Observation

During the Bush years Democrats called 3.5% growth a recession.

Think about it.

UPDATE, by Mark Noonan: “…any short-term recovery we see during 2009 and 2010 is likely to be ephemeral“

Al-Qaeda, Environmentalists: Peas in a Pod?

Well, they both hate western civilization:

Around the globe, environmental protesters tried “a synchronized burst of more than 4,300 demonstrations, from the Himalayas to the Great Barrier Reef,” according to The New York Times.

The sweeping Oct. 24 protest was to bully developed nations like the United States into a climate change agreement when they meet in Copenhagen this December.

The 350.org protesters, who want to drop CO2 in the atmosphere to that level, were especially critical of the U.S. “You have destroyed nature with your industrial waste and gases more than any other nation in history. Despite this, you refuse to sign the Kyoto agreement so that you can secure the profit of your greedy companies and industries.”

Oops, that wasn’t the eco-nuts, that’s a direct quote from Osama bin Laden in 2002. While al Qaeda and eco-nuts use different tactics, they share a similar enemy.

Civilization.

Birds of a feather?

Well, not exactly – but when your ideology is anti-human, you’re bound to find areas of agreement with the other anti-humans out there. The problem stems from believing a pack of lies. Osama believes a pack of lies. Environmentalists believe a pack of lies. Some times, the packs of lies overlap. This should get environmentalists to think, but it probably won’t…in fact, if we did get Osama’s head up on a pike, the left would resurrect his legend as that of a working class fighter for minorities and the environment (hey, if they can turn a cop killer like Mumia in to a commencement speaker, then nothing is beyond them…or beneath them).

Better, though, for people to seek Truth – its easily available. All you have to do is ask for it. Knock on the door, as it were.

NJ-GOV: If a Republican Were Trying to Buy an Election…

…then you liberals would be going ballistic. But since its one of your own – from the New Editor:

New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine (D) has personally furnished $22.6 million of the total of $24.1 million existing in his re-election campaign’s coffers — more than 90% of the total — according to the New Jersey Star-Ledger.

Gov. Corzine has outspent his two competitors in the state’s gubernatorial race, Republican Chris Christie and independent Chris Daggett, by more than 2 to 1 combined.

This 2009 general election spending is in addition to the $100 million the former Goldman Sachs co-CEO spent in his two previous campaigns for US senator and NJ governor, in 2000 and 2005, respectively.

Is this what you liberals want? Is keeping a man committed to abortion rights and profligate spending in office so important that you’ll sell yourself to a corporate shill as long as he toes your ideological line?

Unless you liberals start demanding a vote for Christie, you’ll be shown up as a bunch of power-grubbing scoundrels…

MSM, Big Corporations, Liberals All Shocked That the Economy Sucks

For the rest of us, its less of a shock:

Sales of new U.S. homes unexpectedly tumbled in September, their first drop in six months, underscoring the hazards to an economic recovery even as businesses appeared to be stepping up investment.

New single-family home sales fell 3.6 percent to a 402,000 unit annual pace from a downwardly revised 417,000 units in August, the Commerce Department said on Wednesday. Analysts polled by Reuters had expected sales to rise to a 440,000 unit pace.

Unexpectedly? Unexpected by whom? For crying out loud, the only thing keeping any home sales going at all is the $8,000.00 tax credit and there’s only so many first time home buyers out there, ya know? With rising unemployment and increasing foreclosures, what on earth makes anyone think we can have a housing recovery?

Oh, yeah – I forgot: Obama fixed the economy and all’s well.

In a pig’s eye.

We’re broke. We’re in debt up to our eyeballs. We’re losing jobs. Our wages are falling. There’s no way that we, the people, are going to spend our way out of this mess…and that is what Big Government and Big Corporation are counting on…and we’ve had this massive run up in stocks because a bunch of suckers bought the notion that, some how, an increasingly impoverished people can be made to go on a spending spree when they’re broke and in debt. Obama flashing the cash at special interest, big corporations and a few people just won’t do the trick – especially since its borrowed cash which we, poor as we’re becoming, will have to pay back.

Monumentally stupid.

Is Obama Heading for Half-Measures?

A disturbing news story:

President Barack Obama is considering sending large numbers of additional U.S. forces to Afghanistan next year but fewer than his war commander, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, prefers, U.S. officials said.

Such a narrowed military mission would escalate American forces to accomplish the commander’s broadest goals, protecting Afghan cities and key infrastructure. But the option’s scaled-down troop numbers likely would cut back on McChrystal’s ambitious objectives, amounting to what one official described as “McChrystal Light.”

Under the pared-down option, McChrystal would be given fewer forces than the 40,000 additional troops he has asked for atop the current U.S. force of 68,000, officials told The Associated Press.

Senior White House officials stressed, however, that the president has not settled on any new troop numbers and continues to debate other strategic approaches to the 8-year-old Afghanistan war.

I’d like to say “keep debating”, Barry, and you might eventually get it right…but anyone who studies history knows that councils of war work out to be gatherings of cowards. Everyone gets their two cents in and the decision maker is left with what is best described as the sum of all fears. No decision has been made (which, in and of itself, is a terrible dereliction), but this was my worry all along – not enough troops to win, but enough to keep the bloodshed going at a faster pace.

Please, please, please let this story not pan out…

Obama's Foreign Policy

Explained:

SPIEGEL: You famously coined the term “Reagan Doctrine” to describe Ronald Reagan’s foreign policy. What is the “Obama Doctrine?”

Krauthammer: I would say his vision of the world appears to me to be so naïve that I am not even sure he’s able to develop a doctrine. He has a view of the world as regulated by self-enforcing international norms, where the peace is kept by some kind of vague international consensus, something called the international community, which to me is a fiction, acting through obviously inadequate and worthless international agencies. I wouldn’t elevate that kind of thinking to a doctrine because I have too much respect for the word doctrine.

SPIEGEL: Are you saying that diplomacy always fails?

Krauthammer: No, foolishness does. Perhaps when he gets nowhere on Iran, nowhere with North Korea, when he gets nothing from the Russians in return for what he did to the Poles and the Czechs, gets nowhere in the Middle East peace talks — maybe at that point he’ll begin to rethink whether the world really runs by international norms, consensus, and sweetness and light, or whether it rests on the foundation of American and Western power that, in the final analysis, guarantees peace.

SPIEGEL: That is the cynical approach.

Krauthammer: The realist approach. Henry Kissinger once said that peace can be achieved only one of two ways: hegemony or balance of power. Now that is real realism. What the Obama administration pretends is realism is naïve nonsense.

The real problem with Obama’s policy is that it will have to be paid for – in blood and treasure. After a century in which we learned the very hard way about how dictators are to be treated, Obama is going back to 1933 and figuring that they are just misunderstood nationalists who have legitimate gripes about the stronger powers in the world.

There is no international community. International law is only that which the United States enforces by brute, military force. Freedom is only protected by American power. The enemies of freedom and decency are kept at bay only by rank fear of the United States. Tinker with that – for a moment say that law will be enforced by treaties in and of themselves; that freedom is defended by words; that enemies are just misunderstood friends…and the wicked of the world will lunge for our throat. Why? Because wicked people are just that: wicked. There is no excuse for evil – they know darned well they shouldn’t do what they do, but they do it anyway because they like to do it and feel empowered by getting away with the ruthless oppression of others. Its really no more complex than that.

War is a terrible thing, but it isn’t the most terrible thing. We can have peace and freedom – but we can only have it if we have the military means and the moral will to use the means if pressed to it. We are not to fly off half cocked; we are not to see war as a primary means of conflict resolution…but everyone out there, friend and foe, must be convinced that if we are pushed hard enough, we will strike with devastating force. Only thus will there be a chance for peace – for a short moment, the world was being treated to proof positive about this – right after the fall of Baghdad when Libya gave up its nukes, Syria started to give up on Lebanon, Iran started to talk about peaceful relations…and then we got bogged down with internal, political debates where the left tried to use the war as a means to defeat Republicans…and the world took note of our national irresolution, saw that Bush would not be deterred, but also understood that Bush wouldn’t be President forever. They set the stage and they waited – and their patience has been rewarded: they now have an American President who doesn’t understand – and doesn’t want to understand – what they are made of.

They will strike at us – openly and in secret – as soon as they can.

From Liberal to Liberal-Fascist is But a Step

And British liberals are showing how its done:

Shannon Love at Chicago Boyz surveys the British political scene and muses on whether the recent rise of the British National Party tells us anything about how a European society can be infatuated with the Left one year and switch over to fascism in a relatively short period…

…If fascism and Left wing socialism share most of their political DNA then this process is easy to understand. When the vital 5% — or whatever crucially differentiates them — flips then one becomes the other. The BNP is not a ‘conservative party’ in the American mold. It is essentially a racist but economically Left wing organization which accepts a large state role in managing the economy. Where it differs with the Left is for whose benefit the economy should be managed. For the Left the answer is: for the benefit of what it defines to be the historical victim — Muslims, immigrants from former colonies and people with special sexual needs. For the BNP the answer to the question is: for the benefit of the poor white; the indigene; the people who have lived in the British isles. The Left correctly accuses the BNP of dividing the nation. What it fails to recognize is that the BNP is simply paying them back in their own coin. This exchange of toxic currency has set up a zero sum game. It has cast the Left as the champions of one side and the BNP is happily casting itself as the champions of the other.

Indications are the that the British National Party (which is essentially National Socialist in ideology) will do quite well in the British elections expected in May of next year. Now, the BNP isn’t going to win a majority in the Commons, but it shows the danger in having any sort of ideology which puts the State at the center of politics and makes the people mere cogs in the machine. The lower class Brits are merely making the smallest of adjustments – still socialists hoping for the government hand out, but now insisting that the Moslem immigrants be kicked out. Other than that one thing, there are no fundamental economic differences between Labour and the BNP.

It is the individual who is endowed by the Creator with rights – the State has no right except those delegated to it by the people. This is the distilled essence of American ideology and it is pretty much non-existent in European thought these days. Government is the path to all things – power, wealth, privilege, honor. And so people fight over who gets to be in control of government…and if someone is clever enough to graft a bit of racism on to socialism in order to appeal to a class of people who feel dispossessed in their own land, who on the left really has the right to complain? You think the BNP cannot be replicated in the United States? Of course it can – and it would command the votes of millions…anyone who feels that the GOP is the party of big business and the Democrats the party of the “other” and that neither party is addressing their needs can be induced to be National Socialist.

This is why it is so crucial for we conservative Republicans to really make clear that we are on the side of the people – all the people, everywhere. Why I harp upon the sanctity of human life, why I harp upon the need to find a path to citizenship for the illegals; why I harp upon the need for strict border controls; why I harp upon the need to reign in the big corporations, especially the banks; why I harp upon the need for us to make, mine and grow more of our own stuff – because when we address the real concerns of average folks, we’re doing the real business of government: catering to the needs of individuals as they run their own lives.

We have a choice to make, and we’ll make it over the next four to six years – will we be the nation our Founders created, or will we become, in one manner or another, a fascist State? That our fascism might be liberal-fascism where we ostensibly try to be nice won’t change the fact that the mailed fist will still be there – as will the soul destroying ideology which will set us on the path to national extinction. We can fight for what we are, or allow ourselves to be destroyed. The choice is ours.

NY-23: Hoffman Avoids a Trap

73Wire has the details – seems that the venue is closely connected to the Democrat. Not exactly a fair venue for a conservative, you think?

Geithner's Sweetheart Deal for Banks

When we really pull the lid off this Administration, we’re going to be astounded at how corrupt it is:

Here’s something Goldman Sachs, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, American International Group’s former CFO, and Goldman’s former chairman have all declined to comment on:

While negotiating how much loss large banks would have to take on credit default swaps with the bankrupt insurer AIG, the New York Fed, then under Geithner, rejected a 40 cents-on-the-dollar deal in the works and made taxpayers pay at least $13 billion to ensure the banks suffered no losses…

Its becoming clear just what we’ve got here in Geithner – the banker’s protector. If you think he’s out there trying to get the economy going, you’ve got rocks in your head. All he’s doing is bailing out the banking industry he comes from and likely hopes to return to.

President Obama, its time for a new Treasury Secretary – I’m no fan of yours, but I don’t want Geithner making a bigger mess, even if it works against you…because it will also work against the American people. I’m sure there is some approximation of an honest liberal out there who would serve better.

Christian Conservatives and Immigration Reform

Interesting:

In advance of President Obama’s and the Democrats’ coming push for immigration reform, support for so-called comprehensive reform that would include a path to citizenship for many illegal immigrants already in the United States is building among a surprising constituency: conservative religious activists.

The effort includes not only socially conservative groups that have partnered with Democrats on other issues in the past—like the National Association of Evangelicals and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops—but also more staunchly conservative groups and figures closely aligned with the Republican Party.

“There was this rhetoric in the last immigration debate that was, frankly, harsh,” says Mathew Staver, dean of the law school at Liberty University, founded by the late Jerry Falwell. “We need to understand that we are still a nation of immigrants, and we need to bring people out of the shadows and make them legal.”

And that last statement will make some of my fellow religious conservatives go bonkers. But, once you’re done pounding your computer screen in frustration at our “softness” on immigration, let’s have a look at the issue. First off:

“When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit upon his glorious throne, and all the nations will be assembled before him. And he will separate them one from another, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will place the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.

Then the king will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me.’

Then the righteous will answer him and say, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? When did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? When did we see you ill or in prison, and visit you?’ And the king will say to them in reply, ‘Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.’ – Matthew 25:31-40

Its hard to get around that – in a very real sense, for Christians, that illegal who just crossed the border and is no trespassing on someone’s land and looking for a drink of water is Jesus – to refuse to give him what he needs is to refuse to give to God. Not a position a Christian wishes to be in.

Of course, the practical matter is that all 6 billion human beings cannot live within the borders of the United States – and given that everyone can’t live here, the government of the United States has the right and the moral obligation to secure the borders and fairly regulate who can come in, when and for how long. The trouble is, the United States government through gross negligence all but invited the 12 million or so illegals to come here – while an engraved invitation was not sent, the ease of crossing the border and the lack of punishment for being caught illegally in country was just short of that engraved invitation. And don’t think the citizens of the United States are just the hapless victims of government incompetence. First off, we citizens are responsible for ensuring the best government possible. Secondly, its not like we were complaining over much at the inexpensive goods and services the illegals provided.

So, how to bring the two halves together – how to be a proper Christian and be a good citizen? To me, it will take comprehensive immigration reform. Now, when our liberals say “comprehensive” what they really mean is “immediately make everyone here a citizen so they’ll vote for us”. What conservatives really mean when they say it is, “get the illegals out and triple bar the borders”. Both concepts are half right, and thus all wrong. We need both – a path to citizenship for those we de-facto invited to come, and a secure border so that we can henceforward carefully regulate who comes in.

And if you think it over, fellow conservatives, I think you’ll come ’round to my views – after all, the people coming here are almost all hard working, Christian and well behaved. Our liberals want to hook them on welfare and turn them into a permanent underclass dependent upon liberals for sustenance, but we can turn these people in to full-throated, join-a-tea-party conservatives – dedicated to doing for one’s own and fierce in their defense of individual liberty. Its a matter of eventually having Juan, Nguyen and Kamau with you at the NRA meeting. Ya dig? These new arrivals are conservatives in prospect – just as the prior waves of Irish, Italians and Poles were…and it was previous generations of conservatives who signed away all rights to Irish, Italian and Polish votes because of anti-immigrant sentiment. As it turns out, that led to two generations of liberal Democrat domination of the country. You want that, again? If you don’t, then figure out a way to start reaching out to the immigrant community.