The variety of possible topics for Monday’s commentary was so overwhelming that it’s hard to know where to begin. Let’s take them one at a time:
Pakistan: Until recently, we’d always thought of the al-Qaeda and Taliban insurgents as a rag-tag bunch of skirmishers, more like commandos in their operational style than armies. Think again. We now read that they are holding 30,000 Pakistani troops at bay in South Waziristan. If there really is a War on Terror, this is the biggest and most important battle so far. And if Pakistan loses, the world will become a far more dangerous place. Emboldened and refreshed, Radical Islamists would find it much easier to recruit new fighters and suicide bombers. The terrorists would also be further along the way toward seizing control of a Pakistani nuclear weapons capability that has been under development for 35 years. The potential consequences of this are almost too horrifying to think about, and we can only pray that Pakistan’s army derails or at least delays a Terrorist Bomb by delivering a knockout punch.
The Health Care Juggernaut: Baring his canines, Obama has accused the insurers of being a bunch of dirty, rotten liars. The insurance companies claimed merely that Obamacare would significantly raise the cost of healthcare for most American households. Does anyone actually doubt this? If so, it’s scary to think that they vote. This note from our friend Rich Cash nicely sums it up: “A health care system plan written by a committee whose head says he doesn’t understand any of it, to be passed by a Congress that hasn’t and won’t read it, but exempts themselves from it, signed by a president who smokes and also hasn’t read it, with funding administered by a Treasury Secretary who didn’t pay his taxes, overseen by an obese Surgeon General, and massively financed by a country that’s nearly broke. Great plan! What could possibly go wrong?”
Wage Plunge Steepest in 20 Years: This was the lead story in the usually chipper USA Today over the weekend. We leave it to the inflationists to tell us how it will translate into higher prices for consumer goods – higher prices for anything, actually. Perhaps The Guvvamint actually will have to add three zeroes to our bank accounts to breathe a little inflation back into the economy. Nothing else has worked, as everyone but the inflationists could readily attest.
Holiday Air Fares Soar: The inflationists better not read beyond the headline, since the Wall Street Journal story explains that the airlines’ strategy is to ground as many planes as it takes to keep the supply of seats tight. That means layoffs and unpaid furloughs for pilots, flight attendants, baggage handlers, mechanics and other personnel. If United eventually has ten planes in the air filled with passengers who have paid an average of $20,000 per seat, is that inflation?
The Hoax: Now a Colorado prosecutor wants to bring criminal charges against the Heenes for staging a supposed hot-air-balloon hoax. But just who is the victim here? And who, for that matter, is the perpetrator? Doesn’t a perenially lazy news media deserve nearly all of the blame for raising the visibility of an unverified story to the threshold of War of the Worlds hysteria?
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to Chris T Absolutely right. Thank you for elaborating the points.