THE PERFECT STORM

In 1997, Sebastian Junger wrote published a book about a furious storm that occurred in 1991.  The title of his book was “The Perfect Storm.”  He was inspired by meteorologist Bob Case from the Boston office of the National Weather Service.  Case described this storm as the confluence of three different events that created what he called the perfect situation to generate a major storm.  There was warm from a low-pressure system coming from one direction, combined with a flow of cool and dry air generated by a high-pressure system from another direction, that merged with tropical moisture from Hurricane Grace.  One thing is sure, it was a major storm with some reports of seas exceeding 100 ft.

Today, the Obama administration is facing the real possibility of a perfect political storm, much of it generated by its own mismanagement, arrogance, and incompetence.  We have a foreign policy that can only be described as staggering from failure to failure.  Things are so bad in so many places that it is hard to choose which is worse, but Afghanistan is certainly in the running.  Our commanders no longer even discuss victory: 

 http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/may/20/three-way-stalemate-in-afghanistan/

Things are deteriorating rapidly and the idiotic rules of engagement by the Obama administration are making a bad situation worse.  The following article does a good job of describing the problem.   What a shock to learn that trying to win a war by being careful to not hurt the enemy is not proving to be terribly effective:

http://defensetech.org/2010/05/19/intense-firefight-in-eastern-afghanistan-shows-limits-of-strict-rules-of-engagement/

Unfortunately I predict numerous opportunities for the new “Courageous Restraint” medal, most of which are likely to be awarded posthumously.

The economy, contrary to recent press reports, shows zero signs of recovery.  Instead there are more and more signs that the entire western world is drowning in debt.  Even Obama administration officials are admitting that we cannot sustain current debt levels.  It was stunning to hear Obama lecture Spain about the need to control spending.  I wonder if he removed all the mirrors from the White House?  The Obama administration still plans to turn things around by increasing regulation and spending more money.  (Why not, his previous plans have worked so well!)  More and more economists are no longer predicting a downturn, they are predicting a crash.  Some experts are estimating that the stock market may be over-valued by 40%.  That seems a little extreme, until you realize the same experts were the ones predicting the housing bubble.  Some are even predicting a crash within hours:

http://www.cnbc.com/id/37233453

Here on the home front, the Obama administration is pursuing policies that are total opposed by a huge percentage of the American people.  Health care reform was jammed down our throats, in the middle of the night.  It is an unmitigated disaster.  No one is even pretending that this is working out well.  The main stream media rarely mentions health care reform any more.

The Obama administration is now focused on ignoring the public sentiment toward illegal immigration.  MSNBC conducted a poll which resulted in 51% of the people supporting the Arizona immigration law.  (Odds are the questions was something like: “how do you feel about this new Arizona law that encourages police to use racial profiling to identify illegal aliens?)  They were distressed that the result was this high, for a law they considered to be so terrible, but it is actually worse than that.  You see they ignored the fact than an additional 9% of respondents said the Arizona law didn’t go far enough.  That means a poll run by the official voice of the Obama administration verifies that 60% of the American public totally disagrees with him on this subject.  So what does Obama do?  He doubles down by personally attacking the Arizona law, only to have several key administration officials sheepishly admit that they have not even read the actual law.  It just “seems” wrong.  Incredibly, the Obama administration even apologized to China, who has a pathetic human rights record itself, for this shameful Arizona law.  The final straw was when Obama invited Mexico President Calderon to visit the White House and not only let Calderon rip the Arizona law, he joined in with a few amen’s of his own.  This idiotic display had to stick in the craw of a lot of people.

 Of course all those personal scandals aren’t going away either.  The lastest is the bailout of the ShoreBank in Chicago which has close connections with Obama and particularly with Valerie Jarrett.

 http://www.foxbusiness.com/story/markets/industries/finance/lenders-agree-prop-ailing-shorebank/

 The banks providing this very convenient bailout just happen to be the same banks that got billions from the Obama administration.  Pure coincidence!

 Now, the BP oil spill may turn out to be a far bigger disaster than is being reported.  Some scientists are estimating that the well is releasing 95,000  barrells of oil every day.  That is 20 times higher than BP, or the Obama administration, was reporting.  The Obama administration has done absolutely nothing to solve this problem, and they don’t appear to have anything resembling a plan to deal with it.  So far the primary Obama response has been to launch a major finger pointing attack at BP and others for “finger pointing.” (mirror mirror?)

When you add all these things together, the result is a perfect political storm.  Notice how the main stream media rarely praises Obama any more.  They are too busy trying to explain why Elena Kagan, who’s own writing prove she is a radical, left-wing socialist should not be considered a radical, left-wing socialist.  After all, just like Obama, she has such a nice smile.

We all need to fasten our seat belts because there is a real possibility that the darkest days for our economy are ahead of us.  In addition the recent surge in terrorist attacks shows two disturbing trends.  First, there are more and more attacks.  (So far: none from the violent Tea Party advocates)  Second, we have only avoided disaster by the combination of a luck and incredibly stupid terrorists.  Sadly, the odds of a successful terrorist attack are probably higher now than they were prior to 9-11.

It would take a really skilled an experienced captain of the ship of state to sail through the perfect storm that is developing.  Unfortunately Obama is neither skilled or experienced.  In addition, he doesn’t appear to be considering changing direction any time soon.  

 TDM