In the coming years, reality will become too big a monster for Obama and his tax-and-spend Democrats to ignore. As was the case with overextended debt in the housing market, the overextended debt caused by Obama’s “stimulus” and new entitlement programs will reach a tipping point in the next few years. According to the government’s own accounting, servicing the national debt will rise from its current rate of $200 billion annually to $700 billion a year by 2019. Based on the Obama administrations dishonest past calculations, that number is likely to be much higher.

With the exception of its editorial board, even the New York Times is beginning to recognize the danger posed by Obama’s massive additions to our national debt:

“The potential for rapidly escalating interest payouts is just one of the wrenching challenges facing the United States after decades of living beyond its means.
The surge in borrowing over the last year or two is widely judged to have been a necessary response to the financial crisis and the deep recession, and there is still a raging debate over how aggressively to bring down deficits over the next few years. But there is little doubt that the United States’ long-term budget crisis is becoming too big to postpone.

“Americans now have to climb out of two deep holes: as debt-loaded consumers, whose personal wealth sank along with housing and stock prices; and as taxpayers, whose government debt has almost doubled in the last two years alone, just as costs tied to benefits for retiring baby boomers are set to explode.”

Soon, the annual servicing of the debt will cost more than we spend fighting the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. This begins a new war – a war on the freedom of Americans by conscripting them into financing the Democratic Party’s aristocratic program to buy the votes of targeted constituencies with the scarce dollars of us taxpaying surfs. Obama’s spending spree is his administration’s way of telling Americans they can “eat cake.”

– Mr. Curmudgeon

The Obama administration is setting up a “monitoring and verification” regime, which will determine whether the United States sends or suspends foreign aid to Afghanistan – a nation rife with corruption and a growing drug trade. It’s such a great idea, why don’t we do the same here? According to the Los Angeles Times, “The United States is developing a set of benchmarks to ensure that Afghan President Hamid Karzai keeps a promise delivered at his inauguration to fight corruption and inefficiency…” Back in February, when congress passed the 800 billion dollar “stimulus” bill, President Obama promised that the behemoth spending measure would keep U.S. unemployment under 8 percent. It now stands at 10.2 percent (though some say the number is more like 17.5 percent).

During Obama’s inaugural speech, he said, “The state of the economy calls for action, bold and swift, and we will act — not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth. We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together.” So far, the only ones getting fat off taxpayers are his cronies at ACORN. Suppose we attach “benchmarks” to the success of “hope and change?” What if the congress applied the same standards of honesty and efficiency to President Obama as it does Afghanistan’s Karzai?

Of President Karzai, U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan, Karl Eikenberry, said, “Ordinary Afghans must be convinced that the powerful can no longer exploit their positions…the less fortunate in this country struggle to find work and to feed their families.” Wow, he could have been talking about Obama, ACORN and the struggling American taxpayer.

Obama’s stern anti-corruption policy for a Third World president would be much more credible if he applied the same yardstick to his own administration.

– Mr. Curmudgeon

Having worked with computers on a daily basis, I’ve come to a startling conclusion: they’re dumb as bricks. Without proper hardware and software, computers are just expensive paperweights. Yet, so much weight is accorded the computer models of climate scientists that governments around the world are eager to sign treaties that will destroy jobs and give dictatorial control over the lives of millions of souls to U.N. autocrats answerable only to themselves. Recently, evidence came to light that environmental scientists are cooking the data that generates those dire end-of-the-world scenarios Hollywood so eagerly translates into film – using computer-generated special effects, like environmental scientists.

According the Manchester Guardian:

“Hundreds of private emails and documents allegedly exchanged between some of the world’s leading climate scientists during the past 13 years have been stolen by hackers and leaked online, it emerged today.

“The computer files were apparently accessed earlier this week from servers at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unite, a world-renowned centre focused on the study of natural and anthropogenic climate change.
Climate change skeptics who have studied the emails allege they provide “smoking gun” evidence that some of the climatologists colluded in manipulating data to support the widely held view that climate change is real, and is being largely caused by the actions of mankind.”

In one interesting e-mail from 1999, a climate scientist passed on some valuable information on how to mask declines in atmospheric temperatures:

“I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature [the science journal] trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (i.e., from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline [in temperatures].”

Though the scientist in question was not identified, the Guardian says he was contacted but refused to comment.

“It does look incriminating on the surface,” Bob Ward, director of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change, told the Guardian, “You can’t tell what they are talking about. Scientists say ‘trick’ not just to mean deception. They mean it as a clever way of doing something – a short cut can be a trick.” That’s a nice ice trick too, Bob.

In another e-mail exchange, climatologist Kevin Trnberth, working at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, can’t understand why global temperatures are dropping in violation of his dire global warming computer models:

“The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t… there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate”

You see, if the temperatures are dropping – in direct violation of global warming models – it must be do to faulty thermometers.

One e-mail went so far as to urge all receivers of data non-supportive of global warming to be immediately deleted:

“Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4?
Keith will do likewise. He’s not in at the moment – minor family crisis.
Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don’t have his new email address.

“We will be getting Caspar to do likewise.”

In addition, here’s a nice one regarding the best way to deal with skeptics within the scientific community (I thought Al Gore said there was no dissent among climatologists):

“This was the danger of always criticizing the skeptics for not publishing in the ‘peer-reviewed literature.’ Obviously, they found a solution to that–take over a journal! So what do we do about this? I think we have to stop considering “Climate Research” as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal. We would also need to consider what we tell or request of our more reasonable colleagues who currently sit on the editorial board…What do others think?

“I will be emailing the journal to tell them I’m having nothing more to do with it until they rid themselves of this troublesome editor. It results from this journal having a number of editors. The responsible one for this is a well-known skeptic in NZ. He has let a few papers through by Michaels and Gray in the past. I’ve had words with Hans von Storch about this, but got nowhere. Another thing to discuss in Nice!”

James Delingpole of the London Daily Telegraph wrote a piece entitled “Climategate: the final nail in the coffin of ‘Anthropogenic Global Warming?”

“I asked in my title whether this will be the final nail in the coffin of Androgenic Global Warming. This was wishful thinking, of course. In the run up to Copenhagen, we will see more and more hysterical (and grotesquely exaggerated) stories such as this in the Mainstream Media. And we will see ever-more-virulent campaigns conducted by eco-fascist activists, such as this risible new advertising campaign by Plane Stupid showing CGI polar bears falling from the sky and exploding because kind of, like, man, that’s sort of what happens whenever you take another trip on an airplane.”

It will take a while for a handful of interested media and bloggers to go through the 1,079 e-mails and 72 documents, but it should be interesting what nuggets come to light in the day leading up to U.N. climate conference in Copenhagen.

As Klaus Rohrich at the Canadian Free Press recently reported, global warming is really a pretext for a massive welfare program seeking to transfer the wealth of advanced nations to backward Third World basket cases:

“Recently the ‘Asian Peoples’ Climate Court’ in Bangkok found the G8 guilty of ‘planetary malpractice’ in violation of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. A mock trial heard a case ‘filed’ on behalf of children from Bangladesh, Indonesia, Nepal, the Philippines and Thailand.

“Antonio Oposa, a Filipino environmental lawyer believes that such legal action isn’t far off, as developing nations sue so-called ‘over-consuming countries’ for environmental damages.”

It’s bad enough Obama and his Democrats are going to squeeze us out of our last dollar in order to fund bailouts and health care boondoggles, but do we need to fund the international welfare to appease aspiring Filipino environmental lawyers?

– Mr. Curmudgeon

It’s becoming clear where the pressure to award Constitutional protections to Guantanamo Bay’s jihadists came from – inside Obama’s Justice Department. While testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Republican Sen. Charles Grassley demanded of Attorney General Eric Holder, “I want to know more about who is advising you on these decisions. There are attorneys at the Justice Department working on this issue who either represented Guantanamo detainees, or worked for groups who advocated for them. This prior representation I think creates a conflict of interest problem for these individuals.” Holder said he would “certainly consider that request.” Sen. Grassley continued to press, “But I asked you for information. Will you provide it?” Holder continued to stall, “I will consider that request.” Holder than described the pro-jihadist elements within the Justice Department as “patriots” — proving that patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.

While at the legal firm Covington & Burling, Holder’s associate attorneys participated in the legal wrangling involving 16 detainees from Yemen. However, the list of lawyers with jihadist legal conflicts of interests is an interesting one.

The law firm Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr provides an assortment of “patriots” fighting for jihadists. David Ogden is awaiting confirmation on his appointment as Assistant Attorney General; Justice’s chief of staff Stuart Delery, senor council Eric Columbus and council Chad Golder worked to win victory in the Boumediene v. Bush Supreme Court decision that granted jihadists a right to challenge their detention under the habeas corpus protections of the U.S. Constitution.

The firm Jenner & Block has provided Associate Attorney General nominee Thomas Perrellie whose lawyers represented six Gitmo detainees. Associate Deputy Attorney General Donald Verilli also served at the firm.

Deputy Solicitor General Neal Katyal, who represents the Obama administration before the Supreme Court, argued the Hamdan v Bush case while a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center. The Hamdan decision accorded Geneva Convention protections for stateless jihadists and ruled that military commissions violated the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

According to the Legal Times, more than a dozen such “patriots” now work for Obama’s Justice Department, where arguments are crafted to make our legal system fit Obama’s make-believe world. It’s a patriotic dream in which jihadists and U.S. citizens are part of the exciting melting pot we call America.

– Mr. Curmudgeon

You may not know his name, but Charles Murray is something of a hero. He got the attention of California’s tax-and-spend legislators by cutting their pay by 18%. “We’re broke. This cut needs to happen now. It’s the right thing to do,” Murray told the Los Angeles Times. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s pay went from $212,100 to $173,900. California’s Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg’s salary dropped from $133,600 to $109,500. Murray is the chairman of the Citizens Compensation Commission. State Attorney General Jerry Brown declared the cuts legal and proper.

A spokesman for the tax-and-spenders, Senate Secretary Greg Schmidt, declared that legislators weren’t going to take their celery cut lying down. “I don’t know how we will proceed yet. There are multiple opinions on these matters…it may end up decided by a court.” Voters in the Golden State established the Citizens Compensation Commission when they approved Proposition 112 in 1990. Now the states’ arrogant rulers intend to challenge whether the governed have a right to consent. The Democratic political machine won’t tolerate interference by the people. They bought your vote, California, fair and square. The cost may have brought California to its current state of financial ruin, but holding power over you – the voter – is worth every one of your hard-earned pennies.

Some questions sane individuals might ask dwellers of the Left Coast are these: how much longer will you put up with your government’s arrogance? Are you awake? If you are, what are you smoking?

If Californians did their duty, Charles Murray wouldn’t have to do his.

– Mr. Curmudgeon

In an Op-Ed piece written for the New York Times, Steven Simon – a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations – condemns Republicans for opposing the Obama administration’s presto chango redefinition of Jihadist warriors as mere criminals. “First, let’s dispose of the straw men. John Boehner, the Republican leader in the House, accused the Obama administration of ‘treating terrorism as a law enforcement issue’ — as though ‘law enforcement’ is an epithet.” The term “law enforcement” became an epithet by virtue of Obama’s determination to define al-Qaeda’s 9/11 sneak attack on America as a crime and not an act of war.

Since al-Qaeda and its affiliated jihadist brothers see themselves as “holy warriors,” it is nothing short of astonishing that we don’t take them at their word. According to Article 4, section 2 of the 1949 Geneva Convention:

“Members of other militias and members of other volunteer corps, including those of organized resistance movements, belonging to a Party to the conflict and operating in or outside their own territory, even if this territory is occupied, provided that such militias or volunteer corps, including such organized resistance movements, fulfill the following conditions: (a) that of being commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates; (b) that of having a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance; (c) that of carrying arms openly; (d) that of conducting their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war.”

In violating the rules of decency, war and the Geneva Convention, if captured jihadist are entitled to a day in court, that court should be a military tribunal.

During World War II, seven German saboteurs captured on U.S. soil (Operation Pastorius) demanded they be tried by a criminal court. The issue made it to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In their 1942 Ex parte Quirin opinion, the high court ruled:

“Lawful combatants are subject to capture and detention as prisoners of war by opposing military forces. Unlawful combatants are likewise subject to capture and detention, but in addition they are subject to trial and punishment by military tribunals for acts which render their belligerency unlawful. The spy who secretly and without uniform passes the military lines of a belligerent in time of war, seeking to gather military information and communicate it to the enemy, or an enemy combatant who without uniform comes secretly through the lines for the purpose of waging war by destruction of life or property, are familiar examples of belligerents who are generally deemed not to be entitled to the status of prisoners of war, but to be offenders against the law of war subject to trial and punishment by military tribunals.”

The court denied the unlawful combatants the protections of the U.S. Constitution and handed them over to the jurisdiction of our military. They were quickly tried and the Germans were executed.

The military tribunal process does presume defendants innocence until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. However, military tribunals serve as judge and jury, where a two-thirds vote is all that is needed to convict. Previous statements and trial evidence can be admitted, and the exclusionary rule – which keeps “illegally seized evidence” out of civilian criminal courts – is allowed before a military tribunal. Though there is no appellate process, verdicts are subject to review by the Secretary of Defense. Verdicts are not final until approved by the defense secretary or the president.

Steven Simon concludes his New York Time Op-Ed piece with the same counterfeit moralizing heard from President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder:

“…A judgment in New York, where the greatest suffering was inflicted, will remind us…of the narrow viciousness of the terrorists’ cause and of the enduring strength of our own values.”

By according foreign Islamic war criminals the Constitutional protections of our criminal courts, the Obama administration abandoned the duty of all human beings to make moral distinctions. In not recognizing Khalid Shaikh Mohammed as a soldier in Hitlerian violation of the rules of war, the Obama administration took the moral coward’s way out by redefining terrorist warriors as mere domestic criminals. Far from being a display of “strength” and “values,” it underscored what men of low character occupy Washington’s panicle of power.

– Mr. Curmudgeon

The wheels of justice, goes the saying, grind slowly. That was certainly the case for disbarred defense attorney and abettor of terrorism Lynne Stewart. A Manhattan federal appeals court upheld Stewart’s 2005 conviction for assisting her terrorist client, Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, who masterminded the 1993 World Trade Center attack. Stewart helped smuggle messages from the imprisoned radical cleric to his friends in the Egyptian terrorist group al-Gama’a.

These messages, according the Second Circuit, included a fatwa urging his followers to “fight the Jews by all possible means of Jihad, either by killing them as individuals or by targeting their interests and their advocates, as much as they can.” It also gave orders to break a cease-fire between the terror group and the Egyptian government, which lead to mass murder.

According to the Second Circuit opinion:

“In November 1997…a group associated with al-Gama’a attacked, killed and mutilated the bodies of more than sixty tourists, guides and guards at the Hatchepsut Temple in Luxor Egypt.”

On a personal note, I had been home only a few weeks from a trip to Egypt when this tourist massacre occurred.

The October 12, 2000 attack on the U.S.S. Cole, which killed 17 and wounded 39, was believed to be a reprisal for Rahman’s incarceration.

And who is attorney Lynne Stewart? In a New York Times profile, Stewart was quoted as saying:

“I don’t believe in anarchist violence but in directed violence. That would be violence directed at the institutions which perpetuate capitalism, racism, sexism, and at the people who are the appointed guardians of those institutions and accompanied by popular support.”

It’s odd to hear someone who purports to defend the rule of law, instead, defend mob violence. In another interview with Monthly Review, Stewart fleshed out her worldview more clearly:

“I don’t have any problem with Mao or Stalin or the Vietnamese leaders or certainly Fidel [Castro] locking up people they see as dangerous. Because so often, dissidence has been used by the greater powers to undermine a people’s revolution.”

Now, President Obama plans to bring jihadist war criminals to our shores and grant them Constitutional rights and eager lawyers itching to defend them. The president said:

“Although the security issues presented by terrorism cases can never be minimized, our marshals, our court security officers, and our prison officials have extensive experience and training in dealing with dangerous defendants and I am quite sure they can meet the security challenges posed by this case.”

Obama failed to mention the threat posed to the country and its people by lawyers in league with their terrorist clients. It’s chilling to recall that Stewart was convicted for aiding terrorists back in 2005 and gamed the legal system, living free while her appeals made their way up the legal food chain. What damage did she manage to do these last four years while the appellate process ran its course?

Back in 2008 (way back during the Bush administration) a statement issued by Anthony D. Romero of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), guaranteed the organization’s legal aid for terrorist war criminals:

“…The American Civil Liberties Union and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers have taken on the task of assembling defense teams to be available to assist in the representation of those Guantánamo detainees who have been charged under the Military Commissions Act, subject to the detainees’ consent.”

Romero then heralded his assembled legal minds for their “unparalleled expertise in national security issues who have been tapped by the ACLU and NACDL, there are more than 20 lawyers at the ACLU who stand ready to assist with the effort. The ACLU/NACDL cooperating lawyers have defended cases such as those involving…Lynne Stewart…”

Shakespeare’s Dick the Butcher famously said, “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” Not if they kill us first.

– Mr. Curmudgeon

Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman may have conceded the election to his Democratic opponent, but it appears he’s still in the running for New York’s 23rd Congressional District seat. The Syracuse Post-Standard reports that a re-canvassing of the district’s 11 counties found irregularities in the vote count. It also says that a recent law extending the deadline for counting military absentee ballots was not observed – 1,303 ballots are still to be counted.

Last election eve, Hoffman was too quick to concede on hearing that he trailed Owens by 5,335 votes in conservative Oswego County. As it turns out, this was untrue. He actually won by 1,748 votes. A recount will begin early next week.

Communications director for the New York State Board of Elections, John Conklin, says he sent a letter to the Washington, D.C. House Clerk informing him “all ballots will be counted, and if the result changes, Owens will have to be removed.”

Hoffman’s campaign spokesman Rob Ryan is expecting a miracle:

“Given the majority of these ballots are from a three-way race, we think the ballots are going to break Doug’s way.”

Let’s hope Ryan is right.

The problem with most conservatives is their natural tendency to conserve. Unfortunately, some of the institutions they wish to conserve are corrupted by Democratic political machines that work tirelessly to throw elections, undermining the political process, as was the case with Hoffman. In future, conservative candidates should look suspiciously on the verdicts of authorities and assume, like the left of old, that “the man is out to get you.”

–Mr. Curmudgeon

In a world incapable of telling truth from fable, NASA felt a duty to release a statement assuring moviegoers that the disaster film “2012,” coming to theaters this Friday, is just a movie fantasy and not a special effects simulation of real events to follow two years hence.

The film is based on the theory that our solar system contains a tenth planet with an unusually long elliptical orbital around our sun. In 1995, founder of the website ZetaTalk, Nancy Lieder, borrowed the name Nibiru from an ancient Babylonian religious text to describe the rouge planet. Lieder insisted Nibiru would return to our inner solar system and pass so close its gravitation influence would cause the Earth’s crust to shift, sending the north polar south. There were two small problems with Lieder’s theory: first, her original prediction slated May 2003 as doomsday. Second, Lieder unimpeachable source was her extraterrestrial friends in the Zeta Reticuli star system. With a little more reading, however, and a few more consults with the inaccurate astronomers on Zeta Reticuli, doomsday was rescheduled for 2012 – the year the Mayan calendar stops counting the days.

In a statement published on NASA’s website, the nation’s space agency said:

“Just as the calendar you have on your kitchen wall does not cease to exist after December 31, the Mayan calendar does not cease to exist on December 21, 2012. This date is the end of the Mayan long-count period but then — just as your calendar begins again on January 1 — another long-count period begins for the Mayan calendar.

“There are no planetary alignments in the next few decades, Earth will not cross the galactic plane in 2012, and even if these alignments were to occur, their effects on the Earth would be negligible. Each December the Earth and sun align with the approximate center of the Milky Way Galaxy but that is an annual event of no consequence.”

Don Yeomans, a Senior Research Scientist and manager of NASA’s Near-Earth Object Program Office, assures the public it has nothing to fear:

“Nibiru and other stories about wayward planets are an Internet hoax. There is no factual basis for these claims. If Nibiru or Planet X were real and headed for an encounter with the Earth in 2012, astronomers would have been tracking it for at least the past decade, and it would be visible by now to the naked eye. Obviously, it does not exist. Eris is real, but it is a dwarf planet similar to Pluto that will remain in the outer solar system; the closest it can come to Earth is about 4 billion miles.”

Sorry folks, if you’re expecting a disaster to befall Earth from deep space in 2012, you are in for a big disappointment. But there lurks a potential disaster that may befall us in 2012, and we have the power to stop it. We can prevent a national cataclysm by not re-electing Barack Hussein Obama president in 2012.

– Mr. Curmudgeon

You have to hand it to the New York Times. They have a way of putting the best spin on our nation’s ominous future. Regarding President Obama’s trip to China, the Times said:

“Some activists worry that the Obama administration has been too muted in its criticism of China’s abysmal human rights. Mr. Obama postponed a meeting with the Dalai Lama until after this summit meeting. But trying a less confrontational approach, for a while, isn’t unreasonable.”

God forbid the United States should be “unreasonable” to tyrants, especially this tyrant. As reported in China’s People’s Daily, “Visiting US President Barack Obama said here on Monday that Washington does not seek to contain China. ‘We do not seek to impose any form of government on any other nation,’” Obama reassured his hosts. Of course not, Obama is in China to convince the mighty dragon to partner with him in building a bright socialist utopia in America by purchasing a few trillion dollars in U.S. Treasuries. If a socialist U.S. congress is willing to order a huge and costly dinner, shouldn’t socialist China gladly pay the bill? “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need,” and all that. China believes the cost to America should be more than just interest paid on borrowed Chinese trade dollars.

An editorial in the China Daily stated:

“As China’s military might grows, and especially, its naval and air forces expand their range of activities, Chinese and American military activities and missions are expected to increase in open sea and air spaces. In view of this, the two countries should strictly abide by international maritime and air regulations and try to avoid dangerous military moves that could possibly trigger accidents.

“For the time being, the US should first halt frequent short-distance surveillance by its warships and military airplanes of China’s coastal areas, a potential fuse for military accidents.”

Translation: better diplomatic relations means recognizing the Western Pacific as China’s private lake. Otherwise, accidents can happen. Wink, wink.

The New York Times suffers from the delusion that the United States will remain a Superpower under Obama and his Democrats. The Times urges him to press China to “play an even stronger international role — but also curb some of its darker instincts, including its mistreatment of its own citizens, its less than savory relationships with countries like Sudan and its tendency to bully its neighbors.” President Obama is hardly in a position to make demands of the guy with all the cash and a growing war machine.

Meanwhile, back at the Federal Reserve, chairman Ben Bernanke made a statement that was opaque but frightening nonetheless:

“The foreign exchange value of the dollar has moved over a wide rage over the past year or so. When financial stresses are most pronounced, a flight to the deepest and most liquid capital markets resulted in a marked increase in the dollar. More recently, as financial market functioning has improved and global economic activity has stabilized, these safe haven flows have abated and the dollar has accordingly retraced its gains.”

That’s Fed Speak for, “the dramatic drop in the value of the dollar is the international investor’s way of voting with his cash.” Once upon a time, the one saving grace of the American economy was its position as the globe’s financial “safe haven.” Obama’s spending has put an end to the American economic engine, decimated the value of the dollar and is driving investment into the arms of China and the time-tested safe haven of gold. That means Obama and future presidents will make begging pilgrimages to China a regular part of their presidencies.

Very soon, China will become the world’s policeman. The guard will change from good cop to bad. But in a world with no moral compass, few will notice – until China’s iron boot “accidentally” comes down on their heads.

– Mr. Curmudgeon