Monday, January 31, 2011

While Cairo Burns,
Obama Parties

by Keith Koffler - January 30th, 2011 - White House Dossier

As revolution threatened to sweep Egypt and possibly other allies – with the horrifying prospect of Islamism replacing reliable friends – the president was on view partying with the IN crowd.

An IN crowd that includes the people who would be condemning him if they were an independent press rather than an "amen choir." Obama is not worried. He doesn't care what happens in the Middle East. He cares about tonight's party, or golf, or basketball, or whatever. An existential war for our nation is not his problem.



The Arab World On The Brink...
But Of What?

by Melanie Phillips - January 30th, 2011 - The London Spectator

Well, what a turn-up for the books. Those same liberal circles which flayed the neo-cons alive for pursuing the apparently ludicrous idea that democracy could ever come to the Arab world are now hailing the current upheavals in that same Arab world as .. a democratic awakening.

Maybe it will be so. For sure some at least of the elements involved want true freedom and human rights. But that particular argument against the neo-cons was not wrong (and before anyone flies to their keyboard, let me clarify that what I support, and have always supported, is the principal belief that drove neo-con thinking -- not that democracy in such countries was necessarily achievable, and certainly not overnight, but that there is a moral duty to defeat the jihad in order to defend the west. And that was always a very different matter).

Very intriguing opening to an important article. The neo-cons (so reviled by Patrick Buchanan and all of the paleo-conservatives) were always ideologically correct and pragmatically wrong about Bush's efforts in the Middle East. It is the reason that I broke with them over the handling of Afghanistan. Because the reality is that though Iraq might have been a close call on whether a stable democracy was possible, we should have left Afghanistan immediately after the first vote installed Hamid Karzai. A brutal dictatorship would have resulted but at least we would not have had so many of our troops tied down in a permanent insurrection. With those resources we could have then credibly intervened to stop the Iranian subversion of our efforts in Iraq.

As it has turned out, the Islamic Jihadists are still the problem. We are losing that war, not alone in Afghanistan, but in Pakistan, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and various other places throughout the Middle East. The strategic error is that George Bush thought he could fight a war for existential survival without asking the American people to get involved. We have underfunded the war and wasted so many assets in nation building that we are now being defeated everywhere because the American people do not understand the risks. NO ONE is talking about the consequences of defeat.

At least we were feared when Bush was in charge. Now with Obama in charge, not one of our enemies is afraid of America. They know Obama will do nothing but talk. With that certainty we have become the paper tiger they always proclaimed we had become. Our enemies are on the move throughout the Middle East. This will not turn out well. We will shortly face an Islamo Fascist Middle East with two nuclear powers vying to be the first to destroy the great Satan.


Sunday, January 30, 2011

Obama Infects Federal
Work Forces With 'British Disease'

Editorial - January 29th, 2011 - Washington Examiner

Sadly, an executive order signed by President Obama in 2009 has injected a massive dose of the British disease into the daily operation of the federal government. Executive Order 13522 is innocuously titled "Creating Labor-Management Forums to Improve Delivery of Government Services." The reality is that the only thing improved will be the ability of federal employee union bosses to tell managers of government departments and agencies what they can and cannot do. What makes this an even more extraordinary turn of events, however, is the fact the Obama administration has empowered union bosses to exercise this new power behind closed doors without fear of exposure via the Freedom of Information Act.

[Snip]

According to a recently distributed guidance memorandum signed by Office of Personnel Management Director John Berry and Office of Management and Budget Deputy Director Jeffrey Zients, federal managers must "allow pre-decisional involvement with unions in all workplace matters to the fullest extent practicable, without regard to whether those matters are negotiable subjects of bargaining."

In addition to exempting over 500 unions from ObamaCare, Barack Obama continues his practice of legislating by "executive order" to turn over political power to union bosses. This obscene practice of "executive order" legislation started under the premise that certain powers belonged to the executive branch and these powers were subject to such a Presidential ruling about how they would be enforced. Then lazy legislators decided to write into their laws, the delegation to the executive branch of the power to write rules to "flesh out their laws" and decide exactly what they meant.

Beyond his support for a vast expansion of the federal entitlements that are bankrupting our nation, George W. Bush pushed the envelope on use of "executive orders" to write such laws as he felt were needed in areas where neither power existed. Several of the early conservative legislators who broke with Bush did so over this abusive expansion of the executive branch power. It is clearly neither in furtherance of his constitutional powers nor in compliance with legislative granted powers. It was intolerable. However what most people noted during Bush's exercise of this power was that there was no effective way to reign in his abuse.

At least some of the Obama administration leadership noted this lack of an effective way to reign in this power. They have as a result used the expansion of this power more abusively than even Bush was guilty. In the situation addressed in this article, the pairing of a legislatively authorized new department with an "executive order" authorization to turn over its operation to union bosses is a perfect example of the outrageous trend Bush started. Those in the Republican Party who chastised Bush for his abuse of the process are looking much more prescient now. They predicted the risk to our freedoms that would come from abuse of this power. What is amazing is how little time it took for their predictions of doom to become reality.


Thursday, January 27, 2011

Grace Under Fire

by Patti Davis - January 27th, 2011 - Time

I often imagine what it would be like if my father were still here to mark his 100th birthday, if Alzheimer's hadn't clawed away years, possibilities, hopes. What would he think of all the commemorations and celebrations?

Basically a humble man, he'd be embarrassed, I suspect, although certainly flattered. He would cover his emotions with a joke — probably something about George Burns' living to 100 and how he just couldn't let George get all the glory for making it that far. I'm sure he'd be disappointed in the meanness of politics these days yet amused by all the politicians trying to adhere themselves to his legacy, even aiming to be "the next Ronald Reagan." He'd probably suggest, with a twinkle in his eye, that they should figure out who they are as individuals and be the best at that.

But most of all, I imagine spending time with him as a daughter — and his allowing the residue of my rebellious years and the hurt I caused him to blow away like dust, maybe with a bit of humor, since I did manage to snag his attention by being the bad girl. I'd like to ask him if he was ever really fooled by me.

I'd also like to ask him about the nearsighted boy he once was, whose father frequently disappeared on drinking binges so severe he'd pass out, often miles from home. Maybe my father would finally open up to me about the uncertainty and the waiting ... and the fear.

Yet he had no fear, and I wish more than anything I could sit with him by a window in the dying light of day and ask him about that. How did you come from where you came from and learn to be so confident? How did you learn to trust so completely in your faith that fear didn't stand a chance? I want to tell him I remember the nights when I was a child and he traced the constellations for me, showing me Pegasus and Orion. I want to tell him that even though light-years came between us later on, I never stopped believing he hung the moon.

There will be a lot written about Ronald Reagan in the coming days leading up to his birthday on Febraury 6th. It is unlikely that any will more eloquently express their love of this man than this homage by a daughter who was not always fond of living in his shadow. I think it expresses two things that are true of even Reagan's most devoted followers. Our admiration - and at the same time, our fear - that we are not living up to the greatness he showed us was possible.

He was not just a great statesman. Even more he was a truly good man.


Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Heroes Of Old Were Creators
— Not Talkers

by Thomas Sowell - January 25th, 2011 - Investor's Business Daily

When I mention that my family used kerosene lamps when I was a small child in the South during the 1930s, that is usually taken as a sign of our poverty, though I never thought of us as poor at the time.

What is ironic is that kerosene lamps were a luxury of the rich in the 19th century, before John D. Rockefeller came along.

At the high price of kerosene at that time, an ordinary working man could not afford to stay up at night, burning this expensive fuel for hours at a time.

Rockefeller did not begin his life as rich, by any means. He made a fortune by revolutionizing the petroleum industry.

Today, Rockefeller is perceived to have unfairly enriched himself. Thomas Sowell reminds us of the good that resulted from Rockefeller working hard to get so wealthy. The poor got cheap light and freedom to move long distances.

You rarely hear anyone on the left acknowledge the good that comes from free enterprise. In fact, given their preferences, kerosene would not be cheap and cars would not allow the vast majority of us to travel long distances. To them, it is intolerable that Rockefeller made so much more money than the poor. To them, no benefit to society is worth the cost to their egos of comparing themselves to those who have done better. It is all about envy. Their envy of anyone who is a creator. The one thing you can be sure of is that they will never stop talking about how evil the people who create are.


Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Appeasement Is
The Proper Policy
Towards Confucian China

by Ambrose Evans Pritchard - January 25h, 2011 - The London Telegraph

Is China now where Germany was in 1900? Possibly. There are certainly hints of menace from some quarters in Beijing. Defence minister Liang Guanglie said over New Year that China’s armed forces are “pushing forward preparations for military conflict in every strategic direction”.

Professor Huang Jing from Singapore’s Lee Kwan Yew School and a former adviser to China’s Army, said Beijing is losing its grip on the colonels.

“The young officers are taking control of strategy and it is like young officers in Japan in the 1930s. This is very dangerous. They are on a collision course with a US-dominated system,” he said.

Leave it to another of the left wing radicals of Europe to openly suggest that the appeasement model of Obama is the rational course of action with China. Such advise is based on the idea that the two wars with Germany need not have taken place if we had more "effectively" appeased Germany. That we were blatant in our appeasement, and that it merely encouraged Germany to go to war, is a misunderstanding of the proper course towards handling the aggressive young militants, according to this writer. We should have appeased Germany earlier but in a firm manner and war would have never happened.

See. It was all the fault of the Western Democracies. We drove Germany's militant young officers to war the same way we are driving the Chinese young officers to war today. So when it happens, it will not be the fault of the Chinese aggressors. It will be the failure of America to properly appease the "good" Confucian forces in China.

It is just such delusional thinking that always leads the so-called "peace movement" to blame those who resist war for the war that results. If you just lay down like a lamb, the wolf will not eat you. If you doubt that, then you are worse than the wolf. At least that is the theory of the radical extremist anti-war proponents of peace by violence.


Five Reasons The Planet
May Not Be Its Hottest Ever

by Staff - January 24th, 2011 - Fox News

On Thursday the U.N.'s weather agency announced that 2010 was a milestone, the warmest year on record, in a three-way tie with 2005 and 1998. "The 2010 data confirm the Earth's significant long-term warming trend," said Michel Jarraud, the World Meteorological Organization's top official. He added that the ten warmest years after records began in 1854 have all occurred since 1998.

But how reliable is the data? Here are five good reasons some scientists are skeptical of these claims.

The truth is that you cannot believe any of the lies being spread by the global warming cultists. In all cases, the extreme greens are manipulating data to prove a warming that any rational person would find ridiculous. From the fraudulently created hockey stick graph of Al Gore, to the frustration expressed by some of the true believers in the Climate Research Unit of the East Anglia University that they could not find honest data to support their beliefs, man caused global warming has been based on corrupt science.

These five reasons suggest the degree to which the global warming cultists continue to manipulate data, select biased data and ignore flaws in their data to defend their idiocy. At the end of the article, there is a link to eight predictions that have been proved horribly wrong, made by these extremists. Though they demand that you give them the power to inflict their devastating solutions on planet earth, when confronted with their earlier mistakes they say, "I never claimed to predict the future with full accuracy." They then insist that the predictions will still come true. They were only off a little on time line. You just need to trust them.

Yeah. Right.


Monday, January 24, 2011

Anti-American Chinese
War Anthem Played At
White House State Dinner

by Will Rahn - January 24th, 2011 - The Daily Caller

The person playing this anti-American Anthem was not brought to the event by our enemies, the Chinese. Barack Obama selected the entertainer and approved the music he played. To Obama, it was not offensive that the lyrics of the song calls Americans "jackals" and glorifies killing them.

A former People’s Liberation Army doctor living in the United States said that the performance was nothing less than a propaganda triumph for Chinese Communists. “In the eyes of all Chinese, this will not be seen as anything other than a big insult to the U.S.,” Philadelphia resident Yang Jingduan told The Epoch Times. “It’s like insulting you in your face and you don’t know it, it’s humiliating.”

As it was intended to be. Barack Obama bowed to the Chinese leader, just as he bows to all other world tyrants. It is just one more step in his ongoing campaign to humiliate America. Approving this song was knowingly done to humiliate us. The fact that Obama will not apologize for the mistake is all the proof a rational human needs to understand this ongoing campaign of hate against the nation he was elected to lead is intentional.


Climate Change:
Dogs Of Law
Are Off The Leash

by Richard Ingham - January 23rd, 2011 - AFP

From being a marginal and even mocked issue, climate-change litigation is fast emerging as a new frontier of law where some believe hundreds of billions of dollars are at stake.

Compensation for losses inflicted by man-made global warming would be jaw-dropping, a payout that would make tobacco and asbestos damages look like pocket money.

Imagine: a country or an individual could get redress for a drought that destroyed farmland, for floods and storms that created an army of refugees, for rising seas that wiped a small island state off the map.

In the past three years, the number of climate-related lawsuits has ballooned, filling the void of political efforts in tackling greenhouse-gas emissions.

Billions of dollars were won in law suits targetting doctors for causing various diseases like Cerebral Palsy, quadriplegia and other birth defects for "failure to perform a Cesarean." The increased practice resulted in real death to mothers and children who underwent Cesarean operations when the doctor advised against it but offered the mother her choice based on the rumors. Despite the soaring number of these useless operations, there was no discernible reductions in the number of any of these claimed problems. Why? Because having a Cesarean or not had no effect on any of them. The entire basis for the lawsuits was lawyer avarice, not good science. They are still being won, even though it has been proven the supposed causation does not exist.

Yet none of the lawyers have to give back a dime of their fraudulently gained legal fees. Nor will the lawyers ever be held liable for the rash of deaths useless Cesareans caused.

Billions of dollars were extorted from asbestos companies - even a great number of companies who never were involved in asbestos except in some nebulous manner, such as transporting it. Companies that asked for better weather proofing that in those days could only be provided by asbestos were made to pay damages for asking for better weather proofing. Asbestos was always known to be dangerous. Yet damages were paid to people who never had symptoms merely because they were exposed and "might" someday come down with the diseases that asbestos increased. Of course, if you had any of these lung diseases, you did not even have to prove you were exposed. That the diseases existed before asbestos and will still exist after asbestos has been eliminated from the earth did not matter.

When asbestos was declared illegal we went through a period where it was required to rip it all out, until it was discovered that the practice of removing asbestos caused more damage and harmed more people than sealing it in and leaving it where it was. Lawyers who had demanded the removal, then sued for more damages for the practice of removal they had forced companies to comply with. And in our corrupt court system, they won those lawsuits too.


Many small investors had the companies in which they held stock bought out by tobacco company corporations. Only to find that having been bought by the tobacco companies, they were now liable for the lawsuits against the tobacco companies too. Their life's work was then taken by states despite the fact that they never invested in tobacco, never benefited from tobacco, never even realized that our country would abandon the rule of law and hold them liable for acts they never participated in.

Which brings us to global warming. It will not matter to our corrupt courts if AGW is reality or a political scam. Our courts are nothing but a lottery system of corruption, allowing lawyers to extort billions for any trivial lame brain excuse if they can make an argument that seems credible to a gullible judge. It is not that our judges are too stupid to know these lawsuits are a scam. It is that our judges are too corrupt to care.


Saturday, January 22, 2011

Why Your Dishes
Won't Come Clean Anymore

by Richard Mullins - January 21st, 2011 - Tampa Bay Online

Charles Yezak keeps a secret stash hidden in the kitchen. He can't buy any more. It's illegal in many states now. So he only dips into his stockpile on special occasions.

Not fine wine. Not Cuban cigars. It's dish detergent. Not just any dish detergent.

"This is the stockpile I bought before the changeover," Yezak confesses with a hushed voice while shopping the cleaning supply aisle at a Walmart Neighborhood store in Tampa. "It actually works – not like the new stuff."

Turns out, they really don't make dish detergent like they used to. And that's causing something of a disaster for everyone who gets stuck doing the dishes

Idiot government bureaucrats continue to screw the American people, changing laws for useless and trivial reasons that have little effect and numerous unintended consequences. Like the total lies spread about DDT, these ignorant bans of potassium in dish washing soap will not accomplish their goal. At least this time, banning potassium will not kill millions of children in poor countries, like the DDT ban. However, since less than 3% of the potassium (that causes local problems in a few areas) comes from dishwasing, it will not stop the problem it is intended to stop.

It will simply prove once again, Americans are too stupid and greedy to use common sense any longer. The ban is not in areas where the problem exists but EVERYWHERE! We have turned most of our nation over to idiot Democrats who pass useless feel good legislation. Like the new light bulbs, this is a waste of time and money. It will not matter. These totalitarian idiots have the power and a self righteous belief in their own superiority and nothing that you or I say will stop them. The blood of millions of children dead from malaria for no reason at all will not persuade them to even listen to the stupidity of their goals. Why would dirty dishes influence them?


Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Dependence Day

by Mark Steyn - January 2011 - The New Criterion

If I am pessimistic about the future of liberty, it is because I am pessimistic about the strength of the English-speaking nations, which have, in profound ways, surrendered to forces at odds with their inheritance. “Declinism” is in the air, but some of us apocalyptic types are way beyond that. The United States is facing nothing so amiable and genteel as Continental-style “decline,” but something more like sliding off a cliff.

I have written recently in a couple of different posts on the incredible number of progressive young couples who have declared they will not have children even as they get married. This incredible desire to end mankind is a form of self loathing that is hard for many of us to imagine. Yet that commitment has become a grand ideal in the minds of our youth. What could the teachers that created such self loathing have been trying to accomplish? If that is not sliding off a cliff, the phrase has no meaning.

This article by Mark Steyn will leave anyone who loves our nation depressed. It walks us through a reality that we all know is true but all ignore because it is so wrong in so many ways. Or should be wrong. For three generations there has been a war to destroy what makes America great, a culture war. For three generations Americans have been too busy living their lives to listen to the occasional prophet who pointed out the consequences of our insanity. Now as those consequences move from the far future into the near future, some are starting to pay attention when people like Steyn point out the depressing reality of the changes we have permitted. However it is also becoming clear, we have probably left it too late to change it. We have squandered our future even as we have sold our souls to our enemies. Steyn talks about the incredible stupidity of spending money we don't have by borrowing from avowed enemies.


Within the next five years, the People’s Liberation Army [China], which is the largest employer on the planet, bigger even than the U.S. Department of Community-Organizer Grant Applications, will be entirely funded by U.S. taxpayers. When they take Taiwan, suburban families in Connecticut and small businesses in Idaho will have paid for it. The existential questions for America loom now, not decades hence. What we face is not merely the decline and fall of a powerful nation but the collapse of the highly specific cultural tradition that built the modern world.

What tradition is that? Our enemies have convinced the young of our planet to deride England and America as fascist and pro-slavery. Steyn speaks of this insanity when he says:

It’s interesting to learn that “anti-fascism” now means attacking the British Empire, which stood alone against fascism in that critical year between the fall of France and Germany’s invasion of Russia. And it’s even sadder to have to point out the most obvious fatuity in those “anti-fascist groups” litany of evil—“the British Empire’s association with slavery.” The British Empire’s principal association with slavery is that it abolished it. Before William Wilberforce, the British Parliament, and the brave men of the Royal Navy took up the issue, slavery was an institution regarded by all cultures around the planet as as permanent a feature of life as the earth and sky. Britain expunged it from most of the globe.

Even here in America, there was always majority opposition to slavery. We are denounced despite the fact that slavery was always existent in less than half our states. Close to half a million Americans died to end the scourge when the democratic efforts to end it were starting to work and civil war broke out. These dead were our best and brightest and their letters home acknowledge their pride in ending slavery. Today our nation is not admired for what we did, but denounced for what those we defeated did. Why is there a stain on our nation when any decent observer has to acknowledge that the blood of these dead should have brought us admiration instead?

What else but unjustified self loathing could be the basis of attitudes such as these?

Steyn uses examples of the decline in England to indicate the kind of decline that we are unquestionably facing here as well.


Last year, the “Secretary of State for Children” (both an Orwellian and Huxleyite office) announced that 20,000 “problem families” would be put under twenty-four-hour cctv supervision in their homes. As the Daily Express reported, “They will be monitored to ensure that children attend school, go to bed on time and eat proper meals.” Orwell’s government “telescreen” in every home is close to being a reality, although even he would have dismissed as too obviously absurd a nanny state that literally polices your bedtime.

There seems to be no end to the willingness of our so-called leaders to micro manage every minute of our lives. Here in America, having made our toilets so inefficient that you have to flush 3 times and taken light bulbs away under lies about efficiency, there are already plans to take away anti-bacterial soap as the next step in controlling every iota of our existence.

The final line in this article is the heart of the problem. "Great convulsions lie ahead, and at the end of it we may be in a post-Anglosphere world." That world will not be as good as the one we currently live in. Not even close.


Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Why The Left Hates Sarah Palin

by Evan Sayet - January 18th, 2011 - Front Page Magazine

It has to be her life story.

Now, to all decent people, Ms. Palin’s life story could not be more laudable. She married her high school sweetheart to whom she remains married and with whom she is apparently still in love. In the harshest of climes, she and Todd started a small business which, apparently, they ran well enough to purchase a home and raise a family. Despite the long hours required to run a family business and raise children, when Ms. Palin saw that the public schools were not doing a good job in educating her children, she joined the local PTA and was so effective there that the people who knew her best – and in small towns like Wasilla there are very few secrets – elected her to be their mayor.

Apparently, Ms. Palin was so effective in that job that the mayors of the other small towns and big cities elected her president of the Alaska Conference of Mayors. After a highly successful stint as chairman of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, she ran an uphill battle against an entrenched Republican governor and was elected to the top position, Governor, of the largest state in the nation. She did that job so well that her approval ratings – despite having ruffled the feathers of the leading political family in Alaska – bordered on 80 percent.

As Ms. Palin’s political horizons continued to grow, she found out she was pregnant with her fourth child, a baby with Downs Syndrome. Despite knowing in advance that this child would require even more attention and care than other kids, Ms. Palin opted to give her child – Trig – life.

So, given that those who hate – hate!!! – Ms. Palin know nothing more than these facts about her, what is it about Ms. Palin’s life story that generates this blind loathing? The answer is that, at every turn, Ms. Palin’s story debunks the myths of victimization and self-centeredness that is at the heart of the Modern Liberal ideology.

I hear repeatedly from progressive young people, they have no intention of having any children. If they are so dedicated to ending the existence of mankind on this planet, a self loathing that is beyond anything a rational person could understand, why is anyone surprised that they do not care about the future of our nation? Not caring about our nation leads inexorably to hating those who do.


Monday, January 17, 2011

Cold Fusion Getting Hot With
10kw Heater Prepping For Market

by Sterling D. Allan - January 14th, 2011 - Pure Energy Systems

Last Friday, January 14, we reported about a press conference held in Bologna, Italy in which Professor Sergio Focardi and Eng. Andrea A. Rossi, both of the University of Bologna, announced to the world that they have a cold fusion device capable of producing more than 10 kilowatts of heat power, while only consuming a fraction of that. This is the first public demonstration of a nickel-hydrogen fusion reactor capable of producing a few kilowatts of thermal energy. At its peak, it is capable of generating 15,000 watts with just 400 watts input required. On Saturday, a forum was opened allowing for questions online from around the world.

This recent public demonstration alone is is a huge development, but what's more, they also claim to be going into production, expecting to have units available for purchase commercially within a year.

Though a number of scientists are still sceptical, it must be assumed that these Italian scientists would not be making a claim of ability to produce production units within a year unless there is something to their claims. Either that or this is one of the most amazing scams to have come along since Madoff. The article states that there is a prototype unit that has been heating a factory for two years using the technology Focardi and Rossi plan to put into production. What is surprising is that there was not more interest from traditional media. Unless the costs of the units are really astronomical, or the costs of the materials to power the units are more expensive than is expected, this will revolutionize electrical power generation in our world.

It is true that no one else has had the kind of success with Cold Fusion that this group claims, yet that does not mean they have not stumbled across something that works. The theory is certainly sound. Whether the theory can be made practical is something that many are praying comes to pass. It will not just effect the world of electrical energy production by coal. If it works and is less expensive than coal energy generation, it will also kill all the stupid green energy projects that are MORE expensive than coal.


Sunday, January 16, 2011

Hayes To Helm State GOP

by Rob Christensen - January 16th, 2011 - News & Observer

North Carolina Republicans chose former U.S. Rep. Robin Hayes Saturday to help lead their effort to end the Democrats' 20-year lease on the governor's mansion next year.

Hayes, 65, easily turned back challenges from tea party elements by promising to stay true to GOP principles and to emphasize grassroots politics.

"We are marching off to win for the people of North Carolina," Hayes told the state Republican Executive committee meeting at the Brownstone Hotel, after his victory.

Robin Hayes is one of the nicer people to have held office in North Carolina. Winning a left leaning district on the outskirts of Charlotte, Hayes managed to hold on to the seat for 8 years, even after the Democrats realigned his district specifically for the purpose of defeating him. They finally succeeded in the year of Obama with an overwhelming large turnout of blacks in the eastern end of his congressional district who voted the Democrat ticket exclusively.

With his generally moderate views, Hayes starts his short term as Chairman (to complete Tom Fetzer's term which ends the middle of the year) with serious unease coming from fiscal conservatives and some in the TEA Party movement in the state. Hayes is well regarded in social conservative quarters and has strong ties in the state's business community, neither of which are all that fond of the TEA Party efforts. Hayes' commitment to the core values of the TEA Party movement are being called into question. It doesn't help that Hayes says he doesn't know what the TEA Party movement stands for or anything about them.

However at least one of Hayes opponents, Tim D'Annunzio, has not made any friends by threats to start a conservative party to compete with the Republican Party. D'Annunzio lost the support of some of the TEA Party movement activists when they joined Robin Hayes in his endorsement of Harold Johnson for Hayes old seat in opposition to D'Annunzio. Some of D'Annunszo's antipathy seems to be related to that slight. As it turned out, Johnson lost to the Democrat incumbent and it is unlikely that D'Annunzio would have fared any better in that left leaning district. Threats to leave the party and start a "conservative" alternative are not consistent with the general goals of the TEA Party movement and it is going to be interesting to see if D'Annunzio actually makes good on this.

The TEA Party movement is probably going to have to wait a while for the consequences of this election to become clear for their goals. Some are going to try and re-fight this battle again at the State GOP convention. Hayes may have won the position. However like most in the GOP, it is not clear if he understands what the TEA Party movement means or has a realistic plan to work with these new activists.


Friday, January 14, 2011

A Stupid Poll About
The Right To Insurrection

by Daniel Foster - January 14th, 2011 - National Review

The question is phrased thus:
“Do you think it is ever justified for citizens to take violent action against the government, or is it never justified?”

Surprise: while just eleven percent of Democrats and eleven percent of independents believe it is ever justified to take violent action against the government, fully 28 percent of Republicans do. It doesn’t surprise me that there would be a poll trying to put the smell of blood in the water given the climate of the last week. But what does surprise me is that 76 percent of respondents, including 64 percent of Republicans, think it is never right to take up arms against the government. Ever.

What about if the government canceled the next election and started seizing first-born; or arbitrarily disappearing whole classes of citizenry; or summarily abolished private property and confiscated all our belongings at the tip of a bayonet? Not even then? Gosh, even Hobbes thought you had a right to violently resist a state that was trying to kill you. What could these 76 percent be thinking?

(Even worse, eight percent of respondents were unsure! You’d better know what you believe by the time you hear the jackboots round the corner.)

No matter how many good things happen, such as the election outcome last November, it is polls such as this that make me question the future of our nation. Have we truly become such gutless sheep that less than one in three Republicans believe that our freedom is worh fighting for?

Right now, a number of czars appointed by Obama have illegally taken actions to carry out goals that have been explicitly rejected by both our courts and our legislature, merely because Obama thinks they are just. If you are too stupid to hear the jackboots coming based on that unconstitutional seizure of power alone, you truly are as deranged as the psycho who killed the people in Arizona.


Wednesday, January 12, 2011

What Our Constitution Permits

by Walter E. Williams - January 12th, 2011 - TownHall.com

President James Madison on March 3, 1817 vetoed a public works bill saying: "Having considered the bill this day presented to me entitled 'An act to set apart and pledge certain funds for internal improvements,' and which sets apart and pledges funds 'for constructing roads and canals, and improving the navigation of water courses, in order to facilitate, promote, and give security to internal commerce among the several States, and to render more easy and less expensive the means and provisions for the common defense,' I am constrained by the insuperable difficulty I feel in reconciling the bill with the Constitution of the United States and to return it with that objection to the House of Representatives, in which it originated."

Madison, who is sometimes referred to as the father of our Constitution, added to his veto statement, "The legislative powers vested in Congress are specified and enumerated in the eighth section of the first article of the Constitution, and it does not appear that the power proposed to be exercised by the bill is among the enumerated powers."

Here's my question to any member of the House who might vote for funds for "constructing roads and canals, and improving the navigation of water courses": Was Madison just plain constitutionally ignorant or has the Constitution been amended to permit such spending?

The reality is that even some of the most conservative Americans are not really willing to live within the constraints of the Constitution as it was written. The new attempt by conservatives to require bills in Congress being considered for passage to state their Constitutional basis is going to lead to some really intriguing discussions of what our Constitution really means... and what Americans really understand to be the social contract that binds our nation. I hope that will be positive for our nation. I cannot assure it will be.

The conclusion of the article is a frightening portent of what we may find.
John Adams warned, "A Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever." I am all too afraid that's where our nation stands today and the blame lies with the American people.

I am afraid too. Afraid that Mr. Williams is closer to the truth than most Americans, even Conservatives and Libertarians would like to believe about what the 21st Century will bring. Individual liberty is dying.


Three Articles

This posting has links to three articles, all concerned with the Press' exaggerated reaction to the Tucson massacre.

Michelle Malkin rounded up a litany of the outrageous vitriol produced by leaders of the left wing movement over the last 10 years in her posting "The progressive Climate of Hate" on her blog. Michelle's detailed history shows the mild comments that come from the right pale in comparison to left wing rage directed at conservatives. That article with its extensive documentation can be found
here.

The second article is by John Fricke in The American Thinker entitled "The Media Has Declared... WAR!" It has a great quote:
In a newsroom somewhere on Saturday, shortly after the event broke, one turned to another and asked, "Why would someone do this?" The response was not "I have no idea" or "let's find out -- now." No, the response was "Well, why do you think? Why would anyone do something like this? Because conservative white men are dangerous deranged, people waiting to kill us!"

With that they launched a war trying to convince America that Loughner was a right wing supporter who went berserk. That article can be found here.

The final article is "New Media Soundly Defeats Left-Wing Media’s Political Witch Hunt" by John Nolte in Big Journalism. Focusing in on the resounding rejection by the American people of the vicious attacks on Sarah Palin and the TEA Party movement, Nolte argues that the efforts by the press to blame conservatives for Loughner's paranoid schizophrenia did not work because they no longer have a monopoly on the news. That article can be found
here.

From conversations I have had with people in the TEA Party movement, the attacks have had an interesting reaction. They have triggered an outrage that is resulting in renewed enthusiasm for growing the TEA Party movement. It is a reminder that stirring the pot is a risky business. When it starts to boil over you cannot always control the result. In this case I believe the ignorant attacks from the left missed their goal badly.


Monday, January 10, 2011

Doctors: Gabrielle Giffords
'Not Out Of The Woods'

by Alexqander Burns - January 10th, 2011 - Politico

Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords has shown “no change” in her condition since the end of the weekend, physicians at the University of Arizona Medical Center said Monday, in a sign that the wounded lawmaker may have been spared some of the most devastating potential consequences of the gunshot wound she sustained.

Two days after Giffords was shot in the head during an event with constituents near Tucson, she continues to respond to simple external commands and there has not been any additional swelling of the brain.

“No change is good and we have no change,” said Dr. Michael Lemole, head of neurosurgery at the hospital.

Despite the smear campaign to blame the right for this tragedy, the real story is the battle for life going on in Tucson. There are also the personal tragedies of the people who died, or were injured - and their families, friends and loved ones. These innocents are being ignored for partisan political advantage.

Their tragedy is real. Our sympathies go out to them and we wish them strength in surviving this ordeal. It cannot be easy in this time of personal tragedy to have the source of their pain becoming simply another 15 minutes of fame for a psychotic individual, replayed constantly in the media.


White Flight

by Ronald Brownstein - January 7th, 2011 - The National Journal

After Election Day, several media outlets released exit-poll data breaking down the contrasting level of support among white and minority voters for Republican and Democratic congressional candidates...

From every angle, the exit-poll results reveal a new color line: a consistent chasm between the attitudes of whites and minorities...

Rodolfo de la Garza, a political scientist at Columbia University who studies Hispanics’ attitudes, says that part of the explanation is that whites found the downturn more psychologically wrenching because more of them (especially white-collar whites) had expected to make a steady ascent up the economic ladder. More minority workers hold marginal positions in the private economy, he says, so they were less likely to be shocked by the severity of the downturn—and more likely to turn to government, rather than the private sector, to help survive it. “They didn’t lose money on Wall Street; they had shitty jobs, if they had jobs, so where would they look to if not the [government]?” de la Garza asked.

Polls have consistently shown that whites, by contrast, have aimed more of their economic frustration at government than at corporations.

My first reaction to the title of this article was that another liberal writer was blaming "whitey" for a racist reaction to Obama. After reading the article, I felt less antipathy. There is a lot of interesting data in the article and it was not nearly as much a knee jerk condemnation of whites as I had expected.

What I find interesting is the differing belief systems that are driving the growing separation in voting for various groups. Democrats have increased their votes among blacks from the 70% in the 1980s to 90% today. That swelled to 95% for Obama's last election and it will be a major issue of interest to see if that level of support returns in 2012. Democrats have lost ground with Hispanics, dropping down to 60% for the election of 2010. Democrats retain much higher levels of support within these two communities than for Asians and whites. Republicans win these two groups with 60% support.

The 2010 elections were a major realignment in people's attitudes towards government. What is being anticipated by Democrats is that historical trends will return in 2012. Whether that happens is the $64,000 question, to use an old metaphor. This article correctly notes that for many Tea Party supporters, the change in voting is more definitive than a single election. “'The significance of the tea party is that it is not a situational vote' (Jeff Bell, American Principles Project), it is likely a permanent change in attitude for many of these voters."

The question is going to be "What happens in the next two years?"

Tea Party activists are still committed to expanding the economic awareness of the failures of socialism and government planned economies to all Americans. They continue their determination to end Democrat (and liberal Republican) reliance on national debt to fund government waste and big government abuses that create acts of tyranny against many of our citizens. The TEA Party movement is continuing to attract new converts. The hysterical denunciation of Sarah Palin is more an indication of the left's fear of her common sense approach to freedom that is incompatible with big government - than a belief that she is as evil as they proclaim.

Still, Democrats will get a resurgence in minority and youth voting in 2012 that should help them recover in some degree from 2010. As noted by David Axelrod in the article, Democrats anticipate that 2012 will be more an election about comparisons between two individuals. For their core electorate, the young, minorities and educated white women, the need remains to smear any Republican candidate so that they are unacceptable based on politically correct issues as they define them.

These two countervailing forces should provide for an interesting two years. I think the left wing smear campaign against Sarah Palin is an indication that "Campaign 2012" has already started.


A Farewell To Arms

by Max Boot - January 17, 2011 (Publication date) - The Weekly Standard

In 1991, at the end of the Cold War, there were 710,821 active-duty soldiers in the U.S. Army. By 2001, that figure was down to 478,918. That 32 percent decline in active-duty strength severely limited our options for a military response to 9/11, practically dictating that the forces sent to Afghanistan and Iraq would be too small to pacify two countries with a combined population of nearly 60 million. The result was years of protracted conflict that put a severe strain on an undersized force.

Eventually even Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was compelled to admit that the force was too small.

One of the great ironies of the Bush Presidency is that he is given credit for being "great" on national defense issues for an attitude of belligerence that was never translated into a serious attempt to win the long term war against Islamo-fascism. That failure started with his refusal to even state who our enemy was. He called it the nebulous "terror".

The problem was that despite his realization that we were at war, he did everything he could to minimize it and keep it focused on two targets. Even when Iran entered the war by subverting our troops in Iraq, Bush was unwilling to honestly address their actions. He ignored them and hoped they would go away. Unfortunately, Bush had co-opted the national defense community and only those who were out of power were honest enough to criticize him for his actions in Iraq that were dragging out the war. Since their criticisms were unfortunately the same as those who merely wanted us out, there was no political cost to be paid for Bush's ambivalence towards assuring victory by expanding the war.

Now we face a President who is committed to weakening America. The "Start Treaty" will be used to end missile defense expenditures. We have given up air superiority to the Russians and Chinese. Despite being so understaffed we have had to grind our National Guard forces to the brink of rage with continued deployments of people who have private lives to live even if they are patriots, Obama is now going to aggravate that problem by cutting full time forces.

The pattern emerging supports the contention Obama wishes to weaken America. Disputing this is unreasonable. Yet Obama supporters refuse to concede this and denounce the attack with out responding to the issues raised. The MSM allows them to get away with these refusal to address the issues because they too wish to see America weakened.

As our economy continues to struggle, our nation continues to weaken and our commitment to energy independence relies on the delusion of green energy, there will come a time when America will be attacked by the Islamo-fascists with nuclear weapons. We are doing nothing to engage in this very real war that could end America. We are instead taking actions that assure that is our future. Appeasement never works.


Sunday, January 09, 2011

A World In Crisis

by Matthew Continetti - January 3, 2011 - The Weekly Standard

On December 13, 1931, there was a traffic accident in New York City. A man exited a cab on the Upper East Side and was crossing Fifth Avenue when he was hit by a car traveling around 35 miles an hour. The force of the impact threw the man to the pavement. He struck his head. Two of his ribs were cracked. A crowd formed around him; one of the witnesses hailed a taxi to take the man to the hospital. When he was admitted to Lenox Hill the doctors noted that he was bruised and battered but would make a full recovery. He had cheated death.

This anecdote about Winston Churchill is something that I had missed in all my reading of history. It is difficult to contemplate what might have happened if Churchill had not survived. Yet as much as we admire him for his contributions to the free world we lived in for most of the last half of the last century, we cannot forget that as soon as he had saved the world, the British voters fired him and sent him into retirement in defeat.

Republics are not as contemptuous of their heroes as Democracies. We often forget that. As a result, Democracies seem destined to a repeated pattern that is well documented. They all fail in a bloodbath of tyranny, and it takes a couple of generations to relight the fire of liberty.

This article is an amazing comparison of the history of the Great Depression era with various components of our own situation today. After reading it I was left with an interesting confusion. I was both hopeful and depressed. I re-read it several times and each time I came to the same point. I think I know why. The somewhat positive end of this article makes it clear, what happens next is dependent on what we do. Despite being at a crisis point, there is still no answer whether America is prepared to deal with reality or vote for its delusions. So hopeful and depressed is probably the right response.


Friday, January 07, 2011

The Next Immigration Battle:
Birthright Citizenship

by Arnold Ahlert - January 7th, 2010 - Front Page Magazine

... the Fourteenth Amendment has been “misinterpreted,” and... the word “jurisdiction” provides the key. “It was very clear that to be under the jurisdiction thereof [The actual words of the Amendment] meant that your parents had an allegiance to the United States of America. That has been something that has been ignored, as our government has allowed for citizenship to be granted to children of foreign nationals,” he said Tuesday.

[Snip]

“When taken to its logical extreme, that would produce the absurd result that children of invading armies would be considered citizens of the U.S.,” he said.

Actually, it does not require any extreme interpretation. It is the obvious interpretation of the current judicial oligarchy and its anti-American ideology. It cannot be defended. It is absurd. Yet that is the intent of the supporters of the current interpretation. It is clear, enemies of our nation have successfully mis-interpreted our Constitution for the clear purpose to subvert our nation. They wish to destroy our culture. Their idiocy should be overturned. It would be if our nation still was controlled by patriots. I doubt that it will though. It is my fear that our nation has gone so far down the road to self destruction that it is too late to stop it.