(1) Let Greece Default

(2) Greek Mythology

(3) End Game in Greece

Making Sense of Our Fiscal Mess
The national debt was the top issue cited by voters when Gallup asked what the country's biggest problem would be in 25 years, but not everyone understands just how bad our country's finances are. After the first few trillions, people's eyes glaze over trying to count the zeros.

Labels: democrats, economics, obama, pelosi, reid

The Fall of the House of Kennedy: The battle over who defines the work and institutions that make a nation thrive and grow. (WSJ)

"The central battle in our time is over political primacy. It is a competition between the public sector and the private sector over who defines the work and the institutions that make a nation thrive and grow..."

Labels: clintons, democrats, obama, pelosi, reid

Democrats: "ClimateGate" Leak A Non-Scandal (CBS NEWS)

How else will they fund their TRILLION dollar Leviathan without it? And are you so naive to think this was ever about anything else?

Labels: democrats, global warming, left-wing media

If only CNN/MSNBC/NYTIMES/ABC/NBC/NEWSWEEK/NPR would report on news like the burgeoning deficit instead of stories like balloon boy.

Related...

I had to read this post three times before the absolute insanity of what the DEMS are doing sank in.

First, the White House announces a $250 payment to every senior for inflation that didn’t exist. “In effect, a COLA was paid on inflation that no longer existed,” notes Andrew Biggs of the American Enterprise Institute.

Second, the White House in its desperate attempts to get its health reform passed, has tasked the all-too-willing Majority Leader Reid to walk the plank by convincing him to push a $247 billion portion of health reform as an off-budget item, in a separate bill, to be on the Senate floor this week before moving to the merged ObamaCare bill. Even the Washington Post editorial board said “Mr. Reid proposes not to pay for any of it, not even $11 billion, but simply to write a $247 billion IOU.”

Absolute madness.

Labels: connecticut post, democrats, left-wing media, obama, pelosi, reid

Studio searching for extras. Jennifer Granholm (D), Debbie Stabenow (D), and Carl Levin (D) cast in lead.

Cash-Seekers Mob Detroit Center

DETROIT (Oct. 7) - Scuffles erupted as several thousand Detroit residents jockeyed, pushed and shoved Wednesday to get free money being offered to only 3,500 of the city's recently or soon to be homeless.

Several received medical treatment for fainting or exhaustion while frantically trying to obtain the applications for federal housing assistance. The long lines and short tempers highlighted the frustration and desperation that Detroit residents feel struggling through an economic nightmare.

Related (Must Read)
Michael Moore's 'Socialist' President
It's the Spending, Stupid

Labels: democrats

Disarray. That's one word to describe the status of the Obama administration's legislative program as Congress heads into its final four weeks of work before the August recess...

Related
$1 Trillion Deficit Complicates Obama's Agenda (WSJ)
Federal budget deficit tops $1 trillion with 3 months left in budget year (USA Today)

Limestone Commentary
Who will the DEMS blame?

Labels: democrats, dodd, left-wing media, obama, pelosi, reid

...with the Credit Card Overhaul Bill means responsible individuals will bear the brunt (and endure the punishment) of those who choose to live beyond their means.

Now Congress is moving to limit the penalties on riskier borrowers, who have become a prime source of billions of dollars in fee revenue for the industry. And to make up for lost income, the card companies are going after those people with sterling credit.

Banks are expected to look at reviving annual fees, curtailing cash-back and other rewards programs and charging interest immediately on a purchase instead of allowing a grace period of weeks, according to bank officials and trade groups.

“It will be a different business,” said Edward L. Yingling, the chief executive of the American Bankers Association, which has been lobbying Congress for more lenient legislation on behalf of the nation’s biggest banks. “Those that manage their credit well will in some degree subsidize those that have credit problems.”

Obama's age of responsibility is such an utter farce.

Related
Good news: Responsible credit-card users to “subsidize” deadbeats now (Hot Air)

Labels: democrats, obama, pelosi, reid

Is Carol Gould writing about Dodd, Rangel and Murtha?

Every day one sees yet another shop being abandoned and boarded up; in London some local authorities are allowing charities and small groups to move into abandoned shop premises rather than let them become damp-ridden dumps. As this unfolds, members of Parliament are reported to have been claiming £18,000 for a bookcase and £6,000 for a wooden floor, while engaging in complicated “flipping” arrangements in which they received payments for switching homes every so often.

These politicos live fabulously (Chris Dodd's Irish 'Cottage') while pick pocketing us poor rubes. Where is the outrage as Gore stands to make millions from Cap-And-Trade (Con-And-Transfer)? How about tax cheat Geithner's auto industry adviser who is building a $15 MILLION DOLLAR summer home in Martha's Vineyard! Meanwhile all these schemes, while populist in tone, increase the every man(s) living expenses! The new CAFE standards will IMPOSE a $1,300 car tax on the working/middle class!

Related
British expense scandal ousts lower house speaker
Doing Penance

Labels: democrats, dodd, obama, pelosi, rangel, reid

Michelle Malkin investigates SEIU's influence over Obama.

Big Labor’s investment in Obama pays off

Obama champions the SEIU’s top legislative priorities: expansive government health care (paid for with regressive sin taxes) and the Orwellian-titled “Employee Free Choice Act” to do away with private-ballot union elections in the workplace. (The initiative is “alive and well,” Stern said this week.) Obama has SEIU-blessed bureaucrats installed in every corner of his administration to carry out the agenda.

Source

Related
Trying to Unravel the ACORN String

More Acorn Voter Fraud Comes to Light: Congressional Democrats still want the group to be eligible for federal money.

The money quote (literally):

"People always come forward to our defense. We're just community organizers, just like the president used to be."

Barney Frank removed an amendment that would have blocked groups indicted for fraud from receiving tax payer money.

Labels: democrats

This post (YouTube link) by Glenn Reynolds about John Murtha's Vanity Airport is like the 'ghost airport' in South Korea. The cause - 'incompetent planning and administration' by previous liberal governments - is even identical. I think the water level in Nancy's swamp is rising.

Labels: airports, democrats, pelosi

Where is the outrage? Is this how it ends?

Congress: The spectacle of the very same people responsible for one of the nation's great financial calamities angling to be given even more control to fix the problem would be funny if it weren't so tragic.

Frank, one of the chief architects of the housing mess that's brought us so low, isn't satisfied merely with pretending he and his Democratic pals aren't to blame for all this. No, exploiting voter anger over the now-infamous AIG bonuses, he also wants to dictate to American capitalism what it can earn and what it can't.

This is the kind of thing that normally happens in Third World countries ruled by tinhorn dictators, or in fascist states, where the democratic rule of law has collapsed. Not the U.S.

Source: IBDeditorials.com

Related
ACORN Behind ‘Protests’ At AIG Homes
Busload of Crazies to Tour Homes of AIG Executives This Weekend

To GIVE and to SERVE: the $6 billion National Service boondoggle

Labels: democrats, dodd, pelosi, rangel, reid

Wall Street Pauses To Ponder Fed's Move
Commodities roar, stocks slip, bonds steady.

The dollar remained weak, a day after the Federal Reserve said it will pump $300.0 billion into Treasuries.

The reality of a deep-pocketed buyer for government debt with a virtual printing press in its basement derailed the greenback, as the euro climbed to $1.3676, from $1.3491 a day earlier.

Source: Forbes

Labels: democrats, economics, obama, pelosi, reid

While Dodd, Frank, Pelosi, Obama, Rangel, Reid and Geithner stomp around like a carnival act over the AIG/DNC taxpayer bonuses the Fed decided to create (PRINT) another $1.2 trillion of U.S. currency. Jim Manzi provides the details here but the money quote and eventual outcome is encapsulated in this formula.

More dollars + the same assets = more dollars per asset = inflation.

Related
The David Copperfield School of Economic Recovery
The Fed’s Monumental Move
The AIG Mystery Deepens
Dodd Admits Role In AIG Bonus Controversy
The Obama CYA Act of 2009

Labels: democrats, dodd, economics, obama, pelosi, rangel, reid

I should use my quote of the week more judiciously since it's only Monday but Michael Ledeen has offered this early contender and it's quote of the month material:

Which is where the Left has arrived at the end of its long journey from the Revolutionary Parliament in Paris in the 18th century. Its ideology, as Hegel forecast, having been rendered irrelevant by the changes in the real world, they can no longer explain the world, let alone change it effectively. So they are left with an insatiable desire for power. As we once said about a failed Republican president, they are not very good at the "vision thing." They just scramble around trying to grab whatever they can, and from time to time emerge with incoherent babbling about "cowardice on race," claims that tax increases are actually tax cuts, promises about reducing the deficit that they cannot possibly accomplish, and appeasement of our enemies, since somebody else once advocated support for freedom around the world.

It's the global equivalent of country-club politics, now firmly in the hands of the Democrats.

Labels: democrats, quotes

$850,000,000,000

The European Social Welfare State Bill
“Stimulus” you can’t afford
Stimulus Bill Near $900 Billion (WSJ)
Stimulus Bill Carries $347B in Interest
Republicans Object to Stimulus Dollars for ACORN
Stimulus 101: The Pelosi-Reid-Obama Debt Plan

The Hysterical Style

If anyone wished to know what the baby-boomer generation would do when, in its full maturity, it hit its first self-created, big-time recession, I think we are seeing the hysterical results. After two decades of unprecedented economic growth, rampant consumer spending, and unimaginable borrowing to satisfy our insatiable appetites, we are suddenly going into even larger debt and printing trillions of dollars in paper money to ensure that someone else after we are gone pays the debt. As if the permanent solution to a financial panic and years of spending wealth we didn't create were a government take-over of the economy in the manner we currently witness in Spain, Italy, and Greece—or the high-tax, high-spend ethos of a bankrupt California.

Labels: democrats, generational conflict, liberals, obama, pelosi, reid

Mayor Daley Seizes Land for Unfunded Project
Chicago Mayor Richard Daley has kicked hundreds of families out of their homes and relocated a cemetery full of buried bodies to build a whopping $15 billion airport expansion Chicago residents oppose, airlines don’t want and he doesn’t have the money to build.

The kicker is that Daley stands a solid chance of getting a good chuck of the boondoggle funded in Washington's forthcoming stimulus bill under Barack Obama’s pledge to dramatically increase infrastructure spending.

Related
Bloomberg Readies NYC Shopping List For Congress
Mayor Says If It's A Spending Spree Obama Wants, Then NYC Plans To Be At Head Of Hand-Out Line

MoveOn.org Wants a Depression

Labels: democrats

A Tough Year for Job Hunters
Layoffs will be the rule. Least affected by the downturn are the farm belt and Texas.

Don't expect the ambitious job-creation plans Barack Obama outlined during the presidential campaign to offset much of the current recession's pain. Such plans take years to come to fruition -- if they do at all.

Congress' Financial Mess
News media people, often plagued with little understanding, fail miserably in their duty to inform the public. This is particularly evident in their reporting on the current financial meltdown, suggesting it was caused by deregulation and free markets.

Obama’s $1 Trillion Gamble
President-elect Obama is considering an economic stimulus package that will include increases in government spending and tax cuts of approximately one trillion dollars. Many fear a prolonged depression resulting from a sharp reduction in consumer spending.

Labels: democrats, economics, obama

Congressional Performance
Approval of Congress Drops to Single Digits Again

I wonder why? Here's a little ancillary evidence.

Exhibit 1
With economy in shambles, Congress gets a raise

Exhibit 2
Caroline Kennedy’s Moment—A Sad Reflection of Our Times

"The probable appointment of Caroline Kennedy, the 51-year-old daughter of former President John Kennedy, to fill Secretary-of-State nominee Hillary Clinton’s New York Senate seat is both laughable and yet a parable for our bankrupt times."

Exhibit 3
Report: Jesse Jackson Jr. Is Senate Candidate Number 5

"The revelation may prove to be a problem for Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. "Candidate Number 5" is referred to by Rod Blagojevich as being willing to fork over a million dollars for Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich's campaign should he run for reelection for the Barack Obama Senate seat,. This was told to Rod Blagojevich, it is alleged, by associates of Candidate Number 5."

Exhibit 4
Dodd deflects question on mortgages

"Dodd was one of two senators implicated earlier this year in allegedly receiving preferential rates on two loans. Conde Nast's Portfolio, citing Countrywide documents, claimed that the company made two loans to Dodd in 2003, trimming three-eights of a point from a $506,000 loan to refinance a townhouse in Washington. A second loan to refinance a house in Connecticut was written at a quarter point below the going rate. After the Countrywide scandal broke, Dodd promised the media that he would disclose information about his mortgages."

Labels: democrats, dodd, liberals, pelosi, rangel

It may be the greatest act of malfeasance ever leveled against the American public and this weekend the NY TIMES is trying to provide cover to its Democratic author(s). Prominent DEMS like Dodd, Frank, Obama, Clinton, Johnson, and Raines are getting a free pass from Old Pinch and his merry band of folk writers.

We just had an election in which the decisive financial melt-down was, as Roger Kimball details today, directly traceable to the Community Reinvestment Act and the Fannie/Freddie implosion — Democrat debacles through and through (with Obama as a top recipient of Fannie and Freddie pay-offs, er, I mean, contributions). Yet the Bush White House evidently figured it was beneath the president to speak out about these facts, and the GOP candidate was either blind to or frozen by the appearance of this hanging curveball, somehow deciding the campaign homestretch was, instead, the perfect time for an ode to, and preening display of, bipartisanship. After all, we wouldn't want to have elections be contests between parties about issues of importance to our lives, right?

And, natch, we got smoked ... and now the people who caused the problem have been put in charge of solving it, which is pretty damn bipartisan if you ask me.

It is a big part of the Left's project to control the historical narrative. If you consistently roll over for them, they will consistently roll over you. I'm delighted to find the White House now, six weeks after the election and eight months after the Bear Stearns fire-sale, telling us all about how Democrats fought off efforts to regulate Fannie and Freddie, about how "Democratic leaders brazenly encouraged Fannie and Freddie to loosen lending standards and instead encouraged the housing GSEs to play a larger and larger role in the housing market — even while explicitly acknowledging the rising risks[,]" etc.

Related
Who caused the global economic crisis? (Hint: it wasn’t George W. Bush)

"Perhaps the most amazing thing about the Times’s little drama that casts George Bush as the protagonist of our economic tragedy is not what’s in it but what isn’t. You will search in vain for the name “Barney Frank” or the phrase “Community Reinvestment Act.” But telling the story of our economic crisis with out those elements is like staging Macbeth without Macbeth or the witches."

Capital Is On Strike

"As Shlaes writes in The Forgotten Man, if Hoover caused the Depression, FDR prolonged it by constantly attacking the investor class, whom he called the “malefactors of great wealth”–a phrase originally said by the first Roosevelt, Theodore. FDR’s attempt to pack the Supreme Court in 1937 was driven in part by his wish to tax the rich retroactively."

(Anti-) Mustard Seeds

"I’m going to get to mustard seeds in a moment, but let me first address two anti-mustard seeds: “bailout nation” and a pump-priming Fed. Bailout nation remains an ongoing issue. It really goes to the issue of government planning, industrial policy, and Uncle Sam picking winners and losers. This obviously includes Detroit, which we will probably get a decision on later this week.

Here’s a quote from President Bush that captures all my concerns about bailout nation: “I’ve abandoned free market principles to save the free market system.” Oh no. Say it ain’t so Mr. Bush. Either you believe in markets, or you don’t. Unfortunately, right now, the intellectual and policy tide out of Washington is anti-market. Not good."

Labels: clintons, democrats, dodd, economics, left-wing media, rangel

Unfortunately I think Obama's socialistic indoctrination will prevent him from thinking creatively about these problems; he will simply recycle the same Keynesian programs that prolonged the Great Depression. On the plus side, he will give his friends (soon to be taxpayer subsidized) at CBS/MSNBC/TIME/NPR some really, really inspirational fireside chats.

What Is To Be Done?
If you only read one thing on China this fall...
Trouble in China
What Obama Could Do To Calm Financial Markets, Right Now

Obama will also have to deal with Pelosi's swamp who have a scorching case of the 'gimmies'.

CBC Six feted in Caribbean Hideaway
Shady Island 'House' Party

Related
Stephanopolous, USAToday Agree: Obama Caused Stock Market Rally and Solid Black Friday Sales

Labels: democrats, economics, rangel

"Nothing is ever achieved without bloodshed, lies, tyranny and injustice, but on the other hand, no considerable change for the better is to be expected as the result of even the greatest upheaval."
     - George Orwell

This is one of my favorite George Orwell quotes and a reminder to all those coffee house liberals with Wi-Fi blogging the revolution™ and waiting to change it and re-arrange it.

And some more Victor Davis Hanson (I thought it was apropos):

As I wrote earlier, the shrill Left is increasingly far more vicious these days than the conservative fringe, and about like the crude Right of the 1950s. Why? I am not exactly sure, other than the generic notion that utopians often believe that their anointed ends justify brutal means. Maybe it is that the Right already had its Reformation when Buckley and others purged the extremists—the Birchers, the neo-Confederates, racialists, the fluoride-in-the-water conspiracists, anti-Semites, and assorted nuts.—from the conservative ranks in a way the Left has never done with the 1960s radicals that now reappear in the form of Michael Moore, Bill Ayers, Cindy Sheehan, Moveon.org, the Daily Kos, etc. Not many Democrats excommunicated Moveon.org for its General Betray-Us ad. Most lined up to see the premier of Moore’s mythodrama. Barack Obama could subsidize a Rev. Wright or email a post-9/11 Bill Ayers in a way no conservative would even dare speak to a David Duke or Timothy McVeigh—and what Wright said was not all that different from what Duke spouts. What separated Ayers from McVeigh was chance; had the stars aligned, the Weathermen would have killed hundreds as they planned.

Russell Kirk predicted where this viciousness (anointed ends justify brutal means) would end:

"Ideology makes political compromise impossible: the ideologue will accept no deviation from the Absolute Truth of his secular revelation. This narrow vision brings about civil war, extirpation of "reactionaries", and the destruction of beneficial functioning social institutions."

Mission Accomplished

Labels: connecticut post, democrats, liberals, obama, pelosi

"But, hey, it's not like the guy who writes the nation's tax laws actually has to follow them...right?"
     - NY POST

(1) Why is Charles Rangel (D, NY-15) still Chair of Ways and Means?
(2) Investigations Launched Into Rangel's Latest Tax Questions
(3) Another Day, Another Charles Rangel Tax Scandal
(4) Charlie's Latest Cheat

Labels: democrats, pelosi, rangel

All you need to know about the bailout...

Bailing out the mortgage securities industry will not help us to navigate through these icebergs. If the economy does suffer catastrophic damage, though, we may look back on the bailout as something akin to giving priority access to rich people in boarding lifeboats on the Titanic.

And for the flaccid rubes emailing me to tell me the free farket has failed:

The final proof that American social policies have made mortgage lending an unviable industry rests with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. If sensible business people don't get into the mortgage industry because it is fundamentally a bad business, the American way has been to send in a couple of quasi-government agencies to fill the gap.

Fannie and Freddie dominated the mortgage industry because ultimately government was prepared to fund activities that prudent lenders would not. When their implicit government guarantee became explicit, America's system of government-directed lending on socially desirable, but commercially imprudent, lending stood exposed.

Related
(1) How Obama, his advisors & the dems are linked to the biggest financial meltdown since the Great Depression

(2) Great Depression Myths Revisited

The current financial crisis, a new government bailout in the works, talk of regulation and deregulation and a general unease regarding America's economic future have politicians and pundits alike threatening a repeat of the Great Depression.

This week, the Mackinac Center is re-running one of its most successful and popular publications ever: "Great Myths of the Great Depression," written in 1998 and revised in 2005 by President Emeritus Lawrence W. Reed. This powerful monograph details the cause of the depression, the government interventions that sustained it, and how the myths that federal policies eventually "saved" the country have been perpetuated over the past seven decades.

Labels: democrats, economics

The Anchoress gives a pep talk on media bias after stating the cold hard facts:

By the way, we’re outnumbered. Team Mainstream has all the heavyweights, the guards, the tackles and the microphones, too - so they call the plays the way they see them, regardless of what is actually happening.

This is how I know we're grossly outnumbered:

Immigration 08' (Mobilizing Immigrant Voters) - "Simon Rosenberg has worked in national politics and the media world for more than 20 years."

GOOD Sheet: Coming to America - The GOOD Sheet (progressive agitprop) is being distributed by Starbucks.

Glenn Reynolds echoes The Anchoress:

EARLIER, I promised some thoughts on what to do about the news media's outright campaigning for Obama. They're not just in the tank, they're functioning as arms of the campaign, and Obama's strategy shows that he knows that and is relying on it.)

If you want to have a media environment that isn't dominated by the Gwen Ifills and Keith Olbermanns of the world, you need to ensure that other kinds of voices flourish. That means supporting the alternatives with your eyeballs, your subscriptions, your advertiser-patronage -- basically, your money. Businesses need money to flourish. There's a vast underserved population out there, for news, entertainment, movies, etc., and if people start serving it, the current "mainstream" media won't be so mainstream anymore. So if you're unhappy with current offerings, put your money where your mouth is.

I suppose Glenn's strategy will work until the DEMS pass the Fairness Doctrine.

Labels: democrats, immigration, left-wing media, liberals

Poor Nancy is SO blind with BDS that she's lost all her faculties. I would send her a coupon for some DEPEND® Undergarments if I thought she could figure out how to put them on.

Before your infant mind buys what agitprop CNN/NPR is selling 95 DEMS voted against the bailout (40% of Pelosi's caucus).

Related (Nacht und Nebel)
How the blogger with many visions™ knows the end times are coming.

◙ Exhibit 1 - YouTube pulled the video of the brainwashed children worshipping Obama. The remix can be viewed here.
◙ Exhibit 2
◙ Exhibit 3
◙ Exhibit 4
◙ Exhibit 5

Labels: democrats, left-wing media, liberals, pelosi

...she's like a modern day Typhoid Mary.

Labels: democrats

This is such a bizarre article. It involves Kucinich, Bloomberg, the New York Yankees and global warming. Pelosi's Casita (9% approval ratings) is conducting a hearing on the new stadium the Yankees are building in the South Bronx. The hearing is on "waste and abuse of public dollars" which has now been turned into a statement on class warfare by Rep. Diane Watson, D-Calif.

Meanwhile, Bloomberg (D-NYC) was in Washington D.C. but he was too busy testifying on global warming to participate in the stadium hearings. What a bunch of ass clowns.

Related
BIG WHEEL BENZ THE RULES

Labels: democrats, rangel

Rep. Charlie Rangel won't step down as Ways and Means Committee chairman

WASHINGTON — Rep. Charles Rangel is staying put.

The 19-term Democratic lawmaker refuses to quit as chairman of the House's powerful tax law-writing committee despite embarrassing revelations about his personal finances, Rangel's lawyer said today.

Labels: democrats, rangel

This is the candidate of change?

(1) Friends of Lehman
(2) Obama-Friendly Lehman Bros. to file Chapter 11 bankruptcy

Related

So it would appear that this is precisely what Obama has been railing against: Washington insiders lining the pockets of other Washington insiders while the taxpayers ultimately have to foot the bill. The Agent of Change, it seems, didn’t exactly walk the walk on this one.

Source

Labels: democrats, obama

Top Recipients of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
Campaign Contributions, 1989-2008

1. Dodd, Christopher J
D-CT
$133,900

2. Kerry, John
D-MA
$111,000

3. Obama, Barack
D-IL
$105,849

4. Clinton, Hillary
D-NY
$75,550

Source

Related
Cornyn calls for criminal probe of Fannie, Freddie

Labels: clintons, democrats, obama

There's trouble brewing for House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel (D-NY).

Representative Charles B. Rangel has earned more than $75,000 in rental income from a villa he has owned in the Dominican Republic since 1988, but never reported it on his federal or state tax returns, according to a lawyer for the congressman and documents from the resort.

The meaty details are here and here. I like how he was was, "urged to buy the property by Theodore Kheel, a New York labor lawyer who was one of the principal investors in a plan to turn the southeast Dominican coast from a mostly deserted jungle into a tourist destination." Rangel is a true man of the people AND a conservationist to boot.

Related
Poor Charlie
Trillion-Dollar Baby
CNN Calls Rangel’s $3.5 Trillion Tax Hike a ‘Reform’

Labels: democrats, obama, rangel

Barack Obama Sr., recall, was in the U.S. to study economics to help with the development of his dirt poor, resource rich country, Kenya. (A country the U.S. hoped to save from the clutches of the Soviets and the devastation of communism.) God only knows what he learned at Harvard, but, as the IBD piece mentions, he went home to Kenya where, among his other activities, he wrote an article for the East Africa Journal offering a vivid critique of such capitalist entrerprise as existed in Kenya at the time.

The article, called "Problems Facing Our Socialism," makes the economic case that high taxes are morally and practically good, if the government then uses them to provide for the people. How high should the tax rates be? "Theoretically," he wrote, "there is nothing that can stop the government from taxing 100% of income so long as the people get benefits from the government commensurate with their income which is taxed." Yes, you read it: a 100% tax rate is fine. Obama Sr. continued, " It is a fallacy to say there is a limit (to tax rates), and it is a fallacy to rely mainly on individual free enterprise to get the savings." Free enterprise — bad.

Source: Confiscatory Tax Rate Dreams from my Father

Labels: democrats, liberals, obama

(1) Taking on the Left’s speech-chillers

(2) Editorial: Wine-and-cheese thuggery

(3) Imagine the MSM Reaction...

(4) THE LEFT TAKES THE HIGH ROAD

Labels: democrats, liberals, obama

"I have always loved longitude, I love latitude; it’s in the stars. But longitude, it’s about time...Time and clocks and all the rest of that have always been a fascination for me."

Nancy Pelosi speaking about a painting in her office, Jan Vermeer's "The Geographer."

[NRO]

Labels: democrats, liberals

There's enough marketing savvy/sizzle in Obama™ the brand to make AdvertisingAge® - The Need for Partnership at a Time of Fragmentation. Obama™ the brand, with it's shiny doubleplusgood newspeak and iPod aesthetics, has many intelligent people fooled.

Related
The Brand Called Obama

Old Glory in Berlin
The television feed of Obama's internationalist speech in Berlin frequently cut to Germans waving American flags. Perhaps it's just the cynic in me, but I noticed that they all appeared to be the exact same size and make. It was almost as if some outside entity (a presidential campaign, perhaps?) handed them out in order to deliver the best possible visual images during the speech. Video of anti-American Europeans once again embracing the stars and stripes in an organic display of hope and unity would certainly be powerful stuff. The question is whether the Obama campaign manufactured this image for political gain. If they did, the press bought it hook, line and sinker.

The digital divide
The gap between technologists supporting Republicans and Democrats continues to widen. In addition to financial support, influential technologists like Chris Hughes are now providing strategic support to Obama.

"In a great collaborative effort, Barack Obama partnered with Chris Hughes, co-founder of Facebook, to develop a web presence and better employ the social networking that helped engage younger voters and clinch the Democratic nomination. The campaign also had a very well-organized grassroots effort with first-hand knowledge of the political climate and voting protocol in each state and the expertise to resonate with local communities. The collective skills of these local partners helped the "Obama brand" connect with its audience and raise capital in record proportions."

The left was quick to embrace the tools built by the technologists. A quick survey of reddit on Friday showed mostly anti-conservative, anti-Semitic or general BDS articles. The "what's hot" of reddit included; Send Rove to jail petition passes 100,000, John McCain Covered Up $4 Billion Theft For Friend, and Lev Leviev, Israel's richest man, buying blood diamonds, funding illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank, undermining the prospects for Middle East peace.

I'm not sure the technologists are enough to be the margin of victory for Obama in 2008. What is evident is the technologists represent yet another lever in the arsenal of mind-molding establishments that Democrats can depend on in the general election. And what's most frightening about Al Gore's relationship with Steve Jobs (and Sergey Brin's with Obama) is the technology available today assuages the liberal need for a sense of order (more aptly defined as Fascism).

Labels: democrats, end times, left-wing media, liberals, obama

I haven't written too much about politics lately...Some of it is exhaustion and some of it is just circumstantial. I'm unhappy with the GOP and haven't written them any checks. The source of my unhappiness isn't the economy (sub-prime, high gas prices, inflation, and/or the dollar) or Iraq. The economy is cyclical and will emerge from it's funk (UNLESS the politicos interfere with it). According to the mainstream media we've been living in Hooverville anyway since day three of the Bush Administration so we've known nothing BUT economic misery for 7+ years!

History will judge Iraq and when you separate your emotion and consider the facts (if you can find them) a different picture emerges.

[UPDATE: This doesn't fit the DEM talking points -- World praises progress in Iraq as Baghdad seeks debt relief]

I was watching a documentary on Harry Truman on PBS and it was Truman who went and asked a Republican Congress for buckets of money to aggressively fight communism in Turkey and Greece (what a damn war monger).

My real unhappiness with the GOP has to do with corruption and a reckless abandonment of core principles. This has been done, in my opinion, for the purpose of appeasing the leftward lurch of the mob and for selfish gain. I would much rather the party remain true to the principles of limited government, private property, individual responsibility (devoid in any lefty dictionary) and free markets AND re-trench in the minority. It is, and has always been, our responsibility to take punishment for defending history, protecting the permanent things, respecting tradition, and promoting the individual over the collective. We're destined to lose (to be bloodied) but so it goes.

The party of course has tried to scare me straight. I receive solicitations from the GOP saying things like "stop the Democratic takeover." But from what? What are you offering that isn't a little less left than Pelosi/Obama/Reid? Quite frankly I'm exhausted and would much rather make some pop-corn and watch Jimmy Carter Part II. I gaily look forward to the morning in February when the mainstream media realize that, with the ghosts of Bush exhausted, that there's no one left to blame.

Sure. The mainstream media may find the 1 or 2 remaining Republicans in the House to blame but it won't sell on Main Street forever. Obama's honeymoon will be short and if his policies (open borders, naked appeasement, nationalization, higher taxes, tariffs, and BIGGER government) doesn't yield quick results, his friends in the mainstream media will struggle to find enough polish for that turd. Nancy took over as Speaker of the House in 2006 and less than two-years removed Congressional approval ratings are lower than the President's. Nancy is blaming "obstructionist" Republicans for now but soon that smokescreen will be gone. If the federal government is run like the People's Republic of California there will be enough economic pain to remind voters that socialism has failed from time immemorial. Whether or not voters do anything about it (and if the GOP can find their virgin soul) is the subject of another post.

Update
A list for the GOP:

• Reform (and cut) entitlements
• Cut spending
• Tort reform
• Lower taxes (and tax reform - flat tax)
• More trade agreements
• Treat lobbying as a criminal activity (eh, it's 6:00 AM)
• Marriage amendment
• Fight judicial activism
• Help the UN relocate
• School vouchers
• Immigration reform (beginning with border security)
• Fight (not prosecute) the global war on terror
• Privatize mass transit
• Promote private property as best means of protecting the environment and promoting conservation
• Broad incentives to industry for exploring alternative fuels (cut spending and "re-invest" those tax dollars here)
• Eliminate earmarks/pork barrel spending
• Re-introduce compulsory civil service
• Drill in ANWR (drill in the 48 states), build refineries, and build nuclear facilities (environmentalists be damned)

Labels: democrats, left-wing media, obama, the good guys

Nancy Pelosi praises the goodwill of the Iranians.

"And Nancy Pelosi just called those men and women, and their battlefield commanders, absolute failures, while specifically praising the "goodwill" of the exact regime that is directly responsible for the majority of the deaths of our young men and women serving there."

Pelosi: Some of the success of the surge is due to Iran’s “goodwill”

Nancy Pelosi Puts Credit for Surge's Success Where It Belongs: The Goodwill of IRAN

Nancy Pelosi said what?!

Nancy Pelosi Praises Iran's "Goodwill"

Pelosi Credits Iran’s “Goodwill” for Surge Success

Limestone Commentary
At least she acknowledged the surge was a success.

Labels: democrats

Obama, the Closer
An eloquent clean cut black man is the perfect front man for the radical Left.

By Kyle-Anne Shiver

For a Boomer like me, following the threads of the Obama movement is like a flashback from a bad 60s drug trip — an old, unwelcome nightmare.

Whether it’s Billy Ayers or Bernadine Dohrn, Tom Hayden or Jane Fonda, or any of the other lesser-knowns, 60s Marxist radicals are lining up behind Obama.

Obama’s young worshippers think they see something altogether new, a unique persona, seemingly magically transported to this moment in history to help them finally be the ones to net the elusive butterfly of socialism’s never-realized promise.

The kids think they see something new. But do they?

Sixties’ radicals see their as yet unfulfilled yearning for socialist utopia in a well-groomed, glittery, establishment-approved package.

He is the One they’ve been waiting for. Biding their time during the dark, dreary days of Reagan, throughout the self-absorbed Boomer years, into the Yuppie sellout decade, and on through the compromising Clinton years, they’ve waited and planned and hoped.

To these rabid Marxist radicals, Obama is the One, because he’s probably their last chance to see socialism triumph on our own soil. They have grasped the reality of their own mortality.

And this could be very bad news for America. Who, in his right mind, really wants anything these radicals were peddling?

Source

Labels: democrats, obama

...it's a vast empty space mostly devoid of history and awash in hypocrisy. The hypocrisy is partially the result of being flat-out ignorant about history.

Obama: Bush is Responsible for Chavez (Bzzt! Wrong!)

This is far from the first time Barack Obama has been wrong about a simple historical fact.

I’d like to hear him answer some simple questions about world history, to see exactly how much he really does know. No blow-dried media talking head will ever do this, of course, but I suspect people would be in for a real shock if they knew the depths of his historical ignorance.

Source

Labels: democrats, obama

I can't wait for the Obama presser with a nuclear annihilated Israel as the backdrop. He needs to leave the training wheels on.

"Good evening, my fellow Americans. This afternoon, while my cabinet was making travel arrangements for my trip to Tehran, Iran apparently fired nuclear missiles at Jerusalem. I am dispatching an envoy to the Gaza Strip immediately where my Administration has instructed Ted Kennedy, Nancy Pelosi and Jimmy Carter to distribute arugula..."

So We Lose an American City or Two, So What?
Obama: My Bad, I Meant to Say Iran is a "Grave Threat"
Obama: Iran not a threat
Barack Obama is Either Stupid or Willfully Ignorant
It depends on what the meaning of "is" is.
Obama Claims Iran Not a "Serious Threat" to the US
Polling Iran
Obama: I Will Engage in Direct Talks with Iran

Labels: democrats

President Bush Addresses Members of the Knesset
There are good and decent people who cannot fathom the darkness in these men and try to explain away their words. It's natural, but it is deadly wrong. As witnesses to evil in the past, we carry a solemn responsibility to take these words seriously. Jews and Americans have seen the consequences of disregarding the words of leaders who espouse hatred. And that is a mistake the world must not repeat in the 21st century.

Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: "Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided." We have an obligation to call this what it is -- the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.

Some people suggest if the United States would just break ties with Israel, all our problems in the Middle East would go away. This is a tired argument that buys into the propaganda of the enemies of peace, and America utterly rejects it. Israel's population may be just over 7 million. But when you confront terror and evil, you are 307 million strong, because the United States of America stands with you.

Source

Limestone Roof Translation
Liberals don't believe in absolutes, ergo evil is a value judgment which was invented by man (like fantasy or sci-fi). This fantasy extends to foreign policy- from Carter to Kennedy (Teddy) to Clinton to Pelosi to Barack Hussein Obama.

Additionally, the liberal mind, short on historical perspective (history was also invented by man) and poisoned by subjectivism, concludes that the U.S. would leave the Middle East if we didn't need oil and that we would look the other way while Ahmadinejad lobbed nuclear missiles at Israel. It's OKAY if Jerusalem is vaporized, as long as we can have domestic partnerships, universal health care and consumption taxes.

The other fantasy involves us becoming unstuck from our religion and substituting it for the State (but that's the subject of another post).

**UPDATE**

Seattle Times Editor: 'Hitler's Demands Were Not Unreasonable' (Hat Tip: Ace)

Labels: democrats, end times, iran

You've officially jumped the shark and been relegated to the pop-culture dustbin (deemed culturally useless and irrelevant) when the press "blesses" you with an amalgam. Billary is almost as good as Brangelina and Bennifer.

It was bad enough that Hillary was one of those ladies like Cher and Madonna with only one name.

But even for a pair of grifters like the Arkansas duke and his lovely dauphin, money isn’t enough. After all, you can only spend so much time in your day counting coins. A couple that has spent precious little time in the private sector — a.k.a., the “real world” — and has grown fat and rich off the public teat, needs the Permanent Campaign like a junkie needs a shot, like a horse needs a carriage, like a fish needs a bicycle. It’s not the getting of the office that’s the name of the game, it’s the seeking of it. The thrill of the chase. The excitement of the hunt. The sound of the horns and the hounds, baying at the moon of political power.

So, as much as it pains me to say it, Hillary ain’t dropping out, not if she’s the man I think she is. After all, what has she got to lose by staying in? Bill’s legacy is already etched in stone: impeachment, the Marc Rich pardon and, nine months after he left office, two giant steaming holes in lower Manhattan. Now matter how many times he wags his finger or bites his lip, there is, amazingly, nowhere for him to go but further down. And now that he can’t hurt us any more, we’re even free to say it!

Source: A First Lady and a State Legislator

Speaking of jumping the shark...Michael G. Franc on the party of elites.

Labels: clintons, democrats

Whatever initial/preliminary goodwill I had for Obama as the **NEW** candidate is completely gone. Every new story about Obama and those connected to him (terrorist Bill Ayers, super racist Reverend Wright, and indicted developer Antoin Rezko) make the arugulu a little more unpalatable. Obama deserves props for making someone like Hillary seem the lesser of two evils.

Obama Tech Advisor Introduces Video of Gay, Singing Jesus Who Gets Hit by a Bus

More Details

Labels: clintons, democrats

I employ my own bastardized version of the fairness doctrine around here and it's strictly enforced...

Hillary Won't Say When She Packed Heat Last
Hillary Clinton is trying to out-Romney Romney, saying in a press conference Saturday that she had received firearms training as a youngster...

The video/audio is here. It has to be seen. It's textbook pandering (and maybe a tall tale). Is there .00001% ounce of "authentic" in this woman?

***Update***
Poll Shows Erosion Of Trust in Clinton

Really?

Labels: clintons, democrats

I thought I could go a day without quoting Jonah Goldberg. I was wrong.

The offending word here is "cling." It's a word drenched in haughtiness and condescension. We cling to rocks when we are caught in a current. Obama's imagery suggests that because the economic tide is receding these people are clinging to God and guns, presumably to compensate for the undertow. But he also suggests that if the economic tide were rising these same people would let go of God and guns and ride the currents to happier and more progressive lands where everyone thinks like Obama.

I am moved to pity by this related quote from Peter Kreeft's C.S. Lewis for the Third Millennium in relation to Obama's remarks (sorry for the length):

"A man can endure almost any how if only he has a why." In other words, you can endure bad circumstances, powerlessness, poverty, even a concentration camp, if and only if you have a meaning and purpose to your whole life, and therefore also to suffering, which is part of life. The corollary is that if you do not have a "why", you will not be able to endure any "how" that is a little upsetting...Once the sense of life's significance was lost, we could not endure its sufferings, so we had to invent ways of conquering nature to reduce those sufferings radically. A man with no "why" must conquer his "how".

Western civilization began to worship power when it began to doubt significance. The reason Lewis, Chesterton, Williams, Tolkien, and Thomas Howard fascinate us so much is that they still live in the medieval world, a world chock-full of built-in, God-designed significance. That's why they all think analogically, sacramentally, imagistically. For them, everything means something beyond itself. Everything is not only a thing, but a sign, full of significance. Modernity, confining itself to the scientific method as the model for knowing reality, deliberately induces in itself what Lewis calls a dog-like state of mind, full of facts and empty of significance.

Labels: democrats

This is from Victor Davis Hanson at NRO:

At some point is there any sane Democratic strategist left, who sees that populist rhetoric and "two Americas" lingo do not go well with the several Kerry mansions, the Edwards' 30,000 sq. ft. domicile, the carbon-consuming Gore spread, the $109 million Clinton tax returns, those burdensome Michelle Obama Ivy-League student loans to be repaid, and Marin County sociology lessons?

Labels: democrats

Abe Greenwald wrote that in his article "It’s All Gone" to describe the "authentic" Obama. Hugh Hewitt goes a little further and completely turns the table using liberal-think, in this case cultural relativism, to describe Obama's rattlebrained perceptions of those Americans who live in flyover country.

Obama doesn't know this America, which is certainly the backbone of most suburbs, small towns and rural communities in flyover-country and, truth be told, on most of the coasts outside of the largest urban centers.

What Obama knows is the world in which he has lived, which is a strange combination of some of the toughest neighborhoods in the U.S. and its most elite institutions. He belonged to a church that indulged radical politics in its weekly bulletin and from its pulpit even as it struggled to help some devastated neighborhoods. He did so after attending and absorbing the attitudes of America's most elite law school and having been taught by its --mostly-- hard-left professors. He does so from the lofty perch of the U.S. Senate. He's had a schizophrenic life that combined the toughest aspects of America and its most indulgent.

Labels: democrats

I'm not sure how much play this story is getting in the MSM but if the polls are any indication, Obama is faltering in the polls since news of his speech from one of America's wealthiest blocks in San Francisco broke on April 11th.

I don't live in small-town rural America but I found his comments unsettling (and unsurprising). I was deeply offended by his arrogance in regards to those who cling to religion. Perhaps the best quote, and something I long suspected, comes from Lisa Schiffrin at NRO:

I now feel fully vindicated in my suspicion that Obama's attendance at Wright's church was entirely political and expedient. No one who has a personal relationship with Jesus Christ — or even moderate respect for other people's religious views — thinks in these terms about why working class people might believe in God. Or believes that a more enlightened government will supplant that.

William Kristol puts Obama's words in context:

What does this mean for Obama's presidential prospects? He's disdainful of small-town America — one might say, of bourgeois America. He's usually good at disguising this. But in San Francisco the mask slipped. And it's not so easy to get elected by a citizenry you patronize.

And what are the grounds for his supercilious disdain? If he were a war hero, if he had a career of remarkable civic achievement or public service — then he could perhaps be excused an unattractive but in a sense understandable hauteur. But what has Barack Obama accomplished that entitles him to look down on his fellow Americans?

My favorite quote is from Kathryn Jean Lopez via NRO:

Don't you love the fact that Obama slipped and the news broke just before the papal visit? We'll have a week's worth of oppressed people at the White House, at Catholic University, at two baseball stadiums, lining the streets of Washington and New York. It's Obama vs. these clingers.

This one must sting every voter who believed Obama was some type of transcendental, post-modern candidate:

The radiant charm; the verbal agility; the promise of change; the post-racial unity; the deferential press; and most importantly, the vagueness of character and intent that sustained the whole façade. These were the hallmarks of Barack Obama’s run for the Democratic nomination, and bit-by-bit, associate-by-associate, gaffe-by-gaffe, the junior senator from Illinois has given all of it back. The extraordinary bounty that had made his campaign a nearly unstoppable force of nature is gone.

With last Sunday’s revelation—that he looks at smalltown America and finds armed, hate-filled, irredentist religious zealots—the last piece of the Obama puzzle fell into place. He is not, it turns out, an agent of change; he is a walking checklist of modern liberal inanities.

Finally, you can't toss Jonah softballs like this.

Barack Obama says the state's economy is so bad that a once prosperous and secular people have been driven to embrace their sky god and shoot animals for sport.

Labels: democrats

Weekend Politics

"And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

- Barack Obama at a San Francisco fund-raiser

He's trying to spin the comments. He can't because he really believes it.

Obama believes (really believes) that people of faith are being retarded by their religion. It smacks of hypocrisy and requires a kind of herculean doublethink. Obama is asking voters to reject their faith and communities so we can be remade/reborn into a new man and re-invested in a new community of faith.

So people, ya know they vote about guns or they take comfort from their faith, and their family, and their community...

Obama is going to spend the rest of his campaign suppressing these innate San Francisco values, hoping voters don't realize that there's no place in this new religion for their own volition.

Related
Obama To Rural Pennsylvanians: Vote For Me, You Corncob-Smokin', Banjo-Strokin' Chicken-Chokin' Cousin-Pokin' Inbred Hillbilly Racist Morons

Obama Tries Damage Control; Epic Fail

Great Day 2 Run-Down on Obama's Redneck Rampage Speech

Redneck Rampage Round-Up Redux

Labels: democrats, weekend

"The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars, but in ourselves if we are underlings."

- William Shakespeare

Many people are searching for a scapegoat/bogeyman for these tumultuous economic times. In a nation of victims someone (anyone) must be held accountable for our suffering. I drafted a list of the usual bogeyman but will spare you the trauma of reading it. Instead, Mark Hillman warns that instant gratification may be at the root of our national malaise/funk. More troubling, he believes we have transferred this same instant gratification ethos to our government.



He writes: "When we the people fail to practice self-discipline at home, we cannot possibly be serious about fiscal restraint in government...In roughly three generations, American society has been transformed from a nation of penny-pinchers, scrimpers and savers to a nation of consumption-addicted spendthrifts oblivious to tomorrow."

Once on a trip to Saratoga (in the interest of full disclosure I was there wagering on the ponies) we wandered into the downtown area for some coffee. I remember peering into the window of a bank (it was a very old and venerable building) and being struck by a quote chiseled in marble and set over the tellers that read, "FRUGALITY IS THE MOTHER OF ALL THE VIRTUES." I wondered whether or not the quote would make cents (sense) to the throngs of Skidmore students darting in and out of the cafes.

More importantly, and leaving economics aside, whenever a writer says we're "oblivious to tomorrow" my ears become a little more attuned (Born to see; meant to look). I've connected the words - oblivious to tomorrow - to this dour passage from a Peggy Noonan Op-Ed:

When I was young we didn't wear earrings, but if we had, everyone would have had a pair or two. I know a 12-year-old with dozens of pairs. They're thrown all over her desk and bureau. She's not rich, and they're inexpensive, but her parents buy her more when she wants them. Someone said, "It's affluence," and someone else nodded, but I said, "Yeah, but it's also the fear parents have that we're at the end of something, and they want their kids to have good memories. They're buying them good memories, in this case the joy a kid feels right down to her stomach when the earrings are taken out of the case."

This is where the left and right diverge economically and philosophically and why Obama's soaring rhetoric is so popular this campaign season.

Unfortunately, Obama is simply resurrecting the same old bogeyman to usher in "the same old Great Society programs". In the speech he says, "...a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many."

Does Hillary believe in the same BIG government programs? Absolutely. But the Obama camp has two secret weapons- a vacuous suit with exceptional oratory skills and its closeness to the unofficial queen of the New Age movement. His camp was able to sense, very early on, what Peggy Noonan was writing about. Here is Michelle Obama on the campaign trail:

That is why I am here, because Barack Obama is the only person in this who understands that. That before we can work on the problems, we have to fix our souls. Our souls are broken in this nation.

Did Oprah write that?

There was a moment in this campaign when I considered (albeit briefly) heaving reason aside and supporting Obama because I've lost all faith in our elites. This was momentary (BIG momentary) lapse of reason, for having read Kirk and Kreeft for almost as many years as Obama listened to Reverend Wright, I know where this inevitably ends:

Ideology, in short, is a political formula that promises mankind and earthly paradise; but in cruel fact what ideology has created is a series of terrestrial hells.†

But this is the opportunity of a lifetime for Obama and the liberal wing of the Democratic party and they're going for broke. There are 300+ million empty vessels waiting to be saved by Obama the Messiah and rehabilitated by legions of central planners.

I'M ASKING YOU TO BELIEVE. Not just in my ability to bring about real change in Washinton...I'm asking you to believe in yours."

- Obama '08

The Anchoress believes this painless coup was in the works for a long time and offers the best (and most beautiful) interpretation of where this "obliviousness" may take us:

The ending, of course, is the coup d’état. Believing that the rest of us, now disillusioned, are no longer clinging to romantic ideals of honor, or truth or nobility, these always-restless First Children, devoted to deconstruction, believe they are about to take down the presidency, the churches, the "old" government and even the "old" media. They expect to put into place something "brand new." But believe me when I tell you what they are building is older than dirt. And up from it. Which is why they will need their fortresses. Castro lives in one, too.

They've been practicing all of this, by the way, perfecting the Art of the Painless Coup so thoroughly that most ordinary folks do not even realize what has occurred.

Over the past 40 years these hyperactive First Children have been pulling off small scale coups with varying levels of success. They managed to deconstruct the academies, so that education is less a broadening of knowledge than a narrowing of perspective. They have deconstructed the liturgy to insist that a pantomime in clownface is a vast improvement over 2000 year-old sacrament and liturgy. They have deconstructed government by constructing something so huge and unweildly that nothing coming out of it is reliable or dependable, and almost no one is accountable, either. They have deconstructed the press to the point where the truth of a story is less important than how it may be framed and spun. They have deconstructed the idea of fascism to mean "those democracies in Israel and America" rather than the freedom-suppressing regimes which surround them.

We have created and are responsible for this national malaise. We have opened the door for this government recklessness and malfeasance and are grossly indifferent (and some would argue expectant) to the encroachment.

As John Hawkins writes:

We have gotten to a point in our society where people can pursue courses of action that we know, they know, that everyone knows are highly likely to end in disaster. But then, when the aforementioned tragedy inevitably occurs, there is a demand that the federal government "fix the problem."

The federal government has responded by inflating our currency to postpone this reckoning despite having a tremendous moral and ethical responsibility to protect our currency from debasement. Henry Hazlitt, a man as venerable as the old bank and its motto in marble, knew the curse of inflation. He writes:

Yet the ardor for inflation never dies. It would almost seem as if no country is capable of profiting from the experience of another and no generation of learning from the suffering of its forbears. Each generation and country follows the same mirage. Each grasps for the same Dead Sea fruit that turns to dust and ashes in its mouth. For it is the nature of inflation to give birth to a thousand illusions.

Inflation itself is a form of taxation. It is perhaps the worst possible form, which usually bears hardest on those least able to pay.

Ron Paul may be a little lopsided, but you know there are problems when the nation's accountant, David Walker, resigns/retires and goes on a nationwide tour to warn the country about the looming financial crisis.

Whether we like it or not, history has was a way of forcing us to confront our excesses.

†Russell Kirk, The Politics of Prudence.

Labels: democrats, economics

A little more from the Obama BLOG. I don't edit these:

That's motivation everybody! We have to work even harder. I'll refer to a rather corny and elementary saying/poem that a former adolescent client of mine told be. She said that her teacher told them this EVERY morning. Here goes: "Good, better, best...Never let it rest until your good becomes your better and your better becomes your best!!!"

one love,
YES, YES, YES, WE CAN!!!!

Here's one from Daily Kos via Little Green Footballs. This one is a little creepy.

Labels: democrats

I parsed through hundreds of reactions to the speech and like this one by Stanley Kurtz the best. I continue to vacillate on the effect Obama's twenty-year relationship with Reverend Wright will have on his presidential ambitions. His numbers at Intrade remain favorable and the MSM is fawning over his speech. I also think both camps have run the numbers and know it is going to be a brokered convention decided by the super delegates. As a result, Obama was speaking to the super delegates today more than he was to the voters. The demographic Hillary won in Ohio is going to give her the same edge in Pennsylvania. In short, voters have made up their minds and this speech was more about momentum and re-assuring the super delegates that he can win in the general election.

I think Kurtz assumes Obama is able to navigate the anger and hatred of Reverand Wright. He goes further and examines how the radical elements of the party are able to find their voice under the cover of a slick charlatan. This is important to me because Obama is a radical, a hard-core lefty who believes government is the solution to all the ills of the world (I purposely used the word world). He's also an appeaser and rabidly anti-American.

Obama is persuasive because he's sincere. You wonder how he could have sat for twenty years in Wright's congregation listening to his minister's shocking radicalism without leaving. Obama explains it here. He sees some exaggeration and excessive pessimism in Wright's stance, yet he also sees the authentic voice of African-American pain. And this led Obama to tolerate, excuse, and dismiss for decades what ought not to have been tolerated, excused, or dismissed. This, unfortunately, is exactly how elite liberals come to countenance the sort of anti-American radicalism they ought to stand up and fight instead.

Remember when we were hearing about the need to purge Michael Moore and the MoveOn crowd from the Democratic Party? Obama is the polar opposite of all that–and in a devilishly clever way. Rather than move the Democrats away from the Michael Moores or Jeremiah Wrights, Obama buys absolution for them from the rest of the country. No, Obama does not fully agree with Jeremiah Wright, but the Democratic Party under Obama will be complacent about its Michael Moore wing. That's why the MoveOn types are so excited about Obama. There will be plenty of the most left-leaning appointees staffing the federal bureaucracy and set into judgeships under Obama, and all of it will be smoothed over by speeches about national healing and understanding pain. Under Obama, the Michael Moore-MoveOn wing, far from being purged, will be in the catbird seat, and all because they've found the perfect spokesman.

In this positive attraction to anti-American anger (even if that anger is not quite entirely shared) Obama embodies the sensibilities of the elite academic radicals that are his real heritage and milieu.

Far from pulling a Hubert Humphrey or a Tony Blair and casting the radical left out of the party, Obama seems to see his job as getting the rest of the country to adopt a stance of relative complacency toward the most egregious sorts of anti-Americanism–all under the guise of achieving national unity.

Source

If Hillary found her voice in New Hampshire he has given a voice to the most dangerous radicals in this country.

Labels: democrats

It appears in the Washington Times and it's whipped ALLAHPUNDIT into a fighting frenzy. It just makes me depressed and reminds me that our country's journalism programs (universities) are manufacturing marbles for the echo chamber.

Right underrepresented in press's diversity
Only 6 percent of the national press corps describe themselves as "conservative" in a population that includes reporters, editors and producers from major television and radio networks, daily newspapers, news wires and online sources.

Those who consider themselves "very conservative" amount to just 2 percent, according to a wide-ranging survey of 585 journalists and news executives released yesterday by the Project for Excellence in Journalism.

Source

The same anti-American elite academic radicals who support Obama.

Labels: democrats, education, left-wing media

I found this at LGF but it comes via Ace. Here is Reverend Wright preaching about "dirty Israel" and some connection between 9/11 and Israel/Palestine. And here's one of the anti-Israel photos from the "peace march" in California. God damn America.

***You may need to hurry and watch these videos because YouTube is stuffing them down the memory hole like Obama did with pictures of Reverend Wright on his web site.***

Labels: democrats

It's like an episode of Oprah or a New Age high colonic...No worries though, Barack's staff will block out the bad and keep everyone pumped.

Hi Everyone,

I hope you had a great weekend and pumped your mind with positive energy and thoughts.

As we begin anew, let's take a deep breath and exhale!

Let's see if we can move forward knowing that Barack's staff will handle situations for the good of all involved.

Let's think positive thoughts and write positive messages.

Sometimes, each of us become frustrated... it's human nature. We can not change the past but we can effectuate change in the days to come.

So, take another deep breath.

Blow it out ever so s-l-o-w-l-y.

That's it!

Have a great, positive week!

Labels: democrats

If William Kristol's assessment of Obama in the NYT is correct my prediction is that he will accept the office of VP. His supporters are threatening to withhold support for HRC in the general election if that happens but they will accept whatever narrative the DNC scripts.

(NYT) The more you learn about him, the more Obama seems to be a conventionally opportunistic politician, impressively smart and disciplined, who has put together a good political career and a terrific presidential campaign. But there’s not much audacity of hope there. There’s the calculation of ambition, and the construction of artifice, mixed in with a dash of deceit — all covered over with the great conceit that this campaign, and this candidate, are different.

**UPDATE**
This was just published on NRO:

Derb and Robbins are right: Obama is toast. There is no coming back from this either...Of course Hillary is the obvious beneficiary of his fall, and she may yet pull out the nomination. No matter. The numbers of voters who have sworn to pollsters that they would not vote for her no matter what, has hovered slightly above 50 percent forever. And, there will be a lot of angry Obama voters who won't show up for her.

This was posted by Lisa Schiffren. I still think HRC's staff will find a way to heal those divisions enough to win in November. She will also benefit from a non-hostile MSM who will be working overtime to heal those divisions (most likely by manufacturing "news" of a racially tinged nature that portray conservatives as indefensible cretins). Her greatest asset will be Obama who, given the choice between the Senate and VP, will make the only choice a shrewd, business and usual politico can make.

As an aside...Lisa writes that the election is McCain's to lose. I think that's going a little far, although, she mentions that McCain should introduce Phil Gramm front and center ASAP to calm reservations about his [McCain's] economic prowess in these very uncertain times. Once upon a time, Gramm was going to run for the GOP nomination. Gramm's economic credentials are indisputable.

Labels: clintons, democrats

Blogtalk: Pro-Clinton Bloggers Boycott Kos (Sorry, it's a link to the New York Times)

Objecting to the tone of attacks against Mrs. Clinton and her supporters on the blog, the diarist called for a “writers strike.”

"This is a strike - a walkout over unfair writing conditions at DailyKos. It does not mean that if conditions get better I won’t 'work'' at DailyKos again," Alegre wrote, promising to come back only "if we ever get to the point where we're engaging each other in discussion rather than facing off in shouting matches."

Source

Eric at Viking Pundit opines:

Pass the popcorn, again - Wow, the Left side of this presidential election has everything: identity politics run amok, another Florida voting disaster, Hillary trying to override the "will of the people" and now Daily Kos diarists going on strike. Can I get a Dean Scream Amen, my brothers?

The infighting on the DEM side is delicious. I'm really torn about the outcome. The Intrade Prediction Markets still show Obama winning the DEM nomination (71.8 versus 28.3); however, according to Rasmussen, his national lead against Hillary is fading.

If not for the seriousness of the challenges ahead, both campaigns (and candidates) would be laughable. In one instance you have Elton John signing for HRC for one night only and on the other you have Scarlett Johansson shilling for Obama and whose supporters seem obnoxiously gullible. Here's a typical post on the Obama BLOG (unedited...I resisted the impulse):

Hey everyone , it is really simple if you think about it. When a tree falls in the forest, that it make a sound? Try THis:

1/ TURN OFF THE TV, AVOID ALL OTHER WHITE NOISE.

2/ FOCUS ON THIS IMAGE: BARACK OBAMA AS THE NEXT PRESIDENT!

(Stick to it, and i promise you will feel good all week long)

TRY IT, now!

It's too bad this isn't 1990 when such naiveté, absurdity, and obtuseness would be passable. I think the above comment is more of an approximation of Obama's foreign policy...If I talk to Ahmadinejad I can help him visualize world peace and he will at once give up his nuclear enrichment program and innate hatred of Israel.

Yes. We. Can.

Labels: clintons, democrats

The quote...

"It appears today that some elements among the remnants of the Marxist left, radical Green, miscellaneous postmodern radicals of various hue, and radicalized Muslims are searching for a way to unite around the only issues that connect them: hatred of liberal capitalist modernity, Israel and the United States of America."

- Walter Russell Mead

The photo essay from Ringo’s Pictures...

Saturday, March 15th 2008, I skipped my usual shower, put on a smelly old t-shirt, grabbed my camera and some cash and headed over to Hollywood to join in the peace parade. As usual, the event was sponsored by the communist front group International ANSWER and co-hosted by numerous other Marxist and Leftist organizations.

Labels: democrats

God damn America.

You know who's a Roman? Lucius here, he's a Roman. You know who else? Me. I'm a Roman.

It's over for Obama. Here's the Reverand Wright video on YouTube. I've heard very white educated liberals speak this way. Hillary and Obama both hate America and are equally unpalatable. Obama may speak about "hope" and "change" but there's a reason he's the candidate of choice for Cindy Sheehan. In case you haven't connected the dots, here's an excerpt from God and Gold that links Wright & Obama to the most virulent strain of Anti-Americanism:

"It appears today that some elements among the remnants of the Marxist left, radical Green, miscellaneous postmodern radicals of various hue, and radicalized Muslims are searching for a way to unite around the only issues that connect them: hatred of liberal capitalist modernity, Israel and the United States of America."

Now you know why Michelle Obama is finally proud of America. Here's more from God and Gold. It's almost like Mead is quoting one of Wright's sermons:

"The constitutional separation of church and state violates the authority of God...Commercialized, commodified sex permeates the American economy and culture. American scientists invented and spread AIDS. American pollution is destroying the world—and even so, the United States has refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol. American politics only pretends to be democratic; it is actually a plutocratic system, with Jews behind the scenes pulling the strings. America is the most violent society in the history of the world, dropping nuclear weapons on Japan among many other crimes. American hypocrisy is without compare; American democracy is reserved for the privileged white race. America has no right for the international law, though it wants to impose such laws on others. The Patriot Act ans other harsh measures after 9/11 fully expose the hypocrisy of America's claims to stand for human rights."

This tripe comes from the majority of American Colleges and Universities. Professors like Ward Churchill feed this babble to impressionable minds. I've seen the fruits of their labor; I've read graffiti at one of those places of privilege supporting the Iraqi insurgents. Disgusting.

Related
Peering into the demented mind of the America-hating left

**UPDATE**
John Derbyshire is gloating. He writes: "Why Didn't You LISTEN? Obama's toast, and Hillary will poll poorly against McCain. Get your bumper stickers now!"

**UPDATE 2**
Ouch. I found this on Wizbang.

I'm sure there is a way to spin Obama's 20-year relationship with a race-baiting man who calls for God to damn America, is convinced that it's run by the Ku Klux Klan, that the government engineered the AIDS virus to get rid of gays and blacks, and embraces Louis Farrakhan, but I can't find it.

Can someone help me out here?

Labels: clintons, democrats