Silver Buzz Cafe

Jon Huntsman withdrew from the Republican primaries this morning. The best he achieved was a 5% backing in the South Carolina polls. Most of the time he wavered around 1%. However, despite the fact that many of his views are far too right wing for me, he made a lot of sense when given a chance to talk about his views and concerns. His term as President Obama’s Ambassador to China gave him ideal skills for this century, with China rising and the United States battling to maintain its place in the world.

Huntsman was battered by Republicans and the other candidates for revealing that he could speak Chinese. Republicans seem to regard anyone who can speak a foreign language as un-American, a label that they apply to anyone who doesn’t fit into their other hate-mongering categories. Newt Gingrich (or one of his Super PACs) is currently running an ad that likens Mitt Romney to Dukakis and Perry, using the tenuous line that they can all speak French. Doesn’t Dr. Newtron know that French is the language of diplomats?

His Super PAC also inferred that Huntsman may be a Manchurian Candidate, named after the book and movie where an American is tortured and brainwashed by the Chinese, then manipulated into running for President. The Republicans didn’t seem to worry, last time around, about the fact that John McCain had actually been captured and tortured by the Chinese-backed North Vietnamese.

We’ll miss Huntsman. He’s smart and will probably be back in 2012 as he has his own rich backer in the shape of his father. However, this time around he made the cardinal mistake of thinking that this election was like the ones that used to be run, before the Supreme Court ruled that corporations are people for the purpose of electioneering. Ironically, it was Newt Gingrich who first fell foul of the ruling, when Mitt Romney and his Super PAC blasted Gingrich with millions of Dollars worth of negative advertising. Dr. Newtron found his own billionaire and is fighting back with negative ads about Romney’s time at Bain Capital. Perry has found some backing, but Santorum hasn’t, so far. Ron Paul may keep up by garnering small donations from his many supporters, but doesn’t stand a chance of winning.

Things are going just the way that this right-wing Supreme Court seems to have wanted them to go. This election won’t be won on issues and leadership capabilities. The Republican nomination and perhaps the Presidency will go to the highest bidder. The billionaires who spend most will rule the country. Democracy exists overseas, but not here in the USA any more. Welcome to your future as a serf.

Ex-Speaker Newt Gingrich, one of the most vocal anti-Muslim voices, called today for a Federal ban on courts applying any aspect of Sharia Law. He’s simply trying to stir things up, of course, but I looked for a simple explanation of what Sharia Law actually involves and found this article from the BBC (OK, it’s a slightly leftist organization, but it has a mandate to educate). [BBC article.]

I was fascinated by the reference to Jewish family courts in the United Kingdom. They exist here too. [Article on Halakha Law]

Mitt Romney should lay a $10,000 bet that ex-(Lousy)-Speaker Gingrich won’t also call for a ban on Halakha Law. Though he does have a penchant for annoying minorities I don’t think that even Newt is stupid enough to run head-down into a hornet’s nest.

Tea Party Republicans rejoiced when the debt ceiling deal was signed into law. On paper, the cost cutting will shave $1 trillion off of the national debt. However, nobody mentioned that there will be immediate and extremely damaging consequences to the nation’s and the world’s economies. When S&P downgraded the credit rating of the United States there were immediate consequences. Although some experts say that the change was a mere slap on the wrist and others believe that a single investment management company pressured S&P into making the change, we can already see adverse changes as a result of the Tea Party “victory”. Short term loans are going to cost more. The $1 trillion in savings over 10 years will be completely wiped out by the extra interest charges that the US government will have to start paying right now.

Even worse that that, in the seven days since the announcement of the deal, the world’s equity markets have lost $4.5 trillion in value and they are very likely to lose more in the next few days as the realization of what has happened sinks in. From now on, every time the debt ceiling has to be raised there will be another long and wasteful battle, not all of which can be guaranteed to be settled in time to avoid a total calamity. The Dow-Jones suffered its ninth largest drop in history yesterday. If the markets don’t rally soon we’ll be plunged into a second recession, possibly worse than the first, as we are in a much weaker situation now. This is fiscal irresponsibility at its worst.

Tea Party members seem to think that all of this is a good idea. They hope to “starve the Beast”, as President Ronald Reagan put it. They think that by cutting funding for government they’ll shutdown programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. They believe that they can oust President Obama in 2012 by making it seem that all of this is his fault, when President Bush singlehandedly almost doubled the nation’s debt.

What the Tea Party members don’t seem to realize is that the first people to starve will be ordinary working Americans, all of whom have seen the values of their houses and other assets drop in the past couple of years. Well done Tea Party morons! You’ve taken another great step in turning over our nation to the corporations and the very richest Americans. Why don’t you change your name to the Serfer’s Party? That’s what you seem to be bent on doing. Turning most of us into serfs.

Footnote: Later today, CNN reported that – “Though observers said S&P’s downgrade shouldn’t matter all that much, the market wasn’t buying it. ‘Investors are having one reaction to the downgrade: Sell first and ask questions later,’ said Paul Zemsky, head of asset allocation with ING Investment Management.”