HALF-FULL REPORT 06/22/12

We’re going to go global before we get to the ever-unfolding disaster of Zero – and we’ll start with a headline this morning that split my face in half with a smile:  Gazprom Biggest Loser As Shale Gas Upends World Markets.

The Russians are fracked. The news has been full of Putin the Punk pushing his dinky weight around – trying to send combat helicopters to Syria (only to be cleverly blocked by Britain), backing Iran getting nukes (as long as the nukes are "peaceful"), extorting Europe with sky-high gas prices.

Gazprom, the Russkie oil monopoly, is Putin’s cash cow.  Yet while its sales are collapsing due to US and Chinese fracking, Gazprom continues "to take a ‘head in the sands’ position on shale gas," the story above reports.  Russia doesn’t have the technology, the expertise, nor legal protection for investors to frack in Siberia at anywhere near a competitive extraction cost.

Goodnight, Gazprom.  That’s good news for the world.

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In addition to natural gas, Russia is also a major oil exporter, second only to Saudi Arabia exporting 9.9 million barrels a day.

The US benchmark oil price is WTI – West Texas Intermediate, which is today (6/22) just above $79 a barrel.  Europe has a different benchmark, Brent, which is higher due to import costs.  Brent is today just above $90.  Russia’s current budget requires a Brent price of $117 to be balanced.  Current Brent puts them over $100 billion in the hole.  The Kremlin’s budget is $376 billion. That’s a deep hole.

One reason for that lower Brent price is Europe’s deepening economic crisis.  From Greece to Spain to the focus this week on Italy.  This is the 7^th largest economy in the world, the 3^rd largest in the EU eurozone (behind Germany and France).  It has ceased being a democracy, with its government run by an unelected technocrat named Mario Monti who is frantically demanding Angela Merkel’s Germany bankrupt itself bailing his country out.

The con is called "debt mutualization" (meaning Germany buys the debt of EU deadbeats) through a fraud called the ESM – European Stabilization Mechanism – and thank heavens it was put on hold yesterday (6/21) by Germany’s Constitutional Court.  And not a moment too soon, with the reports coming out this week that The German Economy Has Cracked.

Back to Italy.  The guy to pay attention to there is not Mario Monti but a professional comedian named Beppe Grillo.  He’s started his own political party, The Five Star Movement (Movimento 5 Stelle), that is electing officials all over Italy (like the new Mayor of Parma, where real Parmesan cheese comes from).

He says dumb things about capitalism (is there a European who doesn’t?), but he and his party not only advocate taking an axe to public spending but that Italy default on its $1+ trillion debt and return to the lira.  The sentiment for this is exploding in Italy.  A recent study by Pew Research, "European Unity on the Rocks," found that only 30% of Italians want to keep the euro.  This "Esperanto currency" is not going to be around for much longer.

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Neither is Europe itself as presently constituted.  The 27-nation European Union is an economic suicide pact run by unelected bureaucrats in Brussels and judges in Luxembourg.  The judges sitting on the European Union Court of Justice issued a decree yesterday (6/21) ordering that, on top of the four-to-six-week paid vacation that all employers in the EU must provide their employees by law, if the worker happens to get sick on his/her vacation, the employer must pay for another.

The edict applies to all 27 EU countries, every single one of which is suffering the worst unemployment since WWII.  Europe is sinking into an anti-capitalist, anti-democratic, debt-ridden, uncompetitive, impoverished morass.

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Then there’s Nigel.  Nigel Farage (rhymes with garage) is a Member of the European Parliament representing Southeast England, and is the leader of the UK Independence Party.  Here is what the UKIP stands for:

It’s what the Republican Party should stand for.
 
On Tuesday (6/19) at the G20 Summit in Los Cabos, Mexico, the president of the European Commission, Jose Manuel Barroso, blamed America for Europe’s ongoing euro & debt crisis. The next day, Nigel was interviewed on Fox News for a response.  You have to watch Nigel mellifluously explain that Barroso "is a delusional idiot" who is so communist he admires Mao Tse Tung, that the Eurozone is "a giant Ponzi Scheme" and "the whole thing is going bust."

We need to persuade Nigel to immigrate to America and run for Congress.  He’d sure make a great replacement for Boehner, don’t you think?

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To give Boehner his due, however – yesterday (6/21), he gave a press conference in which he denounced Zero’s invoking Executive Privilege to prevent Congress from access to Fast & Furious documents as "an admission that White House officials were involved in decisions that misled the Congress and have covered up the truth." "What," he asked, "is the Obama Administration hiding in Fast & Furious?"

Boehner knows just what they are hiding.  So does everybody else in town.

On May 3, 2011, Eric Holder testified under oath at a Congressional hearing that he had never heard of the Fast & Furious gunrunning operation to Mexican drug cartels until "for the first time over the last few weeks." Subsequently, evidence emerged that Holder received at least five memos briefing him on the operation going back to July 2010. Since F&F had been instituted in the fall of 2009, it’s quite likely he knew of it even earlier and was deeply involved.

Darryl Issa and Chuck Grassley want an answer to the famous Watergate question asked of Nixon:  What did he (in this case Holder) know and when did he know it?  The answer lies in the DOJ "internal discussion" documents that their Oversight Committees are subpoenaing, the release of which Zero blocked with his Executive Privilege gambit.

Issa, Grassley, Boehner, along with just about everyone of their colleagues and staffers is convinced that these DOJ docs will prove that Holder perjured himself.  Now that President Barack Richard Milhous Hussein is stonewalling, making massive media attention on the scandal unavoidable, this game will quickly reach its conclusion.

As even Zero’s home town paper, the Chicago Trib, says today (6/22), "The more administration officials stonewall, the furiouser this scandal will grow."

The game – Boehner’s and the Capitol Hill Pubs’ game – is to force Holder to resign and soon so he can’t engineer massive vote fraud in November, or else he faces impeachment for perjury.

The only chance Zero has to win now is via massive voter fraud, which is why Holder is suing states for their Voter ID laws and shoveling tons of money to Dem/ACORN fraud efforts.  With Holder gone, this effort disintegrates, so Zero is doing everything he can to keep him running Justice.

A buddy of mine’s wife went to law school at Columbia with Holder.  She says he’s not very bright and a lousy lawyer.  The bet is that he’ll cave and crack. 

The family of murdered Border Patrol agent Brian Terry – killed by a Fast & Furious gun – has called for Holder’s resignation.  The 17,000-member organization of Border Patrol agents has called for Holder’s resignation.  Yesterday (6/21), Marco Rubio became the sixth US Senator to demand Holder resign – as have Mitt Romney and 129 Members of Congress.

That’s so far. Their numbers will grow. The Pubs know the stakes and they’ve got Holder by the short hairs.  Zero, with his desperate EP, has forced the issue.  Holder Justice will soon be history.  And Zero’s path to victory via voter fraud will be as steep as the North Face of Everest.

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Actually, Zero made that climb to victory via voter fraud even steeper with his other bozo blunder of the week:  his Amnesty pander to illegal aliens for illegal votes.  Charles Krauthammer condemned it as "naked lawlessness."  Mickey Kaus decries the maddeningly dishonest deviltry in the details of Zero’s decree.

One mistake that everyone seems to be making is to call what Zero has done an Executive Order.  As of today (6/22), it is not published in the White House EO list.  What Zero did was to authorize Janet Napolitano to issue a DHS Memorandum (dated 6/15) exercising "prosecutorial discretion" regarding illegals 30 and younger.

Note that this "discretion" – meaning "backdoor amnesty" – will be applied to any illegal who "is currently in school, has graduated from high school, has obtained a general education development certificate, or is an honorably discharged veteran of the Coast Guard or Armed Forces of the United States."

In other words, Zero and Napolitano think going to high school is of equal worth as serving in the US military.

In any regard, EO or Memo, it’s just as lawless and just a big a blunder, as it dumps well over a million illegals into the job market to compete with Blacks and Hispanics in a time of record unemployment for both.  Brilliant move by President Pander.

The RNC should do everything it can to make this clear to every unemployed legal citizen in the country:  Zero just screwed you once more.

Already, the 66% support Zero got from the under-30 set in 2008 is down to 53% and dropping. Zero has handed Romney and the RNC a golden opportunity to make that drop off a cliff.

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More bad news for Zero & the Dems this week.  As the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) reports yesterday (6/21): Unions Lose Big in Knox v. SEIU.

The Supremes 5-4 decision guts unions’ ability to steal money from their members for lefty political advocacy without their permission. Another Dem cash cow on life support.

And the Dems’ lousy, terrible, no-good month isn’t over yet.  We’ve got another week of June left – and in that week will come the SCOTUS decision on Arizona’s SB 1070 Immigration Law.  If upheld, states all over the country will be empowered to enforce federal law on illegals – and to ignore Zero’s "prosecutorial discretion" edict.

Isn’t there some other ruling the Supremes will issue next week?  A ruling that could just nuke the Zero Presidency?  What’s it called again?  Oh, yes… Obamacare. 

It’s likely they’ll invalidate the Individual Mandate – and since the whole 2,000 page fascist monstrosity has no severability clause, you’d think that it all goes into the ash can.  But don’t be surprised if they weasel out of this in some tortured way, to make a "narrowly tailored" decision.

Keep your fingers and toes crossed-for if they junk it all, get out the butter and jam as Zero really is toast, while a lot of companies’ stock will rocket.