Bad Politics Kills Good Ideas

Reason without Passion is heartless.  Passion without Reason is brainless

I greatly respect George Will and Charles Krauthammer.  Some hotheads on the right get upset with these men from time to time, but they provide the intellectual wellspring of modern American conservatism (although Krauthammer is not a conservative, strictly speaking, he is a brilliant tactician for our side).

Patience is a Virtue

George Will reminds us how much ground the tea party has won in only a few short years, and he cheers these gains.  The Democrats have gone from the billowy expansiveness of Obama's Hope and Change ever expanding government, to now arguing over what and how much to cut.  Thanks to the tea party, we have reframed the debate and moved it onto our turf.

Having said that, Will issues a caution:

Will, a student of Burke, went on to say, “It really is fanciful to believe that the regulatory welfare state that has been built over 80 years can be substantially deconstructed in August over a debt ceiling vote. It’s going to take a little longer than that.”

“We ought to pocket these gains and prepare for the next fight – and to understand, nothing fundamentally will be changed until we change the president who is determined to veto fundamental change,” Will added. (Wehner - Tea Party Should Listen to George Will)

If that doesn't convince you, please continue reading.  Dr. Krauthammer has some words of wisdom as well:

I have every sympathy with the conservative counterrevolutionaries. Their containment of the Obama experiment has been remarkable. But reversal — rollback, in Cold War parlance — is simply not achievable until conservatives receive a mandate to govern from the White House.

  [...]they don’t have the Senate, they don’t have the White House. And under our constitutional system, you cannot govern from one house alone.(NRO-Krauthammer)

Do the Math:  We Can't Fix it all in one Bite

Aside from the political realities, we also hit a wall of math.  Obama is running annual deficits of $1.5 trillion, and the debt is over $14 trillion.  Cut all federal spending, everything, and fire every government worker and shutter every department, zeroing out these $3.7 trillion annual budgets, and it would still take over a decade to wipe out the debt. 

Another factor:  A present congresses cannot tie the hands of future ones.  Harry Reid can promise to cut one million bajillion over the next ten year all he wants, but spending is voted on year to year.  The new congress elected in 2012 will thumb its nose at such promises, since it is legally under no obligation whatsoever to fulfill them.

Add to this the fact that real people are dependent on government programs, hooked like junkies thanks to years of progressive predations that stripped them of the will and the means to care for themselves.  This cannot be fixed overnight.

"Don't fire until you see the whites of their eyes"

The GOP and tea partiers need to realize this debt ceiling fight is DC Kabuki.  It won't solve anything.  Indeed, raising the debt ceiling hastens our shambolic stagger into the pit of financial penury.  Ever known anyone or any nation to spend itself to prosperity?

The GOP need to avoid immediate draconian cuts that will be sensationalized by the Democratic party propagandists in the news media.  Smile, care, look intelligent and grown-up, and get this damned thing over with so we can shine the spotlight on the disaster scene that Obamanomics has wrought.  Ask Obama every day where the jobs are, and continue explaining to the American people how we cannot continue spending like this.

This opens a path to 2012 victory, and a GOP senate and GOP president can join with a GOP house to finally tame the government beast.  If they don't, I will be joining the passionate millions of tea partiers storming the capitol with torches and pitchforks.

Democrats and GE: They Bring Good Jobs to China

Unemployment Explained

Obama's Jobs Czar, GE CEO Jeffrey HeMelts has thrown thousands of Americans out of work even as he pockets rich tax exemptions from his buddy Barack Obama.

When the president named him Jobs Czar, he failed to mention that he was making him China's jobs czar.

Experiments in Multiculturalism, European Edition

Simple question: Why would a government actively pursue importing culturally-incompatible people?



The European multi-culti liberal commentariate is exploiting the Norway carnage to their advantage.  Here's a typical scold:

But some commentators argue that despite his deplorable methods, Mr. Breivik has a point: "Multiculturalism" has failed and Europe should turn back toward the narrower, traditional national cultures of the region. (CS Monitor)

The “narrower, traditional national cultures” comment is laden with implications.
Are “narrow, traditional” cultures inferior to broader, newer ones? If so, why?

The phrase “turn back” implies doing so would be a step backwards.  As C.S. Lewis reminded us, if you're going in the wrong direction, turning around is not a step backwards.

Another question: Who decided to move western nations away from their narrow, traditional cultures, and why? Who or what gave them the right to do it? Why is it only being done in the West?

Here is how the Norway mass murder aftermath is playing out in Europe:

In a society where anti-Islamic sentiment and isolation were tolerated “naturally on the margins of society there will be crazy people who feel legitimized in taking harder measures,” he said.

“The center of society has to make clear that there is no room for this with us, even for sanitized versions,” Mr. Gabriel said. “There is a deep feeling in society that the pendulum has swung too far toward individualism.” (NY Times)

Get it? If a subject is placed beyond the bounds of civil conversation, it is protected from analysis, critical thinking and criticism. The American left dreams of bringing the rightwing heretics to heel as their European brethren do.

Socialism has killed over one million times as many souls as the Norwegian murderer did, so why have liberals not declared that horrible ideology beyond the pale?

CS Monitor

National Debt: A Simple Solution

The debt limit issue is not a crisis, and resolving it still leaves us increasing the national debt by $15 trillion over the next decade.  We have problems, but the debt ceiling is the least of them.



A little snarky perspective is in order...

Was 2007 the Dark Ages? Was Grandma forced to make soup out of dewdrops and moss? Were our soldiers sent into battle with spitballs and slingshots? Were scientists and researchers shaking tin cups in doorways? Were our 18-year-olds unable to scrape together enough loans to attend our finest universities so they could prepare for a dynamic global job market by sharpening their Beer Pong and sexting skills? (Forbes - Kyle Smith)

He goes on to explain how what we are facing is nothing compared to Greece's calamity.  They are spending 50% of GDP.  Here in America...

Federal spending has averaged 20.2% over the past half-century. As recently as 2007, the last year before the (permanent?) state of emergency began, federal spending was 20% of GDP. And that takes into account the huge increases in spending on homeland security, not to mention Iraqland and Afghanistanland security. In 2011, spending is suddenly 24% of GDP. In a quarter of a century, that figure will be 33.9% of GDP if something isn’t done to alter the trend line.

So compared to Greece, our travails are a piffle.  Trim annual spending to 18% of GDP and our financial situation is stabilized.  Cut an extra 1-2 % off and we're now starting to fill in that deep hole we've been digging for over 180 years now.

The solutions are so obvious even a politician can see it...

Indeed, they are so obvious even the politicians are aware of what they are: turn Medicaid into block grants for states, reorganize Medicare as a subsidy for well-regulated private insurers along the lines of the Paul Ryan plan, raise the qualifying age for Medicare and Social Security and means-test the latter to return it to its roots as a cure for elderly poverty instead of a checkbook-abusing free-for-all.

 As a bonus, stop giving money to fetid foreign sewers full of bug-eyed screamers who hate us, and declare a moratorium on foreign military adventures and global community organizing.

Teach Government to Live on 18% of GDP

History suggests that Americans have a settled notion of what the federal government is worth: about 18% of GDP. Why should shopping for public services be any different than shopping for groceries? We Americans know what we can afford.

People like Ducky perform the useful task of reminding us it's not just income tax.  There's also payroll taxes, state, city, county and local taxes, not to mention business taxes.  Who can calculate the final horrible total that is sucked into the voracious bureaucratic beast's insatiable maw?

And I don't trust the bond market people either.  The US goose is laying golden eggs for them and these rent-seekers need that goose to stay healthy, and in debt.  If the US cleaned up it's debt and only engaged in current account-type borrowing, that would be a huge blow to the global debt markets.

Once the curtain descends on the latest DC kabuki, a good reporter would ask the president how long he thinks the US can continue to borrow $1.5 trillion per annum.  Don't hold your breath.

Kyle Smith - Debt Ceiling Panic Button 
Heritage Foundation - Balanced Budget Amendment
Mark Zandi - How to Cut the Deficit

We Are Busted

“We are living through a tremendous bust. It isn’t simply a housing bust. It’s a fizzling of the great consumer bubble that was decades in the making.” (NY Times)

This is the new normal

Reenflating the bubble will only guarantee that we go through all this again. The massive use of credit created money out of thin air and pumped up an artificial economy that was sure to come crashing down. We were all irresponsible for spending money we didn’t have, and the bankers were irresponsible for keeping the liquor flowing even after the noisy debauch has swung wildly out of control.

Big banks win, everybody else loses

Follow the money. Everybody is selling something. International banking gets fat on sovereign debt, buying and selling it and making money on the exchange. International banks want governments to be in debt, but not dangerously so, which explains why they are for the US abolishing the debt ceiling, cheering on more government bailouts, and cautioning against austerity. They want to milk the cow, not slaughter it. Every new bailout of Greece or other irresponsible entities safeguards their investments and creates a new moneymaking opportunity for the bankers, at the expense of taxpayers.

What if everybody in the world just stood up and gave the banks a big FU? 

We are struggling to repay money that was never there in the first place. The banks did not literally give these broke nations money from their own personal stash, the banks created it out of thin air, with the help of central banks and their fictional funny money factories.

Of course, the markets shudder at such talk. Here’s the party line solution:

“What is required is a grand bargain on private, corporate and national debt, beginning with a general restructuring of debt. Short-term debt at extortionate interest rates needs to be converted into longer-term maturity with affordable interest payments. Default doesn't pay, as it causes losses to already under-capitalised banks and shuts governments out of international money markets. It also exacerbates the falling value of assets on which investment and consumption depend.” (The National)

No. Debt restructuring safeguards the rent streams for the banks by a long-term bleeding of the borrower, extracting even more interest over a longer period of time.

What’s required is a big reset where the entire world tells the banks to go screw themselves, we’re zeroing the accounts and starting over. Would international banking collapse? Probably, but a new system would emerge from the ashes. As for the threat that banks would never again loan to government, puhleeez! Does any sane person really think international finance houses would forgo the billions in annual interest payments?

I know I sound like I’m defending big government, but I’m not. I’m defending the ordinary folks who must bear these government-incurred burdens. It is we the people who ultimately must pay these grossly irresponsible debts, since government has no money of its own.

The Ravenous Beast Will Demand More Taxes Until We're Bled Dry

Even when this debt ceiling "crisis" is over, we're still in crisis. Spending will continue to be a blazing rocket, driving us all further in debt.

Scattered estimates of how much revenue the federal government "loses" allowing money to frivolously remain in the pockets of those that earned it are insufficient.

Even then, why be satisfied with mere hundreds of billions when the President is calling for bold action? Bring out the big guns and calculate the cost of not adopting the greatest tax ever invented, the Value Added Tax (VAT)! Wise Eurocrats know that the goose can be plucked naked with nary a squawk by slathering a tax on every stage of a product's life. VAT-less Washington is annually "losing" trillions!

And while we're thinking big enough to cover a fourteen trillion dollar hole, why limit calculations of "lost" tax revenue to income and transaction taxes? How much revenue is the government "losing" by not collecting a wealth tax? (Bill Frezza)

Those are just a few snippets of Bill Frezza's excellent article.  Go read the whole thing and you'll find yourself nodding your head in violent agreement.  His conclusion is brilliant, explaining what really scares the socialists of all parties in the District of Criminals:

If the chaos in Washington continues people might desperately return to the outmoded belief that our country functions best when we all think for ourselves, have the liberty to dispense our own money, and enjoy the freedom to pursue our own happiness. And we know what happened last time that radical idea caught on.

At some point we’ve got to stand up and declare that government is not worth more than 18 cents out of every dollar we earn.

Child Poverty and Single Parenthood

The child poverty rate for single-parent children is quadruple that of children living in a two parent home


While investigating poverty statistics awhile  back, I quickly found myself detoured into a thicket of indignant liberal apologists who blame child poverty on corporations, lack of government assistance, greedy rightwingers, anything and everything except irresponsible behavior.

Underlying much of the liberal argumentation was a barely-contained hostility and scorn for the very institution of marriage.

Has our society become so emotion-driven that we can no longer analyze the facts as they stand?

People on the left hate the single-parent/two-parent poverty rate statistic. There it stands. In black and white. They can’t blow it up, so they instead make the illogical leap of declaring that anyone who mouths this statistic is trashing single parents. This is a non-sequitur. The conclusion that all single parents are bad does not follow from the stated premise. It's a ridiculous strawman. But logic means nothing to the libertine left.  They simply want to blunt the argument and shut down the conversation.

“… a Republican state legislator from Colorado, [...] argued on Monday that families can stay out of poverty by avoiding having kids outside of marriage.

"Those children are almost guaranteed to be in poverty," Swalm remarked in an interview after speaking out against House Bill 10-1002, which would provide much-needed tax relief for Colorado's poor. "You don't want kids in poverty? Don't have kids out of wedlock." (Change.org)

Progressives hate such personal responsibility talk, so they use emotional appeal to demonize people who point out the obvious…

“House Speaker Terrance Carroll rightly identified Rep. Swalm's comments as "an insult to every single person who lives in poverty, who works their butt off every day just to keep their head above water."” (Change.org)

The child poverty rate for single-parent children is quadruple that of children living in a two parent home. That’s a fact, and not one outraged liberal could actually explain how this statistic insults “every single person who lives in poverty, who works their butt off every day just to keep their head above water."

Here’s the best liberal argument I could find:

“It's that he got his causation all mixed up. These statistics shed light on a real problem: single-parent households (and not just in Colorado) struggle with low incomes disproportionately more than families led by two parents.

But whether a child winds up living in poverty can't be boiled down to the number of parents he lives with. Countless factors, like unequal access to affordable health care and educational opportunities, play a huge role.” (Change.org)

Tis true that correlation is not causation, but as any exhausted single mom or dad can tell you, it’s hard work going it alone. This is not about demonizing people who have suffered misfortune, it’s about identifying what works and warning people off a very rocky path. MTV has a whole reality series based on the travails of those who give birth out of wedlock. Refusing to hold up the traditional two-parent family as the ideal is nuts.

“After all, what single-parent families need definitely isn't an extra dose of unfounded criticism. They need the resources to help their children succeed.” (Change.org)

This is what’s wrong with our dialog nowadays. We cannot have a rational discussion without people getting huffy and taking offense. Platitudinous twaddle clouds the issue. Go look at the cited article’s comment thread and shudder. One suggests HUD should do more. Another criticizes mean-spirited conservatives for suggesting that those on the public dole submit to drug testing. Anything to avoid stating the obvious and putting the burden for success or failure where it belongs: On the individual.

Sawhill and social researcher Ron Haskins authored a book, Creating an Opportunity Society (Brookings, 2009), in which they assess what are in reality the extremely low barriers to exploiting opportunity in the U.S.

They note that a youth who finishes high school, gets married before having children, and maintains a steady job is almost guaranteed middle-class status, no matter what his background. Those three conditions shouldn't prove insurmountable for anyone. (The American Spectator)

Put more simply, here are Dr. Walter E. Williams’ Rules for Avoiding Poverty

* Graduate high school
* Get married before you have children
* If you get married, stay married
* Get a job, any job. A minimum wage job is a stepping stone
* Avoid engaging in criminal behavior

Further Reading:
Heritage – Marriage and Child Poverty
Cornell Study
Kaus Files - no More Brazils

European Terror Fallout

Finally. Finally! The Islamaholic left has a horrific rightwing attack as a tu quoque to employ when a conservative Bible-clinging Islamophobe criticizes the next Islam-inspired suicide bombing, decapitation, embassy burning, honor killing or gay slaying.

Tim McVeigh has faded from view, and he wasn’t of much use to the left anyway. Can’t pin Oklahoma City on the Christians, since he was an avowed atheist. It just didn't fit the narrative: The Rush Limbaugh right deplored and condemned the bombing and cheered McVeigh's death. We believe in the rule of law after all; killing people and destroying things is not only inhumane, it's very unconservative.

Back in January, the shooting of Gabriel Giffords re-energized lefty excitement.  They were all over that story like ants on a log, only to see the narrative again wilt under the harsh facts that the shooter was a dope smoking leftist who had never heard of Sarah Palin and who also happened to be an atheist.

At first, the Norway mass murder looked like the work of Muslim terrorists.  Any time something goes boom in the civilized world, there's a better than 95% chance an angry Islamist is behind it, and no sooner was the news out than the Islamic Death Cultists cheered the event and tried to take credit for it.  Even as the facts emerged, it still seemed there could be a Muslim connection.  This is the continent where World Bankers are brought low by devout Muslim prostitutes working as hotel maids after all.  But no, it was a self-described neonazi Christian whose anti-Muslim plan was to get his countrymen on his side by killing a hundred of them.

Tea Partiers, Brace Yourselves
The left will use the popular media to continue to make excuses for every act of Muslim violence, while blaming everyone to the right of Barack Obama for every act of horror great or small committed by any non-Muslim of European descent.  The left that takes pains to separate the millions of good Muslims from the scant few who commit violence will gleefully lump conservative in with the neonazis and violent rightwing extremists, although we have nothing in common.

So do your homework now, and every time an uninformed moron opens his yap to repeat the latest daily kook trope or MSNBC poison gas propaganda attack, shove it back in their faces.  Ask them to show you where Jesus advocated shooting children and blowing up buildings.  Make them explain how Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin have blood on their hands.  Bottom line is they can't.

Probably the best thing you can do is explain how the Norwegian has perverted Christianity and does not represent all Christians.  Libs should understand the argument.  They've been making it for years in excusing violent Islamic extremism.

Atlantic - Why The European Right Can't be Blamed
Inside the Mind of the Oslo Murderer
Douthat - A Rightwing Monster
Guardian - Not Christian but Anti-Islam
NY Times - Norway Attacks
Fox - Norway Suspect
WSJ - Norway Gunman

The Hidden Imam & The Risen Lord

Liberals who reflexively scream and caw like a flock of startled birds at anything uttered by a conservative make the fundamental mistake of conflating Islam itself with the different cultural milieus and practices that spring from it.  We who defend Western culture should not make the same mistake.

Some bloggers in Right Blogistan have really been laying the wood to Islam, some going so far as to call it a satanic cult.  Others struggle to separate the Islamist murderers from the religion itself, while still railing against its malignant influence on Western Christendom.  While I do not criticize religious debate, I am in the latter camp.

I don't think it is any more racist to criticize black panthers or radical islamists than it is to attack white supremacists.

It is not anti-Christian to call Fred Phelps and his followers the anti-American ass-hat dingbats that they are, and it is completely legitimate to criticize Muslim extremists operating in the west who hate our western values. 

Having said that, I think Christians and conservatives do our cause more harm than good when we criticize Islam itself.  I've done it.  Usually while criticizing one of the Muslim world's multifarious abhorrent cultural practices, hydra-headed hatreds, cultural intolerance, or religious bigotry.  We can condemn an abortion clinic bomber without condemning Christianity; can we condemn a Muslim terrorist without casting aspersions upon the religion of Islam?  

How do you like it when smart-ass atheists ridicule your faith?

Sticks and stones, right?  But does it make you have a more favorable or less favorable opinion of them?  Does it make you more willing or less willing to hear what they have to say?  I found Mike Huckabee's winking anti-Mormonism repellent.  He lost my vote, and I'm not even a Mormon.

It is in our own best interests to keep our focus on the anti-Western practices of the few, rather than the religion of the many who go about their daily lives as good Americans.

My God's Better than Your God

I remember awhile back hearing Glenn Beck on the radio mocking the Shia Twelvers, calling the Hidden Imam “the boy in the well.” You’d think he'd be a little more circumspect, seeing as how his religion is based upon God coming into the world as a human baby, dying, and coming back to life after three days in the tomb, and then ascending to heaven.  To the skeptic, that's right up there with Mohammad's flying donkey.

Some Christians believe we’re all saved.  Others believe there is a preordained elect, and the rest of us will burn in hell. Catholics pray to saints, believing they are with God and can therefor plead to him on our behalf.  This leads fundamentalists to condemn the followers of the Whore of Babylon to eternal damnation. And that's just within Christianity!

My point here is not to mock anyone, but to simply point out that our different and varied beliefs are not reconcilable.  We don't have to respect the religion of others, but we must respect each others' constitutional right to freedom of worship.  None of us can scientifically prove our particular sect or belief is the right one, so why argue about it and inflame one another? As Dennis Prager once observed, every religion has elements that look downright ridiculous to outsiders.

Freedom of Conscience - Freedom from Violence

Outside of some witch trials, institutional bigotry against Jews, and a few spasmodic episodes against Catholics and Mormons, we've been blessedly free of sectarian turmoil and bug-eyed religious zealotry here.  I pray we can keep it that way.  Inshallah

A Message From The President

 

Thought for the Day:

If the Justice Department doesn't arrest the president and congress, it should immediately apologize to Bernie Madoff and release him from jail.  But what do you expect from a criminal organization that traffics arms to Mexican drug gangs?

Natural Rights

Fellow Right Blogistani Bastiatarian has done it again.  His wise comments were spurred by Jersey McJones' absurd outburst that our rights come from man.

Here is Bastiatarian's off-the-cuff response, which is better than my best planned-out one. Here it is without further editorial comment:

But let's play your pitiful little game and pretend that there is no God, and that rights do not come from Him. Even then, it would be impossible for my right to my life, my liberty, and my property to come from other mortals. Does another man own my life? If there is no God, and I have a life, the only rational conclusion would be that I own my life, and because I own my life, I own the right to direct it (my liberty), and therefore I own the product of combining my life and my liberty (my property).

Either way, my rights are not determined by others. They are "unalienable" and absolute.

Or do you believe that those rights don't exist at all? Such a twisted belief leads to the conclusion that I can do anything I want, and nobody has a right to do anything about it. I could shoot you in the face just for fun, and nobody would have a right to punish me for it. Without rights, there is no right and wrong.

Others might not like what I did, and may attempt to use whatever strengths they have to take revenge, but what would be the point of that? Revenge for what? If there are no rights, then I haven't violated anything; I haven't done anything wrong, so even simple vengeance would be irrational. The only point of harming me would be for those people to gain some type of pleasure from it. But if doing whatever is pleasurable here and now is the only point of life, then there really is no point. It doesn't last, so why bother even living? Why not just end it and get the hassle over with?

Poverty and Immorality go Hand in Hand

We have really screwed our lives up with our rampant irresponsibility

"The typical homeless family, HUD reported, is a mother with two children." (Catholic News Service - A Mom and Two Kids)

A man pays no price for impregnating a woman and running away. The woman pays a scant cost, and government forces the rest of us help her shoulder the burden.

There used to be a social bargain, an old man once explained to me. Women had the good stuff, and men had the strong backs to bring home the bacon. Man and woman entered into marriage and exchanged these gifts to make a family, a fundamental building block of the community.

A particularly odious scoundrel was a man who got a woman pregnant and took off. He broke the social agreement. She gave him something, but he failed to uphold his end of the bargain by forsaking all others and assuming his responsibility as head of the family. Worse, he condemned his mate and the child to a life on the margins. Today, that bargain is broken. Women give it up for free and men can be perpetual little boys.

Family has now been redefined so that it means nothing whatsoever, contributes nothing to society, and cannot even sustain itself.

I read another heart sob story about a woman and her children in a homeless shelter.

Jasmine turned to the shelter in mid-June, after she and her boyfriend decided it was time to go their separate ways." (Catholic News Service - A Mom and Two Kids)

Imagine that!  They just decided to go their separate ways! …And stick the taxpayers with the bill by throwing themselves upon the mercy of Catholic Charities and various taxpayer-funded federal, state and local agencies.

Her first mistake was getting knocked up, twice, by a man she was not married to. What has turned so many of our women into brainless tramp-stamped candy stores? Her second mistake was letting the little boy pretending to be a man walk away without a care in the world.

The article goes on to explain how single moms saddled with a litter of illegitimate kids and no job skills can't afford an apartment. No kidding.

Your Right to Immorality ends at My Pocketbook

Am I being moralistic? Hell yes! I am a libertarian, but your business becomes my business when government shakes me down because you're fertile, averse to marriage, and like to get jiggy.

Forty percent of births in America are to unwed parents. Broken down by ethnic group, the figures are 30 percent among whites, 50 percent for Hispanics and 70 percent for blacks.

Marriage patterns are creating a caste system in a country that had traditionally enjoyed relative equality. Among the well-educated, marriage rates have remained very stable over the past several decades.

College graduates are thus (mostly) rearing their children in orderly, supportive environments in which kids are taught to study hard, delay gratification and plan for the future. But 54 percent of the children of high school dropouts are illegitimate. Their parents' lives are marked by financial stress, conflict and turmoil. (Mona Charen – Wrong Marriage Debate)

The sad fact is that we have a growing self-selecting underclass with no morals. Marriage means nothing, kids are accidents that get in the way of a good time. And those kids grow up stupid because the nuts don't fall far from the tree.

Educated people and people in the skilled labor force get married, stay married, and see that their progeny do the same. They avoid drugs, sexual license and financial irresponsibility, and teach their kids to do so as well. They may not be driven by Jewish or Christian faith, but they have nonetheless adopted the traditional values of these great religions and are successful as a result. This creates a virtuous cycle, while our new underclass is trapped in a downward spiral.

Regardless of where they come from, morals do matter

Since the 60’s, radical elements in this country began trashing “traditional morality” and deploring the “Christian theocracy,” screaming that we should tear it all down man! Well, you stinking, immoral hippies, you've succeeded.  You’ve torn it all down man!  But for all your talk of morality without God, you failed to replace the old morality with something new.

Nihilism has filled the void. Congratulations.

Michele Bachmann Trashed by Tabloid

I’ve never liked the pseudo-conservative HuffPo cheap imitation The Daily Squaller.  Their recent hit job on Michele Bachmann, and migraine sufferers everywhere, just reconfirms my justified bias.  

It’s founder, Schmucker Carlson, is one of those lighter than air little conservative wannabes who does damage to the conservative cause by his ineffectual defense of it and his perpetual pandering the liberal establishment.

Hanging around the periphery of big-time punditry, basking in the glow of true greats like Charles Krauthammer and George Will, Tucker is the little boy who just graduated from diapers to training pants and loudly announces to everyone, “I’m a big boy now!”  He’s an unserious schoolboy in short pants who is no conservative, and his internet site is digital toilet paper, tabloid trash.

Bachmann’s Headaches

The trashy hit piece on Michele Bachmann is full of direct quotes, so it appears factually true, but the tone of the article is prurient, using titillating phrases such as heavy pill use, stress-induced medical episodes, and mood plunges.

The article is garish sensationalism

Worse, the author is grossly ignorant, confusing headaches with migraines and calling the episodes a nervous condition.  He hints that Bachmann is crazy, unstable and hooked on pills, fulfilling every liberal fantasy that Bachmann is a rightwing Stepford Wife in the Valley of the Dolls.  It also casts migraines as a mental illness, which it is not, and characterizes her reactions to them as some kind of weakness, also untrue.

Migraines are serious business.  They strike like a bolt from the blue and can put the strongest person flat on his back.  They can also cause nausea to the point of vomiting.  Papa Silverfiddle is a strong manual laborer who worked in a factory, cleared brush and busted broncs, never prone to taking sick time.  But a migraine would flatten him.  A good friend of mine from childhood is a big strapping volunteer fireman, welder, mechanic and all around good guy, but when a migraine strikes, he’s rendered as helpless as a kitten.  If the writer could experience just one migraine episode maybe he would change his ignorant tune.

If they are as strong and as frequent as the story alleges, I think Michele Bachman’s migraines disqualify her from the presidency.  We can’t have a president flat on her back incapacitated, especially when such episodes are impossible to predict.  This is no shame to her.  It is a medical condition she has no control over.

I also think articles such as this also disqualify The Daily Caller as a serious news outlet for conservatives.

ABC News - Bachmann Headaches

Do Muslims have the Same Rights as Christians?

Herman Cain Stumbles over the Constitution

Just a Conservative Girl over at Potluck scolded presidential candidate Herman Cain for siding with the Murfreesburo, Tennessee group that wants to prevent a mosque from being built in their town. She rightly points out that Cain’s position runs afoul of the US Constitution.

Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain said Sunday that communities have a right to ban Islamic mosques.

"Let's go back to the fundamental issue that the people are basically saying that they are objecting to," Cain said. "They are objecting to the fact that Islam is both religion and (a) set of laws, Shariah law. That's the difference between any one of our other traditional religions where it's just about religious purposes. (Sacbee – Herman Cain)

Cain’s reasoning is tenuous and tendentious as best. I understand the distinction he is making between religious islam and political islam, but it still does not pass constitutional muster. What’s to stop communities from banning Catholic Churches because that faith’s canon law does not jive with civil law on the subject of divorce? As gay marriage fever sweeps the nation, can states outlaw Baptist Churches because they refuse to bless such ceremonies?

Religious law that is voluntary, respectful of human rights, and not in violation of civil law is a good thing

Muslims have a right to their Sharia law, so long as it’s practice does not conflict with our civil law, and it does not impinge on the rights of the rest of us. It’s called religious freedom. More importantly, certain abhorrent practices aside, Sharia law is a code for Muslims to live by, and it provides a way for them to guide their lives and solve problems without getting government involved.

Indeed, the concept of solving problems at the lowest level has been snuffed by progressivism. Catholics call this concept of solving problems at the lowest level, subsidiarity, but they didn’t invent it. It goes back to the time of Moses, and our founding fathers wrote a constitution and built a nation upon the concept. National civil society starts with personal morality. Problems must first be addressed within the family, next the larger community, and so on. We’ve forgotten how to solve our own problems without government intervention.

If we are to stay true to our constitutional principles, we cannot be singling out certain religions for especial opprobrium or holding them to extraordinary standards. So long as the Murfreesburo Muslims obey the law, seek no special favors from the government and refrain from dictating their laws to non-Muslim citizens, what’s the problem?

To Form a More Libertarian Union

There are some encouraging signs emerging from the conservative ranks. Neoconservative foreign policy is dead, concludes Foreign Policy magazine. That may be overly optimistic, but it's safe to say it is on life support, with GOP armchair generals losing their taste for sending others off to war.

A second sign of new life in the GOP was the near-death of the immoral people-starving, money-wasting Ethanol program.

Cutting our foreign entanglements and ending wasteful government programs takes us towards a more libertarian nation, and that's a good thing.  Let us decide things at the state and local levels.  What suits us here in Colorado would rankle the nanny statists of Massachusetts and Chicago.

Getting the federal government out of our lives would also blessedly take much of the politics out of it as well:

"We need independence not just in politics but from politics," they write. "Contrary to the myths perpetuated by liberals and conservatives alike, the winning and losing of elections is not transformative of what matters most."

The things that truly matter in life (our families, friends, churches, communities, teams, relationships, and culture) do not stem from state capitols or Washington, D.C. (Heather Wilhelm – Hipsters Against the Political Machine)

This is key. As it stands now, everyday Americans must be invested in politics because politics and government has infested every last corner of the average American’s life. If you like to smoke, shoot guns, engage in homosexual activity, go to church, or perform other controversial activities, you’ve got to keep your ear to the ground and protect your interests by contributing to a criminal gang disguised as a political party.

This is what has driven me towards libertarianism. Unlike liberalism and conservatism, libertarianism does not condone or prohibit any particular human activity, so long as that activity does not interfere with the rights of others.

Getting the federal government out of our personal lives and back within the bounds of its constitutional mandate would save us trillions and just as important, take the air out of the interminable political arguments that waste our time.

America Still a Nation of Believers

Since the Reverend Billy Graham is slowly retreating from the scene, I nominate Rabbi Shmuley Boteach for America’s Pastor. Before Graham, Catholic Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen filled a similar role, so having a non-protestant occupy the position is not unprecedented.


The good rabbi observes...

“While 92 percent of Americans believe in God, in Britain only 35% do”

“From the piety of the Pilgrims to the faith-based values of the country’s founders, to the belief in manifest destiny and even the marketing of Coca-Cola as “the real thing,” Americans tamed the wilderness with the faith that their nation is a new promised land, destined to illuminate the Earth with the torch of freedom and the light of human dignity.”

“British influence in the world, in contrast, has gone off a cliff over the past century. I would argue that the new, militant atheism that is becoming characteristic of Britain is a key reason. Atheism is a philosophy of nihilism in which nothing is sacred and all is an accidental.”

The Atheist’s View of the Human Condition is Dark

There is no soul to illuminate and no spirit to enliven – just decadent flesh. Human love is a prank played by our genes to ensure the propagation of the species, and poetry and faith are shallow distractions masking the inevitability of death. Men are insemination machines incapable of ever being truly faithful, and women are genetically programmed to seek out billionaire hedge-fund managers, the better to support their offspring.

No God, No Soul, No Purpose

For while religion affirms the infinite dignity of the human person, its absence robs life of its sanctity. Universal exploitation and humiliation for fame and fortune are the inevitable outgrowth.

Plenty here for my God-skeptic friends to scoff at and attack, but Rabbi Shmuley makes a good point. We are more than biocomputer-directed ambulatory meatsacks. We laugh and we love and we are capable of incredible hatred and cruelty. Can all of existence really be finite?

Shmuley Boteach – Godlessness has doomed Britain

Is Illegal Immigration Slowing?

The New York Times reports:

Crossing “mojado,” wet or illegally, has become more expensive and more dangerous, particularly with drug cartels dominating the border. At the same time, educational and employment opportunities have greatly expanded in Mexico.

Per capita gross domestic product and family income have each jumped more than 45 percent since 2000, according to one prominent economist, Roberto Newell. Despite all the depictions of Mexico as “nearly a failed state,” he argued, “the conventional wisdom is wrong.”

The economic gains cannot be denied. More jobs and more post-secondary education is a good thing for Mexico and the US. If Mexico could ever get up to near the standards of Canada and the US, border enforcement and illegal immigration would fade as a pressing issue.

Illegal immigration issues and the criminality surrounding them clouds the fact that Mexicans are good people, more “like us” than not. We share a Christian heritage and an entrepreneurial spirit. Like us, the lazy ones are prone to take advantage of social services, but also like us, many more work and scrimp and save to make a better life for themselves. Bringing immigrants out of the shadows of illegality will solve much of the dysfunction and language problems, resulting in a more welcoming America and removing the perceived stigma of being Hispanic.

Enforcement Works

“illegal life in the United States became harder. Laws restricting illegal immigrants’ rights or making it tougher for employers to hire them have passed in more than a dozen states since 2006. The same word-of-mouth networks that used to draw people north are now advising against the journey. “Without papers all you’re thinking about is, when are the police going to stop you or what other risks are you going to face,” said Andrés Orozco.”

If the US really got a handle on the illegal immigration problem, closing the borders and punishing those greedy human rights abusers who hire illegal workers, the situation would rapidly improve for newly-arrived legal Hispanic immigrants.  No longer under a cloud of suspicion, integration into the American patchwork would be much easier.

For a thoughtful treatment of the issue, see Michael Barone - New Reality Emerging

Global Progressives Ripe for Ridicule

Loony Left Lampooner

You don’t want to mess with sarcastomatic Brit James Delingpole. I mean, just look at him. You can tell he’s a smartass extraordinaire by his picture. But he’s our smartass, and boy does he whack those lefties good.

Don't let the snark fool you; he's also a serious reporter.  His short article at Breitbart's Big Government explains what really happened in Britain with the Rupert Murdoch empire's phone hacking scandal.  Bottom line:  Britain has no Rush Limbaugh or Fox News, and the lefty establishment was deathly afraid Murdoch would bring it. 

Delingpole goes after the climate change "warmists" with particular zeal:

They think that the naughty yellow pixies who pull the special, magic Climat-O-Levers which control the weather have been paid by evil capitalists with fat cigars in their mouth and $ signs on their pinstripe suits to make the world’s climate all horrid so that poor, underprivileged and disabled people and endangered creatures suffer – and that the reason we don’t know about it is because the media is run by evil Conservatives who want to keep this truth a secret. (The Science is Settled)

He gleefully reminds us what Michael Mann (of the "Hide the Decline" Mann-made crisis) and his ilk tried in vain to hide: There has been no global warming since 1998...

Why then am I mentioning it now? W-e-l-l, because just as ze war is to the Germans, Chappaquiddick is to the Kennedy family and that Portland masseuse incident to Al Gore, so the recent lack of warming is to the, er, Warmists.

They hate it. It’s an affront to everything they believe in. Damn it, if the world isn’t warming with the alacrity they’d prefer, how are they going to keep the funding gravy train going, and how are they going to persuade an increasingly sceptical populace that the “science” is “settled”, the debate over and the time for action is now?

That’s why they can’t be reminded of the truth often enough. It’s like salting the slugs that are ruining your garden: necessary, but also kind of fun too. ( Delingpole – No Global Warming)

Blogger buddy Mark Adams recently observed here that Alinsky rightly says that ridicule is the most potent weapon. There’s no defense against it and it enrages the target, making the fun even funner. Well, Delingpole’s incessant needling of the left is a beautiful and hilarious thing to behold.

You can stay plugged into his fact-filled snark and laugh uproariously at each punctured liberal balloon by visiting JamesDelingpole.com.

A Deficit of Leadership

While Democrats and Republicans argue over how to rearrange the deck chairs, the Titanic continues to sink.  I've included links to three articles that put the debate in perspective.

Keynesianism has Failed. The Monetarists are Proven Wrong

The Fed has extended the banks trillions of dollars in easy money, but this hasn't produced a commensurate expansion of lending. Why not?

The Great Recession demonstrates that the money supply is not the ultimate driver of the economy. The ultimate driver is very simple: has the government created a safe climate for investment? (RCM - Tracinski)

Dodd-Frank: Creating Chaos out of Order

The federal government has sown chaos and uncertainty in the markets. Nobody understands Dodd-Frank.  Not the congressional dimbulbs who voted for it, not the regulators, nor the regulated. It is a blank check for government caprice and regulatory whimsy, creating a regulatory free-fire zone where bureaucrats run rampant.  Would you put your money in a game where the rules were murky and subject to reinterpretation?

The Obama administration and the Democratic Congress have [...] created a hostile climate for investment, and they have done so through one measure that is directly smothering the economic recovery: the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill. Dodd-Frank has injected a lethal dose of uncertainty into the very heart of the financial sector--and we're only halfway through the worst of this effect. (RCM - Tracinski)

Tracinski explains how this flies in the face of the concept of the rule of law, which is a cornerstone of successful markets: Making clear laws understood by all and applicable to all.

Washington, We Have a Spending Problem

Ed Morrisy explains (text and chart are from Hot Air):

... look what happened to federal revenue after the much-maligned Bush tax cuts took full effect in 2003.  Economic activity expanded rapidly — and so did federal revenues.  In fact, the economy during that period boomed, and receipts from both personal and corporate taxes peaked as a result.  The Bush tax rates, as they are properly called today, did not create a revenue vacuum; they helped produce an expansion that enhanced rather than lost revenue.

While revenues have tripled during this period, federal spending has more than quintupled.  

It’s Later than We Think

And as if you didn't have enough to worry about, James Pethokoukis explains why the debt crisis is actually much scarier than we realize. Current projections are based upon rosy government scenarios.  Those of us who live in the real world know life is more thorns than roses.  As interest rates rise (and this is inevitable), interest payments will consume us. Go read it all here: Pethokoukis – Debt Crisis Fast Track

Where did all the Money Go?

Everybody is broke, including whole countries. I heard somewhere that total global debt is over 100 trillion! Simply put, progressive government programs were built with borrowed money, and they are not self-sustaining, they are draining. China holds the mortgage note, and the progressive version of the American Dream has turned into a nightmare.

So, Where did all the Money Go?

In the throes of the 2008 crisis, the money didn’t disappear. President Bush explained that it was "stuck," and "clogging the system." Not the disaster he made it out to be, but not good either.

Finance and the banking system facilitates business transactions that power our economy. Think of the truck that regularly delivers goods to your grocery store. The store manager doesn’t stand on the loading dock and write a check in order to get the driver to unload. No, the driver unloads and presses on. Revolving credit accounts facilitate this and millions of other daily transactions. If the financial system locks up, so do these accounts, freezing economic activity.

Making a Bad Situation Worse

Tarp favored large institutions over smaller ones, and our banking system is in even worse shape because of it. Wall Street is gambling bigger than ever, and Uncle Sam is behind them with promises of credit if they shoot craps again, which they will indeed.

community banks have given way to big banks and excessive industry concentration; profits are increasingly driven by risky trading; leverage is taking precedence over prudent lending; compensation is out of control. This toxic combination leads to continued taxpayer risk and threatens long- term U.S. prosperity. (Bloomberg)

Still Too Big to Fail

Fortune Magazine explains that the Dodd-Frank Banking Scam made provisions for too big to fail institutions to have "living wills," which are agreements on how to break them up if another crisis happens.  This is folly:

These "wills," which banks are currently discussing informally with regulators, are a weak, pathetic substitute for what Washington should have really done: that is, break up "systemically important financial institutions" into much smaller pieces. Or segregate their federally-insured-deposit parts from risky things like creating and trading derivatives. (Fortune)

The Fortune writer has nailed it, but alas, it will never happen because it curtails the profits of the banking giants and politicians can't extract bribes from them with such a simple plan.

International Banking:  A Multi-Tentacled Monster

One ugly scene that some analysts are imagining involves a default by Greece leading to losses inflicted on banks in other European countries that own large amounts of Greek debt. [...]

Those losses could then cascade to the United States because the American and European banking systems are so interlocked, lending billions of dollars to each other every day.

American banks and insurance companies may also be liable for the biggest share of default insurance payments to European institutions if Greece or other countries fail. And the trillion-dollar money market fund industry could also suffer.

About 44.3 percent of money-market fund assets are European bank debt... (NY Times - Worries Grow)

The Gig is Up

The beast is strangling us, and we've done it to ourselves.  If our progressive governments had not gone into hock to the tune of tens of trillions, these international Snidely Whiplashes would not now be tweedling the ends of their pointy mustaches and threatening us with foreclosure.  Our politicians, paralyzed with fear and cowering like the trapped rats they are, don't know what to do other than borrow even more.

It has sent the message that we have hit the moment of demosclerosis. Washington is home to a vertiginous tangle of industry associations, activist groups, think tanks and communications shops. These forces have overwhelmed the government that was originally conceived by the founders. (David Brooks - Who is James Johnson)

The solution is clear but impossible:  Get out of debt and disentangle the federal government from its sweaty pornographic embrace with high finance and big business.  The federal government should not be Wall Street's drinking buddy.  It needs to be the cop with the nightstick who cracks the big banksters over the head when they reel out of the saloon drunk and begin marauding and threatening innocent citizens.

The answer to the question, of "Where did the money go?" 

The answer is that it never existed in the first place.  The money was conjured out of thin air.  That's what credit is, and it must be paid back.

Your Rights on a Jury

You have more power than a bad law... or even the Judge himself!

Our system of government was designed as one of checks and balances. One of those checks was the jury system, the right to be tried by an impartial jury.

The idea was that if the ballot box didn't work, (i.e. bad laws were passed and then enforced), the jury box could right the wrongs created. This was done to avoid the upheavals caused by reaching for another box – the ammo box.

The current judicial system holds jury’s rights in contempt, or in their words, “jury lawlessness”. The idea that one jury member could nullify a bad prosecution, (or should I say “persecution”?) sticks in the craw of statists in black robes. It wasn’t always like that.

Originally, the concept of a jury of your peers was a group of twelve local men who knew you in life. They were the ones who judged you, based upon lifelong experiences with you and the facts in the case. They also judged the law, its application and even the morality of the law itself. They judged the facts and the law.

They did not elevate a mere man in a black robe to God-like status. They believed that their trial decision would be judged at the end of their life by the eternal Judge himself.

In time a doctrine evolved here in the United States whereupon juries were given strict instructions to only judge the facts in a case and regardless of the morality of the law – higher minds and the elite would determine if laws were Constitutional. This flies in the face of the original intent of juries!

Weeding out Jury Members Who Know About Jury Nullification

Expect to be asked if you believe juries can disregard laws they believe are wrong if you are called to jury duty in a criminal trial. If you are selected, expect a stern judge to order you to judge only the facts in the case.

Personally, I would not admit knowledge of my rights. Let me tell you why.

“‘Tis no crime to lie to a liar.” Corrupt lawyers and judges have distorted the real reason we have juries – and privately, many would prefer the institution of juries to go away permanently, as is beginning in England.

That being said, if your wife and daughter were downstairs in the basement when an armed rapist breaks into your house, are you going to answer truthfully when the thug asks where the womenfolk are? Of course not.

In a similar way I don’t have a twinge of conscience when it comes to not being forthright to a prosecutor looking to weed out “lawless jury members”. In fact, I would consider it a badge of honor to derail a dirty prosecution for someone accused of violating one of our gun control laws innocently or a host of other federal laws that violate the Constitution.

I believe I will have to give account one day. If I was involved in sending someone to prison for violating an evil law, that will be held against me.

And what is a judge? An unholy hybrid of a politician and a lawyer. Tell me what is honorable about that, your Honor!

What can you do?

Get educated on the Fully Informed Jury. Spread the truth to your family and friends.

With the existing heap of federal and state laws, you most likely have committed (unknowingly) some felony. Perhaps even today. Who knows, some investigator with a quota to fill could get you thrown into jail – your only hope then is someone on the jury who knows his rights and has the guts to do the right thing.

Be the change you hope to see. Exercise your rights on a jury. Wisely. Spread the word – the life you may save may be your own.

- Hugh Farnham

USA: An Economic Obamanation

I love it when lefty columnists write headlines like this:

GOP Out to Sabotage Economy!

It gives me a chance to say,

"Too Late, Obama Beat Them To It!"

You can always count on lefty loon Michael Tomasky to give us a good hearty laugh at his expense.  His naked psychological projection is stunning:

It’s about time the Democrats started saying openly what has been clear for months or even years now—that as long as economic recovery would work to the political benefit of Barack Obama, the Republicans have been, are, and will be in favor of sabotaging the economy.

Tomasky must have been on the moon during the Bush years, when democrats and their toadies in the press spent 6 whole years talking down the economy until finally they got their wish and it crashed.

What's Obama's economic plan?  Mine involves hoarding ammo, water and MREs...  It could get ugly out there.

It's not getting a lot of press here in the US, but the European streets are simmering with anger, and this time it's not the Muslims, but the natives who are violently restless.  Could anger spill over to violence in this country against those running the joint?  Hell yea, concludes eternal skeptic and unabashed liberal Paul Farrell.

He calls Reaganomics evil, but is silent at the progressive evil that has racked up northwards of $60 trillion in unfunded liabilities, all in the name of “progress” and prosperity, while actually driving us to retrograde penury.

That street violence, in Athens, Madrid, and someday here, was brought to us by the bankrupt promises of progressivism.

The European Union, like the 19th-century Congress of Vienna, can point to one achievement: a general absence of war in Western Europe for more than 60 years. Otherwise, almost all the socialist promises of an equality of result are imploding before Europeans’ eyes. (VDH - Europe is Warning Us)

Income inequality is at an all time high, unemployment is rampant and we are trapped in an Obamanomics stagflation death spiral.  People have a right to be angry.

If the people at the top got there by the sweat of their brow battling it out in the free market arena, good for them.  I begrudge them nothing.  But that’s not always the case in the United States of Crony Crapitalists.

The Big Banks are still to big to fail, despite what Chris Dodd and Barney Frank told us.  The sweaty pornographic embrace (with the taxpayer as the pivot man) between DC and Wall Street is simply too lucrative to abandon.

Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Citigroup, and other giant U.S. banks have been profiting at your expense through an implicit taxpayer guarantee of their debt above and beyond the bailout funds they have already received, a recent report from credit agency Moody's shows.

We are in for a painful deleveraging.  Walter Russell Mead writes that we will pass through a profound societal change as well.  There’s no way around it.  We are out of easy answers.  We bought our prosperity with borrowed money, and it must be paid back, but the Obama administration is blissfully ignorant of this reality.

Victor Davis Hanson asks...

If dispirited Europeans are conceding that something is terribly wrong with their half-century-long experiment with socialism, unassimilated immigrants, cultural apologies, defense cuts, and post-nationalism, why in the world is the Obama administration intent on adopting what Europeans are rejecting?

Liberals love to preach about environmental sustainability, but they ignore the fact that the social model they have built is financially unsustainable.

Congratulations to South Sudan, the World's newest Nation

South Sudan President Salva Kiir, wearing the hat given to him by George Bush

Nationhood for the beleaguered people of Southern Sudan seemed a distant fantasy a few years ago, when Muslim Janjaweed routinely raped, robbed and murdered southern animists and Christians by the tens of thousands. Even more incredible, the UN has declared Sudan president and bloody tyrant Omar Hassan Ahmad Al-Bashir a war criminal guilty of genocide.

All this with nary one US boot on the ground.  It was a shared marshaling of moral and political force, as well as some money to pay for the African UN peacekeepers 

The United States gains a great ally with the birth of the Republic of Southern Sudan.

It is a largely Christian nation whose official language is now English. It sits at a strategic mid-point in east Africa along the banks of the Nile. Many Sudanese sought asylum in the United States when the civil war was ongoing. There is a deep affinity between our two nations, despite the distance.

As his trademark, President Salve Kiir proudly wears a black cowboy hat given to him by President George W. Bush. Likewise, President Obama is revered, at least in part because he made stopping the genocide in Darfur one of his signature issue during the time he was in the Senate.  (Daily Beast)

This is a victory we can all enjoy:  The UN as well as the UN bashers.  Liberals like Bono, George Clooney, and Nicholas Kristof, as well as Republican George Bush, who does not get enough credit from liberals (other than Bob Geldoff) for what he's done for Africa.

Most of all, it is a victory for the people of South Sudan, who now have a place they can call their own.  To paraphrase Ben Franklin, they have a republic, if they can keep it.  There are nefarious forces who will work hard for their failure.  I hope the US and Europe will continue to push hard against those evil forces, and I will pray for the people of South Sudan. 

CBS - US Welcomes Birth of a New Nation
FOX - South Sudan Celebrates Birth
NY Times  - South Sudan becomes New Nation

Bad Medicine

 

H/T to an old war buddy who's still in the game

Czar of Chaos

Creating Chaos… and turning chaos into a new order

Many conservatives miss the mark when evaluating this administration’s actions. We want to believe Obama really wants to do the right thing, but is simply misguided from his liberal past.

The truth is he wants to tear down our current system and implement his own. It’s not a matter of degrees of opinion on the future of this country; but instead a fundamental philosophy that desires to tear down the old system, then usher in a new socialist one.

In almost every area of federal oversight we can see Obama working to create problems in order to bring about a public reaction – with a liberal solution waiting in the wings. From banning offshore oil drilling to massive federal borrowing we see this administration sowing the seeds of trouble and chaos.

Meet Cloward and Piven

From the beginnings of the Progressive Movement it was seen to remake America into a “better” society, certain bulwarks had to be removed. Family ties, Christianity, the Constitution, and American culture as a whole had to be razed to the ground before a Socialist America could be constructed. In other words, the system had to be crashed. Then order out of the chaos.

The theory of creating a new order out of chaos was described by two liberal professors out of Columbia University named Cloward and Piven. The thrust of the theory was to overload the governmental system with welfare freeloaders, and out of that tumult a new socialist order could be constructed. Subvert… destroy… and then rebuild.

We can see this at work during the Great Depression. A created financial crisis… national suffering… a New Deal… and soon most Americans were suckling the government teat. According to Alan Simpson, “Social Security is a cow with 310 million tits!”

Speaking of the Great Depression, it was a manufactured crisis. Ben Bernanke admitted as much when speaking of the Federal Reserve of the 1920’s: “We did it… very sorry, won’t do it again”. The same names were at it then as today: the Federal Reserve and Goldman Sachs.

A Senate staffer recently told me a month ago the system was going to financially collapse. All of us around the table were slack-jawed to get this from officialdom.

The collapse of the entitlement state is coming into view. This year Social Security began to borrow to pay current retirees. To balance the federal budget without cutting Social Security or Medicare poses no obvious solution.

We have passed the point of being able to pay off our debts. All that is left is to wait for the collapse and a massive devaluation of the dollar.

I’ve never expected to collect social security and but a fraction of my military retirement. Instead, I’ve invested in hard assets like land, buildings, precious metals, and even base metals (like lead in 7.62 mm diameter).

Problem / Reaction / Solution

A societal manipulation technique by those in power is to first define an end-state solution. Then a problem is created (by a bureaucracy or useful idiots) that alarms the population and leads them to the end-state solution.

We can see this administration is adept at supporting rabble-rousers and troublemakers, from union thugs in Wisconsin to the Muslim Brotherhood. The administration even sent out Jimmy Carter and the DNI to exclaim the “Muslim Brotherhood is secular”. That doesn’t even pass the giggle test.

This President is still a community organizer at heart. I believe he wants to create a climate of financial chaos in order to usher his version of a New Deal II. A climate where the American people will cry out for a new solution. I believe the solutions Obama will offer will shred the Constitution.

Don’t fall for the Hegelian Dialectic, as fellow blogger Rev. Gregori reminds us. Let your fellow citizens know that a crisis usually doesn’t just happen, but is made to happen with a goal in mind. Fight back by supporting conservative causes that stall the “solution” offered by the administration. Write your congress-critter. Slow the beast down. Stall the plan. Frustrate The Man.

The Problem / Reaction / Solution process has a shelf-life. If it is slowed down, and the American people are educated, the whole dialectic falls apart. Those apologists for the “solution” are seen for the destructive individuals they are. They then will have a choice: shrink into the shadows or become oppressive. If they become oppressive, the mask is finally off and even more Americans will be woken up.

Hegelian Dialectic: "If you want to take total control over large populations, first you devise a solution to a problem that does not exist. Once you know that your solution will work, you then cause or allow the problem (or incident), for which you devised your solution, to take place so that you can implement your solution."

A question: Is there a group using Liberals as useful idiots to destroy America, in order to bring in something quite different than Socialism?

- Hugh Farnham

photo chop courtesy of Chicago Ray

Raping America

Strauss Kahn is still a pig, by all accounts, but we knew that already.  International organizations are rife with oligarchic ass-pinchers, pedophiles, rapists, shakedown artists and thieves.

Regardless, what happened in that Sofitel hotel room between him and the maid has been called into question.  Kahn's defense team admits they had sex, but they insist it was consensual (how would you like to face your wife with that defense?  "Honest honey, I'm not a rapist!  It was consensual!")

Europeans smelled a setup from the start, and it looks like they were right.  First the phone call from the alleged victim to her criminal boyfriend, in immigration lockup, where she told him, "Don’t worry, this guy has a lot of money. I know what I’m doing,"

Prosecutors then discovered...

...she had lied about her immigration, about being gang raped in Guinea, about her experiences in her homeland and about her finances, according to two law enforcement officials. She had been linked to people suspected of crimes. She changed her account of what she did immediately after the encounter with Mr. Strauss-Kahn.

She lied to gain asylum in this country:

The housekeeper also told investigators that she had been gang raped in Guinea.

She described soldiers destroying the home where she lived with her husband, and said they were both beaten because of their opposition to the regime. She said her husband died in jail.

But then, in a subsequent interview with Manhattan prosecutors, she said the story was false, one she had been urged to tell by a man.

She lied about her financial status to scam benefits from the government:

In recent weeks, investigators collected bank records showing deposits of thousands of dollars in Arizona, Georgia, New York and Pennsylvania to an account in her name.
The woman had repeatedly said that the Sofitel was her only source of income.

The district attorney’s office said the woman had lied about her income to maintain her public housing, and had claimed a friend’s child as her own dependent to increase her tax refund.

So regardless of whether she attempted to shakedown DSK, she has definitely scammed the United States of America and We the People.  We should deport her back to Guinea.

Uncle Stupid's Gonna Take Care of You...

Reading through this chain of fraud and lies, I see a common thread:  Stupid immigration policies that let in cigarette bandits, dope peddlers, welfare cheats and devout Muslim prostitutes.  We let people in because they know how to concoct a good heartsob story, and we're a soft touch.  Too many "victims" then use their privileged status in The Land of The Free and Home of the Brave to conduct criminal activities.

This is why immigration, and even asylum, should be conditional, for five to ten years.  Anything more than a traffic ticket and you're out.  This woman should be stripped of any status we granted her and deported back to Guinea.

NYT - Strauss-Kahn Accuser
Maid Cleaning up as Hooker