Weekend in Review

OK friends, events are moving so fast that its hard to keep up. This weekend marked several significant items of note.

1. Saturday would have been Ronald Reagan's 99th Birthday. Unless you are a Progressive, a Socialist, or Communist; no matter how you felt about some of his policies it is almost impossible to argue with his most famous mantra: the government that governs best governs least. So it is a fitting tribute that:

2. This weekend marked the very first Tea Party convention. I suppose that the Tea Party will use those famous words of Reagan's as one of their rally cries. Tea, in case you don't know, stands for Taxed Enough Already. The name also ties it back to those heady days of the 1770s when American citizens used their God-given right to redress grievances with the symbolic dumping of tea from an East India Company merchantman into Boston Harbor. The modern Republican party was America's first successful alternate party - formed by abolitionists that tore away from the too conciliatory 'Whigs' and eventually eliminated that party altogether. The TEA Party might have a shot at being the second successful alternate party (by that I mean able to challenge for the majority - something the current alternative parties have been unable to do) if they remember that what unites them (and makes them popular with many people) is more important than what divides them.

3. I believe this weekend also marked the 5 Billionth public appearance of Obama since he was sworn in as president. Boy, I thought I was tired of Clinton after the first TWO years!!! I mean seriously. What other president would weasel his way onto television while the whole of America only cares about the Super Bowl? Could we have a few days without having to look at, and WORSE, listen to this jug-eared nonce? So far his only presidential 'success' is to take personal hubris further into the universe than NASA will get after he guts their budget.

4. Largely unnoticed in the media was a 6.4 magnitude earthquake off the coast of Japan. I suppose its not earth-shattering news except that major earthquakes seem to be unusually numerous lately. It is fortunate that so far only one has hit a populated area because even that one has strained the western world's (therefore the world's) disaster response services. A second major disaster while the world is trying to dig Haiti out of the last one could overwhelm private agencies like the Red Cross and add buckets of money to our deficit since America would respond no matter the long term costs to us.

5. Also largely ignored in the US is the economic disaster looming in Europe. Greece is largely insolvent and facing the prospect of being run by EU commissioners - a surefire guarantee that they will never again be solvent. Spain is also on the verge of economic collapse and the London Telegraph has reported that this might cause a "Lehman-like tsunami" of economic collapse throughout the EU. This could decimate the Euro's value and shatter the already fraying political union of Europe. (On the plus side that would temporarily silence talk about replacing the dollar as the world's reserve currency.) Facing the very real prospect of being controlled by the French and Germans, many EU nations could arbitrarily opt out of the Union or hold plebiscite elections regarding leaving the union.

Those events, while damaging to the psyche of Europeans, would pale in comparison to the damaging economic ripples that would hit the world. This could deepen and extend the recession (in spite of what is being said by the white house and media we are still in the recession) or raise the spectre of the 'd-word'; worldwide Depression.

And yet all of that pales in comparison to another disaster I think is looming on the horizon. This disaster threatens the western world like nothing we've encountered before. It could trigger wars, destroy the Constitution and personal liberty like nothing we've considered before, and trigger events that will be equated with the horrors of the Biblical book of Revelation. How's that for a warm-fuzzy beginning to the week?