'' Wood said. ``If you run the model long enough, eventually global warming will win.'' The only trouble with this I have is the notion of "model." Whose model? What are the parameters of this model? What data was used in the creation of this model? A model should relate to actual statistics ... and as Mark Twain (also attributed to Benjamin Disraeli) said, there are "lies, damn lies and statistics."

With that in mind (obviously), Leibniz almost declined to publish the study ... it was a little too "inconvenient" (pun intended). ``We thought a lot about the way to present this because we don't want it to be turned around in the wrong way,'' Keenlyside said. ``I hope it doesn't become a message of Exxon Mobil and other skeptics.'' The trouble here for Leibniz is that there is simply no other way to present the data, except for what it is and warn everyone that you don't believe the obvious conclusions, and you (and we should) choose to believe your model. And statistics.

Sort of like believing Hil-liar.