Finns Become Eurosceptics

Finland just finished a national election in which one of their several parties, the True Finns, was the strongest gainer. You can find the Associated Press story here on the website of the San Francisco Chronicle.

The euro zone is shakier than its advocates would like you to believe. The True Finns are known for opposing bailout funds for the Greeks and Portuguese; the party increased its representation in the 200 seat parliament from six seats to thirty-nine.

Finland joined the European Union in 1995, and the euro common currency zone when it began in 1999, perhaps seeking a counterweight to their huge, and sometimes belligerent neighbor, Russia. They have not, however, joined NATO as have several of their neighbors with concerns about Russian interference.

Peru Selects a President

Peru has been one of the true economic success stories in Latin America over the last decade or so. Now a presidential election has cast the continuation of that success into doubt.

Four candidates ran and the two who made it into the run-off are both questionable. The run-off candidate with the most votes was leftist Ollanta Humala, and running second was Keiko Fujimori, daughter of an imprisoned former president.

All four candidates received substantial numbers of votes. The question of how people who voted for numbers three and four will vote in the run-off is very critical.

Ollanta Humala concerns the Peruvian business community as he is viewed as a populist/leftist somewhat in the mold of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez. It is feared he would nationalize natural resource-based industries and destroy the Peruvian economy, much as Chavez has done in Venezuela.

Keiko Fujimori concerns voters because her father's regime was both corrupt and somewhat repressive. On the other hand, father Alberto Fujimori is also popular with Peruvians as he managed to largely eradicate a violent, home-grown Maoist movement called Sendero Luminoso. His daughter claims her father laid the ground work for the subsequent economic prosperity; I'd guess she is correct.

Peruvian voters' choice boils down to increased equality without much prosperity versus more prosperity accompanied with more inequality. Add in how the voter feels about Fujimori Sr. and you've probably got the decision model.

My message to the Peruvians: don't feel like the Lone Ranger. The U.S. has been faced with choices between less-than-stellar presidential candidates for two decades or more. You hope you choose the lesser of two evils and get on with life. Sources for this post include this from Reuters, and this from The Wall Street Journal.

Grief in Greece

During the 1940s, many of the partisan groups fighting the Germans across occupied Europe were Communist, sponsored and supported by the Soviet Union. Coming out of World War II, a substantial part of the Greek people associated opposition to the Germans with Communism.

U.S. President Harry Truman provided post-war aid to the non-Communist side in Greek politics who, with that help, carried the day. The Greek Communists didn't go away, their heirs still battle for control of Greece.

Go see this Wall Street Journal article which talks about Greece slowly sinking into anarchy and possible civil war. I am concerned our current President, unlike Democratic President Truman, won't see the need to continue the Cold War fight against Communism.

Noonan: Obama Likely to Lose

Peggy Noonan, former presidential speech writer and long-time Wall Street Journal columnist, takes a look at the 2012 election and declares Barack Obama is likely to lose. Why? She says of our president:

The more that people experience his leadership, the less they like his leadership.

Noonan has some minor concern the GOP might nominate someone off-the-wall, someone nutso, although she doesn't name names. The primary and caucus system by which parties select presidential candidates can sometimes favor those with extreme views.

Triage

I know the fear of "death panels" will be used to belabor any plans to reduce the cost of medical care. We want to think we are more special, more important than that.

We imagine a group of tired, bored bureaucrats using actuarial tables for our age and illness to decide we probably won't live. Given that decision, they stop spending money on us beyond routine hospice care. That imagining is likely quite accurate.

On the other hand, everybody dies. And we know that a relatively large proportion of our total lifetime medical expenses will be incurred in our final months of life. Think how much could be saved if heroic measures were not taken in everyone's final months.

Perhaps we could lower the society's total medical expenditures by a third - that is an enormous saving. The model is triage.

Quotes of the Day

The trenchant Mark Steyn, writing for the National Review online, about the President's recent budget speech:

This country is dying, and the president just went on TV and bragged to the world he has no plans to change it.

The rest of the article is good too. Steyn gives us essentially the same thought in different words, saying the speech:

More or less declared to the world that this administration has no plan, and has no plan to plan on getting a plan anytime soon.

The only way Democrats can have government function as they prefer, without running up huge deficits, is to raise taxes dramatically. Raising taxes is not at all popular with voters. Therefore, no plan.

The Need for a Deed

We've written about the imbalance between men and women in China and India. The results of this imbalance are beginning to be felt.

See this New York Times article about Chinese women refusing to date men who don't own the deed to a home, probably an apartment. Chinese parents are about to learn the truth of the maxim: "It's not nice to fool with Mother Nature."

Quote of the Day II

Jay Cost, writing for the Weekly Standard, about the President's unending stream of gaffes:

The right can’t stand him, the middle has abandoned him, and now even the left is criticizing him out in the open. Let’s face it: this president is just plain bad at politics.

Cost's whole article is worth your time. He substantiates the allegation of BHO being bad at politics.

Quote of the Day I

Dr. Charles Krauthammer, columnist and TV pundit, commenting on President Obama's budget speech at George Washington University:

I thought it was a disgrace, I've rarely heard a speech by a president so shallow, so hyper-partisan and so intellectually dishonest.

Dr. K isn't pulling any punches with that evaluation. My source is The Daily Caller.

What's It Worth?

Felix Salmon writes for Reuters that a slim majority of people don't realize their home is worth less than it once was, based on a survey done by Pew Research Center. Well...yes and no.

For people who bought their homes 10-15 years ago, that home may still be worth more than the owner paid for it. If those owners haven't taken the equity-based-on-inflation out of their home in a refi, they are still money ahead. They didn't pay a huge price for the home and they have accumulated some equity.

The real "underwater" owners are those who bought at or near the peak of the housing bubble, and those who refi'ed the bubble-created "value" from their homes and spent it. I suspect most of these are fully aware of their folly.

In any event, an owner can walk away from an underwater home and default on its mortgage. In this circumstance it is unlikely a lending agency will write him another mortgage. He must find another place to live, as a renter, where he only accumulates rent receipts. Given that reality, if he can afford to make his mortgage payments, he may continue to do so, underwater or not.

Tax and Spend

President Obama has weighed in with his approach to the budget. He wants to raise taxes, no surprise. You can check out the story here on CNN or here on Bloomberg.

Obama was quite partisan in his remarks at George Washington University, attacking Republicans for being "deeply pessimistic." His plan calls for the usual Democratic class warfare approach of steeply taxing the rich.

As we've noted here at COTTonLINE on several occasions, taxing the rich simply doesn't work. It inhibits economic growth; causing the rich to engage in various lawful tax avoidance behaviors - "tax dodges" - that add little to the overall economy.

Republicans are certain to attack Obama's plan as classical Democratic tax and spend behavior. Harried by the Tea Party, the GOP means to reduce the overall size of government, not just talk about it.

Obamacare Bombs

The Denver Post has a report, based on an Associated Press/GfK poll, concerning the dropping popularity of Obamacare health reforms. They note that:

Support for Obama's health-insurance expansion has slipped to 35 percent, while opposition stands at 45 percent, and another 17 percent are neutral. Among seniors, support has dipped below 30 percent for the first time.

As we know, the finding for seniors matters because, unlike younger Americans, most seniors vote.

It's A Gas

T. Boone Pickens, fabled oil speculator, has some interesting things to say about getting the U.S. to convert to using much more domestically produced natural gas, and consequently much less imported oil. Assuming his numbers are accurate, he makes a compelling case.

Pickens' interest in gas isn't altruistic; he holds a large position in natural gas and would benefit hugely if we did as he urges. Just because he has a dog in the fight doesn't mean his reasoning is wrong. It does mean we should be sure what he's told us is accurate and is the whole story. See his reasoning here in Forbes.

Hanson: Poor Old California

Victor Davis Hanson, who lives in California's great central valley and views his state with a jaundiced eye, writes about it for Pajamas Media. He has an historian's grasp of what was, what is, and how we got from there to here.

I've lived through the times he talks about and Hanson has it right - almost twice the people but very little more infrastructure. What was adequate forty years ago, is adequate no longer.

BTW, a cold-eyed realist would dam every major canyon coming down out of the Sierra, catch the run-off for the dry years, and generate cheap, clean power with the falling water. Cold-eyed realists aren't popular in today's California, hence the problems Hanson catalogues.

Old News

Lucianne.com provided a link to an article in the Washington Times concerning the counterterrorism unit of the Los Angeles Police Department. For a liberal city in a liberal state, I find it interesting they are still doing this:

Los Angeles has one of the few big-city police departments with a dedicated counterterrorism intelligence program.

The LAPD started doing this kind of counterterrorism work nearly 100 years ago. My father, who had friends on the force, told stories of the unit tracking various Communist fronts in the LA area in the 1920s. Tracking them and arranging for them to be disrupted.

The First Half

When it became obvious that the Obama administration was going to handle terrorist suspects with kid gloves, giving them civil rights they certainly don't give us, we made a prediction. We predicted that fewer of the "bad guys" would be taken prisoner. We were right.

This article in The Los Angeles Times reports that the CIA is conducting fewer interrogations. What it doesn't say is the other half of our prediction, namely that our troops would take fewer prisoners by not allowing surrenders. Don't be surprised when this second part is finally reported. It is a logical consequence of prisoners not being valuable.

Quote of the Day II

Economist Robert Samuelson, a columnist for Newsweek, writing about our President's response to the dilemmas posed by our government deficit:

Obama urges an "adult" conversation and acts like a child, denying the unappealing choices.

Comparing the Democrats' whining to Rep. Ryan's GOP budget plan, Samuelson concludes:

Ryan is a model of intellectual rigor and political courage.

It remains to be seen whether this courage will cause the electorate to recoil in horror from the GOP.

Quote of the Day I

Governor Jerry Brown, being interviewed on the website of CBS-TV Los Angeles, about the state the state and nation:

We are facing what I would call a ‘regime crisis.’ The legitimacy of our very democratic institutions are in question.

I don't think I agree, but I can see how it could look that way from the Governor's office in Sacramento.

The Kennedys on TV, A Concluding Review

We viewed the final episode of The Kennedys last evening. It did not disappoint. All these years later I can still remember the shock I felt in grad school when Bobby was murdered in an L.A. hotel kitchen. That is where the mini-series ends.

An odd thing about the series was that, watching it, you would never have known Jack and Bobby had a younger brother Teddy. Can he have been so invisible during this time?

Perhaps the plan is to do a Kennedys 2.0 series including Ted at Chappaquiddick, his failed run for president, his evolution into grey eminence of the senate plus the death of John, Jr.? The family has been an ongoing soap opera.

BTW, it is clear why the Kennedy family and its hangers-on didn't want this series to air. Camelot loses magic when you see that the knights were flawed, the armor rusty, the table not round, and the motives often less-than-pure.

Rasmussen: Obama at Another Record Low

Check out this morning's Rasmussen Report. It reports our President has the fewest people ever (19%) strongly approving his performance. Rasmussen's polling found that:

There has been a sharp decline in enthusiasm among liberal voters.

That's not what the White House wants to see as the President announces his bid for reelection. Meanwhile, Rasmussen's Presidential Approval Index comes in at -20, not quite a record low but not a ringing endorsement either.