High Speed To Insolvency

Why liberals love trains.

by George Will - February 27th, 2011 - Newsweek

Remarkably widespread derision has greeted the Obama administration’s damn-the-arithmetic-full-speed-ahead proposal to spend $53 billion more (after the $8 billion in stimulus money and $2.4 billion in enticements to 23 states) in the next six years pursuant to the president’s loopy goal of giving “80 percent of Americans access to high-speed rail.” “Access” and “high-speed” to be defined later.

After I changed my original college major from Architecture to City Planning, I was exposed to a great deal of the 'mob uniformity' demanded by liberal practitioners of the City Planning concept. I lived in Atlanta at the time and was amazed at the waste involved in changing a city designed around the automobile to a city designed around the train. MARTA, Metropolitan Area Rapid Transit Atlanta, fascinated the professors at Georgia Tech and they made everyone study the process closely. There was tremendous information about the huge cost overuns that were probable, and how unlikely the glowing predictions of usage would be true. Yet they jammed MARTA through and damn the costs. They called those high speed trains too. In reality, because they are very slow at acceleration and stopping, the only place trains are high speed on average is in areas where they do not stop and start. Long distances is not where they make money though so where they are usually used they are never high speed.

Cars versus trains -- they are nearly mutually incompatible concepts. Two examples are the cities of Los Angeles and New York.

Los Angeles was based on the car, and was vastly more effective at building a city that was cost effective and allowed for rapid free movement of people. The reason that so many are aware of the big traffic jams so fondly promoted by those who hate Los Angeles, is that they are temporary anomalies. For 2 hours in the morning and 2 hours at night, the freeways do not work as designed. For the other 20 hours a day, they are the most magnificent transportation system in the world.

New York on the other hand is an abomination. It was based on the train. Since the trains are not effective unless backed up by buses and cabs, the fact that most of the day you cannot get around because of the limitations of the system are ignored by the liberal lovers of 'mob uniformity'. The buses and cabs are not around for much of the night so you are seriously constrained if you want to go somewhere while the system, i.e. the needed support components, is shut down.

As noted in the article, cars are more energy efficient than trains as well. It is obvious when you look at the huge weight of trains when only a few people are on them, they are consuming huge amounts of energy for nothing.

Trains also only serve 7% of a city. Trains are asinine and ridiculous wastes of money. No where do trains make money except on one or two highly concentrated lines in rare conditions. They absorb huge subsidies for the bulk of every system ever created.

Of course for those government lovers who never look at cost benefit, that is irrelevant. They want them and they are determined to have them. The reason is simple. They want to get YOU off their highways so their movement in a car is not impeded.

You did not stupidly think the important people in government were going to ride on trains did you?

Progressivism Has Been “Outed”

by Arnold Ahlert - February 25th, 2011 - Canada Free Press

Many Americans, perhaps for the first time in their lives, are beginning to recognize the contemptible nature of progressivism. How does one defend the total abandonment of the democratic process, occurring first in Wisconsin and then in Indiana, where Democrats legislators have literally run away from their responsibilities? One can’t—without revealing the bankruptcy of one’s own convictions. The most satisfying aspect of it all? Americans are getting a daily dose of progressivism’s only unalterable tenet: the ends justify the means.

For those of us who have long been paying attention, this isn’t news. Yet plenty of Americans scoffed at the idea that those who have long engaged in class warfare, stoked racial divisiveness, and fanned the flames of national self-loathing were anything more than people expressing a different viewpoint.

It is a different viewpoint, just a contemptible one. It is a viewpoint of self righteous rage and hate aimed at anyone who dares disagree with their ignorant and childish views. The reality is that nothing they believe can be defended. Socialism HAS been tried, even if they childishly insist it hasn't and "we just need to do it right this time." The reality? Socialism always fails. It always will. The concept itself is corrupt.

As Mona Charen noted in her article about this same subject, had Republicans dared do the same things being done in Wisconsin and other states where Democrats lost, they would be condemned as “anti-democratic,” “obstructionist,” and “radical.”

Progressives show no class. They tell constant lies about anyone who opposes them. They even tell lies about what they believe. Now they are running away like a little five year old holding his breath to "stop the votes" of the legislators who won the elections. They proclaim they believe in Democracy and yet the minute they lose they subvert Democracy with every power they can bring to bear.

It is obvious to anyone with a brain. Progressives stand for nothing except tyranny.

The Imperial Presidency

by Megan McArdle - February 23rd, 2011 - The Atlantic

Orin Kerr worries that the Obama administration's decision not to defend the Defense of Marriage Act may have far-reaching implications:

... Here's what I fear will happen. If Congress passes legislation on a largely party-line vote, the losing side just has to fashion some constitutional theories for why the legislation is unconstitutional and then wait for its side to win the Presidency. As soon as its side wins the Presidency, activists on its side can file constitutional challenges based on the theories; the Executive branch can adopt the theories and conclude that, based on the theories, the legislation is unconstitutional; and then the challenges to the legislation will go undefended. Winning the Presidency will come with a great deal of power to decide what legislation to defend, increasing Executive branch power...

Maybe it was always thus, but it seems to me that both parties are increasingly resorting to procedural tricks rather than politics, and it worries me.

It should worry everyone.

The true threat to our freedoms comes from a combination of this executive branch power with politically sympathetic judges like Gladys Kessler. Her insane ruling that thinking is committing Interstate Commerce, combined with the power to refuse to defend any law a President deems disagreeable politically, changes our courts into a farce. If our courts are not already bastions of injustice, they are about to become so.

Especially if a combination of these two new attitudes on law are applied to such things as a Presidential ruling declaring a state of emergency and suspending elections as a result - say next year in 2010?

Now The Commerce Clause Covers 'Mental Activity'

by Thomas Lifson - February 23rd, 2011 - The American Thinker

According to federal Judge Gladys Kessler of the DC US District Court, the powers granted to the federal government on the Commerce Clause extend to regulating "mental activity." Ruling on an ObamaCare challenge brought by 2 individuals, the good Judge made the leap from "physical activity" to "mental activity" in extending the reach of the federal government. This is not a joke. Read the 64 page decision here.

Did you just have a thought? Thinking is a "mental activity" subject to government control, according to this judge. Did you not realize thinking made you guilty of committting "Interstate Commmerce?" Interstate Commerce can only be done with permission of the federal government. Ignorance of the law is no excuse. It is quite probable that you needed permission from some federal agency to have the thought, if not a license authorizing you to think, assuming the thought itself was not a violation of some law that justifies a penalty.

So it is simple. Stop thinking until Obama gives you permission or accept the consequences. You have been warned.

Paul Krugman Epitomizes The Current Liberal Divorce From Reality

by Timothy P. Carney - February 21st, 2011 - Washington Examiner

In his column today, Krugman describes the unions as a "counterweight to the political power of big money."

But the unions are big money. Five of the top ten contributors to congressional and presidential campaigns since 1989 are labor unions according to the Center for Responsive Politics. In the last election, 10 of the top 20 PACs were union PACs.

More importantly, it's not as if Big Labor is balancing out the rest of "big money." Does Krugman [not] know that all of the top ten industries contributing to the 2010 elections gave more money to Democrats than to Republicans?

In reality, all of the major power brokers in our modern society are in cahoots with the Democrats, who are the masters of political corruption. The same corruption that gives public employee unions outrageous wages, perks and retirements - provides corporate welfare to big business and Wall Street.

Everyone is promised all the gold. Both Wall Street and unions are the enemies of our nation. Both see America as the goose that laid the golden egg. Both plan, as the fable reminds us, on killing the goose so they can hoard all the gold for themselves - because they do not have a clue how our wealth is created. Aesop is still right. As they tear at the soul of our nation, the goose is dying.

They are too stupid to see that.

Federal, State And Local Debt Hits Post-WWII Levels

by Steven Mufson - February 20th, 2011 - Washington Post

The daunting tower of national, state and local debt in the United States will reach a level this year unmatched just after World War II and already exceeds the size of the entire economy, according to government estimates.

But any similarity between 1946 and now ends there. The U.S. debt levels tumbled in the years after World War II, but today they are still climbing and even deep cuts in spending won't completely change that for several years.

One major reason for the inability to fix our problems is the ignorant focus on the "deficit" instead of the "debt." Even the imbecile leadership of the Republican Party has chosen this strategy because they do not have the guts to actually rein in spending. Fiddling around with minor issues is the most that any politician is willing to do at this point.

Neither party really wants to reduce the debt, and until they do our nation will continue to plunge down, with a lower standard of living and fewer options for our young to build a better life. When did America reach a point where we can find no one to run for office who seriously believes in the discipline that made us great?

Obama Assaults Democracy By Rejecting Popular Consent

by Kelly O'Connell - February 20th, 2011 - Canada Free Press

“Just 28% believe federal government today has the consent of the governed.” This creates several problems for Obama. First, most Americans do not experience government as representational. This is dangerous because it breeds a fatalistic and cynical populace increasingly disconnected from Washington, and all that implies.

Second, it forces a constitutional crisis. For, despite Barack’s poisonously smug demeanor in every setting, and claims of constitutional mastery, this creates a de facto lawless regime. For if Obama is continually defying the will of the people at every turn, he has created an anti-constitutional tyranny, and therefore must be stopped.

In conclusion, we have a constitutional, Natural Law duty to see Obama driven from office by impeachment. Because the only moral government, according to our Constitution, is one that derives its legitimacy from the Consent of the Governed, an idea Barack ha[s] refused to honor since gaining office.

This article includes a litany of issues where Obama is opposed by the American people. However one stood out as a perfect example of why it is rational to declare Obama a tyrant. "Only 18% believe the Obama myth that the greatness of America came from government." Trying to jam government solutions down the throats of a people who reject the idea is the very definition of tyranny.

I agree with the writer. Obama is a tyrant. He should be impeached.

Progressivism In All Its Ugly Glory

by Arnold Ahlert - February 21st, 2011 - Jewish World Review

The battle lines couldn't be clearer: either the public will wrest this country back from the serial abusers for whom no government deficits are too large, no compensation packages too lavish and no special interest groups are too special, or we will all become vassals of their self-righteous, progressive tyranny.

Don't think for a second that the appearance in Wisconsin of the Democratic National Committee, along with Barack Obama's Organizing for America, is merely a show of "solidarity" with the "oppressed" public service employees. Wisconsin has become Ground Zero for a progressive movement quite comfortable with the use of intimidation, threats of harm and precisely the same hateful rhetoric they accuse conservatives of perpetrating whenever that particular bit of hypocrisy suits their purposes.

To put it succinctly, progressivism is all about the ends justifying the means. Once one understands that, everything else becomes clear. It makes it easy to understand why the same president who reminded Republicans that "I won" as the singular justification to implement his agenda, is taking the side of cowardly Wisconsin Democrat Senators who have made it clear that winning only counts when their side is victorious.

The most arrogant, and ignorant, attitude of this mob in Wisconsin is the constant comparison of their acts with the acts in the Middle East. These bigots see themselves as fighting oppression. To them, any time they do not get their way, it is oppression. Forget that the voters elected the Republicans to rein in the abuses of unjustified wages, outrageous benefits and exorbitant retirements at early age. To the unions, daring to take away their perks is the equivalent of abuses by the oil based dictatorships of the Middle East who never hold elections.

How ignorant are these people who have so little ability to see the fact -- they are the dictators, using power and intimidation to jam their greed down the throats of others without an iota of reality ever seeping in to their self righteous perceptions.

It appears that most of them do not remember the consequences of earlier attempts by public servants to strike in an attempt to force government, by the people, to bend to the will of the public servant's demands. Though advised not to call out the National Guard to restore order and end a strike by Boston Police, Calvin Coolidge did so because he felt it his duty to uphold the elected officials. This in spite of the fact that Coolidge felt the complaints by the police were justified. A strike by public servants is never the way to solve these disagreements. When the Mayor tried to fire the Police Commissioner who disciplined the striking officers, Coolidge ordered him back to his office.

In a surprise, the public backed Coolidge and returned him to office in a landslide. Coolidge's own words probably summed up the reaction best. “The people decided in favor of the integrity of their own government.” That is ultimately the reaction that public servants all over America need to remember during this current economic crisis. They cannot intimidate the voters by refusing to do the jobs they are paid to do. Ronald Reagan proved to the air traffic controllers - that has not changed.

Veteran’s Group Demands Apology From Secretary Of State Clinton

by Staff - February 19th, 2011 - Sky Valley Chronicle

Could it be the U.S. government thinks peaceful, civilian protest against government is fine on the streets of Cairo, Egypt but not on U.S. soil?

As Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave a speech at George Washington University yesterday condemning governments that arrest protestors and do not allow free expression - and lauding freedom of speech on the Internet - 71-year-old military veteran Ray McGovern was grabbed from the audience in plain view of her by police and an unidentified official in plain clothes and hustled out of the building and, according to McGovern and his supporters, was “brutalized and left bleeding in jail.”

What McGovern did was simply remain standing silently in the audience and turned his back on her as Secretary Clinton began her speech.

That was it.

Incredible video. Incredible national humiliation. Obama has instituted the attitude among his goons that half our population are his enemies. As a result, he has convinced the goon forces that respect for peaceful dissent no longer applies to any but those who support him.

This is how tyranny starts.

Woman Dies At Desk, But Nobody Notices

by Staff - February 19th, 2011 - The Associated Press

As Los Angeles County employee Rebecca Wells toiled on a risk analysis audit, she apparently died at her desk, but nobody noticed her body until the next day.

Co-workers described her as tireless. Always “working, working, working.”

I question their definition of work if laying dead at her desk looked like "work" to them. It makes you wonder how long she might have been dead before they noticed if she had not died on Friday. As it was no one noticed until the weekend. The really positive thing is that she is a union worker so her estate will be paid overtime for the extra day. That includes double time for Saturday. Those unions are always looking out for the tax payers!

Obama’s War On Democracy

Editorial - February 18th, 2011 - Washington Times

The political unrest in Wisconsin, billed as some kind of grass-roots uprising, is being organized and directed by Barack Obama's Organizing for America and the Democratic National Committee. This development is consistent with Mr. Obama's instructions for supporters to "get in the face" of those who oppose them, but in this case, they are seeking to derail a lawful legislative process...

Dan Grandone, state director for the president's campaign apparatus, accused Gov. Scott Walker of "ignoring Wisconsin voices today and asking for the power to drown them out permanently tomorrow." It is important to note that the voices of which Mr. Grandone speaks are not those of the public at large. Voters sent an unmistakable message in November by taking solid majorities in the state Assembly and Senate away from Democrats and handing even greater control to Republicans...

That the protesters speak in a different voice can be seen in the signs they carry. Many compare Mr. Walker to Hitler, Mussolini or Hosni Mubarak. One placard had the slogan "Repeal Walker" with the governor's head in sniperscope cross hairs. This is the symbolism that Democrats recently denounced as "hate-filled rhetoric," and it is far from the voice of the public. It is rather the voice of an entitled class that seeks by any means to stop its free ride from coming to an end.

In the private conversations of progressives , un-democratic views are common. One of the standard progressive lines about gaining power is the famous quote, "One man, one vote, one time." This is the progressive concept that once power has been acquired in a single election, elections will cease and progressives will exercise power without recourse to feedback from the public by such "contemptible" actions as elections. That leaves no risk in the public voting them out.

Since Obama's election, it has been noted that progressives have long advocated the Cloward-Piven strategy of collapsing freedom in America by making government promises that cannot be kept. This means increasing welfare and public employee pay until government is bankrupt. No matter how much Obama and his progressive minions insist this is not their goal, it is difficult to see anything in their actions that would contradict it is their plan.

It is clear that Obama does not see himself as representing the people of America nearly so much as he sees himself representing labor union leaders in their quest for forced unionization. It is equally clear that Obama and progressives really do not believe democratic elections should have consequences -- unless they win of course.

In Sharp Reversal, U.S. Agrees To Rebuke Israel In Security Council

by Colum Lynch - February 16th, 2011 - Foreign Policy Magazine

The U.S. informed Arab governments Tuesday that it will support a U.N. Security Council statement reaffirming that the 15-nation body "does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlement activity," a move aimed at avoiding the prospect of having to veto a stronger Palestinian resolution calling the settlements illegal.

But the Palestinians rejected the American offer following a meeting late Wednesday of Arab representatives and said it is planning to press for a vote on its resolution on Friday, according to officials familiar with the issue. The decision to reject the American offer raised the prospect that the Obama administration will cast its first ever veto in the U.N. Security Council.

Tick tock. Tick tock. The nuclear clock goes tick tock.

Another botched foreign policy initiative shows just how weak America is perceived in the Middle East. It is not that Obama is "maybe" going to cast his first veto. It is the pitiful display of indecision and waffling that goes along with the veto "threat" that embarrasses our nation and its efforts to have any say in issues of consequence in that region. No one really knows what Obama will do. Neither our friends nor our enemies. No one can trust that he even stands for our nation's best interests. In a region where forces inimical to our interests daily threaten to use nuclear bombs against our only ally, and then against us, such indecision is intolerable.

Tick tock. Tick tock. The nuclear clock goes tick tock.

Good Morning, Suckers

by Peter Ferrara - February 16th, 2011 - The American Spectator

President Obama's budget released on Monday proposes to spend $3.73 trillion for 2012. He can't say Bush made him do that. That proposed spending is an undeniable fact that reveals who he is, which he successfully hid from 53% of voters in 2008.

Campaigning in 2008 he promised voters that his plan involved a "net spending cut." That net spending cut translated into $836 billion in increased spending this year from 2008, according to President Obama's own budget documents. That is a federal spending increase of nearly 30% since 2008. Either President Obama does not know what "net spending cut" means in English, or he bamboozled a lot of people in 2008.

Almost makes you want to take to the streets to demand resignations and honest elections. But that couldn't happen here. For one thing, you need a free and independent press to have true democratic elections.

It is hard to find new ways to say that Obama is a liar and a con-man. It is interesting that one of Obama's top supporters in 2008, gay rights advocate Andrew Sullivan, seems to have lost the faith. It is reported in this article that Sullivan wrote in the Atlantic, "To all those under 30 who worked so hard to get this man elected, know this: He just screwed you over. He thinks you are fools."

Whether you say supporters are "fools" or "suckers" makes little difference. The 2011 budget just introduced by Obama (8 months after it was supposed to be passed) makes pitiful cuts to a budget that he has already inflated by over a $1 Trillion in the last two years. Just undoing the incredibly wasteful increases of the last two years would give 50 times more savings than Obama proposes. Of course even the Republicans are leaving nearly 90% of the increases of the last two years in place. It makes you wonder if either party seriously understands the disaster we are facing.

Three Articles About Our Marxist President

The following three articles were all published today. Though each in its own way summarizes more than just recent mistakes, they all seem triggered by the abysmal performance by the Obama Administration in everything it tries. They are all excellent articles by brilliant individuals who have studied our President well.

Obama & The Human Stain by Kelly O'Connell - How Political Correctness Gave America a Con-Man President

Wanted: A Grand Strategy for America by Niall Ferguson - Obama’s Egypt debacle and the vacuum it exposes

Does Obama Want the Best for America or Does He Want to Destroy It? by Jack Kerwick - Our president is determined to see the historic nation that is the real America go the way of the dinosaur

The general consensus in these articles is that Obama is a malignant narcissist, an extreme Marxist, out of touch with reality, coddled by a left wing press, ignorant of history, baffled by strategy, devoted to politically correct delusions and a master con-man who surrounds himself with yes-men who pamper his ego.

The summation of these flaws is simple. Obama will never make the right decision for America. Ever.

'Raw Deal'

Historian makes waves with scathing look at Franklin D. Roosevelt
Burton Folsom Jr.'s book livens up the 'tea party'-driven debate over how to interpret America's past.

by Mark Z. Barabak - February 12th, 2011 - Los Angeles Times

Many tea partyers, for instance, speak as though the Founders favored a small, circumscribed federal government, when in fact some wanted a more powerful Washington than we have today. (James Madison proposed a national veto over state laws.) In a recent speech, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) extolled the Founding Fathers' efforts to end slavery, when they actually made inequality the law, passing legislation counting blacks as three-fifths of a person.

This is an interesting article about an extremely controversial topic. The views in the paragraph above indicate the amazing dichotomy of filters through which so many left wing zealots view history. As an example, the obviously liberal writer acts as if the anecdotal evidence that a few founders philosophized about concepts that might support a more powerful government -- was not trumped by the fact that those views did not prevail. It is especially ignorant to try and count Madison among those who favored a powerful central government. The writer (and left wing historians in general) also misstate the loss of the argument by the slave states (who wanted to count their slaves in full for representation and settled for getting three fifths of their number counted) as if it was general agreement by our nation that slavery was just and blacks were not full people. This bigoted misrepresentation is loved by the left.

In fact, as history proves to those who are not biased, most of our founders opposed slavery. At the time of our nation's creation slavery was tolerated in a minority of our states. The majority of states opposed slavery. The creation early in our nation's history of the Abolitionist movement, which banned the importation of slaves, generated laws in the North for the end of slavery, and which was winning the battle to end slavery in the South so effectively that it triggered secession, is ignored as an American attribute by the same bigoted historians who laud its goals. They act as if the abolitionist movement was not embraced by America.

As proof, it is generally ignored by the left that nearly half a million white Americans died to end slavery. Those American soldiers wrote letters home, copies of which still exist in large numbers in museums, about their pride in risking death for the war against slavery. The majority of our nation, America, considered slavery an evil. However those who hate our economic system of free enterprise, practice an unparalleled deceit when they blame our nation for the very scourge that we fought a war to end. A perfect example of this is the snarly pretension that Michelle Bachman is wrong when she notes, it was not America that embraced slavery, but a minority of states who the majority of Americans opposed.

By what logic of hypocrisy is America still punished for the sins of those we fought and defeated?

The same applies to economic issues. Left wing historians ignore the speed and success by which Calvin Coolidge ended the recession of 1920, a recession more severe than the one that Hoover and Roosevelt failed miserably to end. Coolidge's success led to the roaring twenties and one of the greatest periods of wealth creation and increased standard of living for the middle class that has ever happened. Coolidge accomplished that by getting government off the backs of the people.

The failure by Roosevelt to end the recession of 1930 is directly attributable to his taxing productive citizens for giveaways that produced nothing but government edifices. It is time that the lies of the left be addressed. It is still arguable whether truth will prevail, but at the very least, it is no longer being suppressed.

How to Think About The Tea Party

by Paul Rahe - February 2011 (Publication Date) - Commentary Magazine

On February 19, 2009, when the finance commentator Rick Santelli indulged in a rant against the newly unveiled “stimulus” bill on the CNBC cable network and called for a demonstration in Chicago modeled on the Boston Tea Party, he fired a shot heard round the country. Santelli’s diatribe was focused on the fact that Americans who had played by the rules, had saved much of what they had earned, and had paid their bills on time were being required to bail out fellow citizens who had gotten caught short in purchasing a domicile they could not afford or while speculating in real estate. In the weeks that followed, ordinary citizens spontaneously gathered in towns and cities across the continent to organize Tea Parties in protest against what they took to be an unjust redistribution of wealth from the industrious and the rational to the greedy and improvident. The mainstream media treated them with contempt, and most Republicans kept their distance. Leading Democrats denounced them as frauds and ignoramuses and sought to brand them as racists. Even when the president of the United States used the obscene epithet “teabaggers” to refer to them, however, the adherents of what was coming to be a full-fledged movement—the Tea Party movement—stood firm. And in the course of the summer of 2009, as Americans began to grow fearful of the scope and intrusiveness of the Obama administration’s health-care proposal, that movement’s numbers grew.

[Snip]

Consider what Barack Obama and the Democrats did over the past two years—with their so-called stimulus, health-care reform, and reform of financial regulation. Each initiative involved the passage of a bill more than a thousand pages in length that virtually no one voting on could have read, and no one but those who framed it could have understood. Each involved a massive expansion of the federal government and massive payoffs to favored constituencies. And each was part of a much larger project openly pursued by self-styled progressives in the course of the last century and aimed at concentrating in the hands of “a small group” of putative experts “an almost complete control over other people’s property, other people’s money, other people’s labor—other people’s lives.” Without quite knowing whom they are evoking, Tea Partiers are inclined to say, as FDR said in 1936, that if they do not put a stop to what is going on, “for too many of us life” will be “no longer free” and “liberty no longer real”—for otherwise the bureaucratic busybodies ensconced in Washington will deprive us of the means by which to “follow the pursuit of happiness” as we see fit.

The only difference is that FDR’s assertions demonizing the “economic royalists” were demonstrably false, and when the Tea Partiers make comparable claims today, they are, alas, telling the truth.

As long as the Tea Party movement focuses on the rejection of federal power to control our lives, they are doing our nation a service. When they veer off into passing laws at the federal level to create the moral world they think their church is failing to assure, they are not meaningfully different than the evil they oppose. That to me is the test of the value of the Tea Party movement. Will it stay focused on freedom, or allow itself to be diverted into social issues that have powerful adherents to control us, just in a different way.

A Letter From A Fearfully Concerned Muslim

by Salim Mansur - February 11th, 2011 - Pajamas Media

Ten years after 9/11, we, the broad public of liberal democracies, still have not fully grasped the meaning of that horror-filled morning, or understood without any apologetics or polemics the evil nature and ideology of the men who planned and executed the deed. We remain more or less preoccupied with re-litigating the debate over the decision by the Bush administration to take the war declared upon the West into the heartland of the enemy and expunge them; and instead of faulting Bush for not going far enough at home and abroad in defeating the Islamist jihadi assault on the West, for reasons that have everything to do with the nature of our corrupted polity, we have contorted ourselves to find the right mix of appeasement. From the ashes piled high at the end of the Second World War to the re-grouping that was essential to contain the Soviet Union, the passage of time was barely twenty-four months. Ten years after 9/11, the West has as leaders Obama and Cameron, Sarkozy, Berlusconi, and Merkel still clinging to the fantasy that Islamists are merely a Middle Eastern version of Milton and Locke, Tocqueville and Mill, leading the reform of the Islamic civilization that once gave us Alhambra and the Taj Mahal, Omar Khayyam and the tales from the Arabian Nights.

The fault, as Cassius reminds Brutus, is in ourselves, a decaying civilization that will be saved (if it will be) not by the snobs in Washington and New York, London and Paris, Rome and Berlin, but by our version of the unsophisticated children of truckers who are now waking up from the drug-induced stupor of their parents’ and grandparents’ generation. I have hope, the eternal hope of a fearful heart, that the West will survive and yet again gather speed, but how sad are the losses and tears that have piled up — with more to come. They could have been avoided if we, as a people, were not so irresponsible or unfaithful to our history as to place at the head of our societies leaders so unworthy and clueless as the one who so unfittingly occupies the seat of Washington and Lincoln, at the head of this great republic.

Perhaps the only people who really understand the evil that Islam represents today are the rare moderate Muslims like Mansur who admire the freedoms of Western Civilization. They cannot believe the gullibility of America and the West at our accepting the democratization of the Middle East as a good thing.

A lot of blood will be spilled, much of it American, because of the idiocy of the voters who put the socialists into power during the years of 2006 and 2008. There is no such thing as a good Democracy. That illusion is still being promoted by those who hate freedom, such as the socialists of our Democrat Party. Democracy is and always will be mob rule. The evil that comes with mob rule does not and never has gone away without a bloodbath.

We are a Republic, based on meritocracy, freedom and the rule of law. At least we used to be.

No Coal, No Power, No Gas

by Jeffrey Folks - February 11th, 2011 - The American Thinker

Let's see if I get this straight. During the early February cold spell in the southern plains, when wind chills in Dallas dipped to minus twenty degrees, Texans were going without power to heat their homes and businesses even as the state was sitting on massive surpluses of natural gas. Even hospitals were having to switch to emergency generating systems. And this in the state with the largest energy production capacity in the continental US.

How was it that Texas suffered an extended period of rolling blackouts at a time when there's a glut of coal and natural gas waiting to be used?

The detailed answer - as provided in the article - is that environmental extremists have gutted the ability of Texas to use its energy to benefit the people of Texas. This is the same insane strategy the environmental extremists are currently extending to the rest of our nation. And unfortunately, the Obama administration totally embraces the stupidity and is helping to make it happen. We are shipping the needed energy to China, which is not afflicted with the short sighted stupidity of the environmental extremists or the Obama administration.

As it becomes clear that the danger of man caused global warming has always been a scam to provide political cover for a global socialist takeover of the world's governments, and evidence appears that the real threat is a massive and rapid global cooling from an incipient ice age, the most important question that must be answered is how long will it be before the MSM catches up with reality?

Don't hold your breath. It will not happen soon.

Crisis Flummoxes White House

by Adam Entous And Jay Solomon - February 11th, 2011 - Wall Street Journal

The defiant tone taken by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak—and widespread confusion about the meaning of his speech—had White House officials stumbling for their next step in a crisis that was spinning out of their control.

Egyptian officials said Mr. Mubarak gave the Obama administration much of what it wanted: the delegation of presidential powers to the vice president, Omar Suleiman.

They said Mr. Mubarak had all but been rendered a figurehead leader, precisely the formulation set out by U.S. officials over the weekend.

But Mr. Mubarak's language and refusal to yield to what he called the intervention of foreigners left protesters furious, the scene in Cairo precarious and the White House seemingly unable to influence events.

The White House is in disarray as they flail around trying to find some way to blame this on George W. Bush. Since they have taken office, that has been the Obama administration standard method of operation. So far in this crisis, they have not found any credible way to blame Bush and it has left them with a complete lack of ideas.

However if you watch the MSM the fact that Obama and his administration are totally ineffective and do not have a clue what to do next is simply ignored. The greatest example of ignorance has been their futile attempts to portray the Muslim Brotherhood as a 'largely secular' organization that 'has eschewed violence'... direct quotes by Obama's Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.

If they truly believe that, they are imbeciles. If they don't, they are liars.

Combine that example with Obama's Secratary of State, Hillary Clinton, assuring us all 3 weeks ago that Egypt was "stable" and we need have no concerns about it remaining our ally.

Who wants to place a bet on that ridiculous prediction now?

New Drilling Method Opens Vast Oil Fields In US

by Jonathan Fahey - February 9th, 2011 - The Associated Press

A new drilling technique is opening up vast fields of previously out-of-reach oil in the western United States, helping reverse a two-decade decline in domestic production of crude.

Companies are investing billions of dollars to get at oil deposits scattered across North Dakota, Colorado, Texas and California. By 2015, oil executives and analysts say, the new fields could yield as much as 2 million barrels of oil a day — more than the entire Gulf of Mexico produces now.

This new drilling is expected to raise U.S. production by at least 20 percent over the next five years. And within 10 years, it could help reduce oil imports by more than half, advancing a goal that has long eluded policymakers.

"That's a significant contribution to energy security," says Ed Morse, head of commodities research at Credit Suisse.

Of course the immediate response of the Obama administration has been to seek some way to stop use of the new technique. They want to 'study' it and see if they can find some way to block its use. Every act of this administration is focused on denying American citizens access to energy unless that energy meets their ignorant definition of acceptable 'green' energy. That means it cannot be cheap energy. It has to be so expensive that it requires government subsidy. That reality assures that energy access is totally controlled by government bureacrats and not by citizens.

Another View On Why There Is No Robust Job Growth

by John Crudele - February 10th, 2011 - New York Post

The economy should be creating jobs.

That, anyway, is what everyone says. President Obama thinks that. And so does Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, every Wall Street economist and all the unemployed folks sitting around Starbucks logging on to Monster.com.

But jobs aren't being created -- at least not nearly enough by even the most forgiving definition of an economic recovery.

Even if last Friday's disclosure by the Labor Department that only 36,000 new jobs appeared in January was flawed on the pessimistic side (as I showed in my last two columns), private measures of employment aren't showing a labor market that is even the least bit robust.

So what gives?

As this article notes, there is evidence that even the fairly dismal report Obama is selling as good news is false bravado based on cooking the books. Inflation is understated and reported as if it was increased consumer spending. A lie. A bizarre drop in imports is ignored to make the economy look better too.

Instead of the rosy outlook Obama is reporting, a realistic look at fourth quarter numbers gives increased credibility to those who are reporting a probable double dip recession is under way. So maybe it isn't that those "evil capitalists" are just sitting on profits to screw the "workers of the world." It seems more likely that business leaders are simply paying more attention to the fraud underlying the claims coming out of the White House than the gullible MSM .

6 Charged In Bell Corruption Case Reject Plea Deal

by Jeff Gottlieb, Corina Knoll and Christopher Goffard - February 7th, 2011 - Los Angeles Times

Lawyers for six current and former Bell leaders said their clients would not accept plea deals that would have sent them to prison for two years and forced them to pay back hundreds of thousands of dollars allegedly looted from the city treasury.

[Snip]

The two-year deal offered to the defendants may not have amounted to much of a concession by prosecutors. Sanford Perliss, a lawyer who represented a Temple City mayor charged in a recent bribery case, said his client rejected a two-year plea deal but ultimately pleaded no contest and received a 16-month sentence from a judge.

And that is the problem. Trivial sentences are traditional in these types of corruption cases, primarily because our court system is as corrupt as the legislative and executive branch people being charge. The judges apparently want to establish precedents that will protect them if it ever becomes their turn.

It is interesting that these 6 each got at least about $100,000 a year they were not entitled to, while the worst offender in the corruption got $1.5 million a year. Perhaps they are counting on the idea that though they stole from the people, they were not the major thieves and their punishment should reflect that.

Thinking About Ronald Reagan: On 100th Birthday, He's Remembered For Good Reason

by Lou Cannon - February 1st, 2011 - Politics Daily

On the eve of Ronald Reagan's election as president of the United States in 1980, a radio reporter asked him what it was that Americans saw in him. Reagan hesitated and then replied: "Would you laugh if I told you that I think maybe they see themselves and that I'm one of them?"

Thirty years and four presidents later, Americans still see themselves in Reagan. In a Gallup poll in 2009 they ranked Reagan as the best president, just ahead of Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy.

This highly generous assessment is based on more than likeability. Reagan left the world safer and the United States more prosperous than he found it.

This is an excellent article about Ronald Reagan the conservative by Lou Cannon the Liberal.

One of the more interesting points made in the article is the history of how Reagan was savaged, not just by Liberals, but by the Republican leadership of the time. William F. Buckley, George Will, Gerald Ford, George H.W. Bush, Henry Kissinger and numerous others opposed Reagan at various times and ridiculed him as not qualified for office. As he was famous for doing, he never held a grudge against any of them. He never joined them in the gutter politics. He allowed their insults to slide off him and was courteous and generous in return. That did not mean he did not defend himself from their attacks. He simply did not let an attack define the future.

That talent is perhaps one of the important aspects of why he is so loved today. He was always focused on the future, not the past. He loved our nation for what it was. A place where merit allowed you to get ahead. Not where government carried you but where government provided a level playing field. He understood that bureaucrats were always evil, even corrupt, so he worked to limit their power. That simple philosophy provided for the greatest economic boom since the roaring twenties.

At the same time he brilliantly opposed the Soviet Union and won the Cold War without firing a shot.

Sarah Palin is another maverick both opposed by Republican leadership and ridiculed by the left -- even as Reagan was in his day. I think it is interesting that she has summed up the flaw in the constant search by Republicans for another 'Ronald Reagan'. Reagan, said Palin, "was one of a kind, and you're not going to find his kind again."

Santelli Slams CNBC Panelists For Spinning Jobs Report

by Julia A. Seymour - February 4th, 2011 - Business and Media Institute

Jobs are heading up and down at the same time. The Bureau of Labor Statistics announced the morning of Feb. 4 that only 36,000 jobs were added in the month of January, but the unemployment rate dropped from 9.4 percent to 9.0 percent... CNBC's Rick Santelli even lashed out at some of the CNBC "Squawk Box" panel that were discussing the latest jobs report.

Once again it appears that on CNBC the only reporter who is not "in the bag" for the Obama Administration is Rick Santelli. The exchange by panelists mentioned above went as follows:

"We know that the U6 probably gives you a better indication of the true unemployment rate …" Santelli started to say.
CNBC's Steve Liesman interjected: "It went down, Rick. It went down - "
"Yeah, what is it?" asked Santelli.
"It went down Rick, to 16.1 [percent]," Liesman said.
"Oh boy, guys! 16.1 [percent] is probably the unemployment rate. That's cause celebre," Rick sarcastically shouted on the trading floor of the Chicago mercantile exchange

Meanwhile the rest of the press is claiming that the fraudulently derived data from the Obama Administration pretending the unemployment rate has fallen to 9.0% is "great news." Like the administration, the press ignores the contradictory data from Gallup polling that shows just the opposite, with 'official' unemployment going back up to 9.9% (with real unemployment being 19.2%).

Santelli was pointing out to the CNBC panel that the administration's own data was based on two assessments that contradicted each other. They simply ignored the one they didn't like and reported the rosy scenario.

As if we can trust anything Obama says. My question? Why are there not more people like Santelli who are ranting about the con job. Especially with youth unemployment the worst it has ever been. Even by the rigged numbers, unemployment for under 25s is over 20% for the 'official' number and nearly 40% for what is starting to be called 'real' unemployment. How does the next generation learn to be productive members of society when they are facing such a catastrophe?

Obama Well Knows What Chaos He Has Unleashed

by Victor Sharpe - February 5th, 2011 - The American Thinker

Not content with creating havoc in the U.S. economy, setting Americans against each other, and forcing through a health reform act which has nothing to do with health but everything to do with the redistribution of wealth and an immense increase in governmental interference, our president has now opened a Pandora's Box in the Middle East. It may well usher in a catastrophe not seen since World War 2.

From his notorious Cairo speech to the present, President Obama speaks, and disaster follows. Some commentators believe that President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton are so utterly naïve as to make themselves unable to understand what will happen in Egypt as a result of their undermining of the Mubarak regime.

The question is justifiably asked: Do they truly believe that the next regime that comes to power will have the interests of the U.S. and the West at heart?

My fear is that Obama is not naïve at all, but he instead knows only too well what he is doing, for he is eagerly promoting Islamic power in the world while diminishing the West and Israel, however much innocent blood will flow as a result.

From Obama's earlier statement that he would take the side of Islam against America, there has been no indication that this accusation against him is not true. Though Obama supporters rail against the idea, the evidence certainly supports the premise his acts are intentional and consistent with an anti-American, pro-Islam attitude.

This article reminded me of one of the most ignorant acts in this half century long war by Islam to regain its former power, the pressure by America under Eisenhower to have Britain give up the Suez Canal and return it to a nation that has ever since used it to abuse the rights of others in the region. Egypt gets nearly $5 billion a year in profits to operate the Suez Canal, another $3 billion a year from America for supporting peace in the middle east (everyone forgets that Jimmy Carter bought his Nobel Peace prize with what is now more than $120 billion in taxes levied on American citizens), and significant oil royalties from oil fields that Israel developed but which we forced them to give back to Egypt.

All 3 of these acts are about to be proven at best to have short term advantage. The Middle East is about to erupt into a war that will only end with nuclear bombs in American cities, a war that would not be needed if America did not repeatedly exercise gullible wishes for peace and cave in to our avowed enemies.

The awareness that George Soros and Zbigniew Brzezinski are right in the middle of this new crisis, stirring up hatred for America, is all anyone really needs to know to realize nothing happening in the Middle East is what it seems.

Magnetic Polar Shifts Causing Massive Global Superstorms

by Terrence Aym - February 4th, 2011 - Salem News

NASA has been warning about it…scientific papers have been written about it…geologists have seen its traces in rock strata and ice core samples… Now "it" is here: an unstoppable magnetic pole shift that has sped up and is causing life-threatening havoc with the world's weather.

Forget about global warming — man-made or natural — what drives planetary weather patterns is the climate and what drives the climate is the sun's magnetosphere and its electromagnetic interaction with a planet's own magnetic field.

When the field shifts, when it fluctuates, when it goes into flux and begins to become unstable anything can happen. And what normally happens is that all hell breaks loose.

Magnetic polar shifts have occurred many times in Earth's history. It's happening again now to every planet in the solar system including Earth.

The magnetic field drives weather to a significant degree and when that field starts migrating superstorms start erupting.

The real catastrophe of all the energy and animosity wasted on AGW is that now, when a real threat is upon us, the average member of the public could easily respond in frustration "Oh shut up."

It is clear that there were vineyards in Greenland while the Vikings were there. It is not yet as warm today as the weather was during that time called the medieval warm period. Yet AGW proponents wrote books denying that the medieval warm period existed, or that it was warmer than our current era. They simply ignored the archaeological record and insisted it did not happen. To even cite the evidence was denounced by the fanatics that promoted the AGW myth.

Evidence that earlier periods had much higher CO2 levels than we have today were also denounced by those AGW fanatics. They tolerated no one daring to contradict their view of the dire threat. To point out contradictory evidence was to get you labelled a "denier" and ridiculed and insulted.

As recently as 2 years ago the AGW fanatics insisted snow storms were a thing of the past due to global warming. Now after 2 years of severe winter storms they are shouting from the rooftops, "See, we told you that global warming would cause major snow storms. It is all the fault of global warming." The evidence is easily found to prove they have changed their story 180 degrees. Do they think we are stupid?

They even changed their label for the myth of what was happening from "global warming" to "climate change," in embarrassment at their former claims falling apart. What they absolutely will not acknowledge is that AGW is a cult, not science. The demand for ceding control of government to them is a search for power. They believe in their own omnipotence. To have their agenda start to unravel is driving them to make ever more irrational assaults on those they see as enemies.

The problem is there is a serious catastrophic risk possible that we are not dealing with. However it is not related to man. It is related to the power of the solar system to determine its own course of change, exactly as it has done for more than a billion years. It has been happening for a billion years before man came to earth and will still be happening a billion years henceforth. What man needs to do is try and understand the conseqences of the poles shifting. We need to learn how to deal with it. The evidence suggests that we are more likely to be heading towards a new ice age than towards a warmer planet.

As noted in the article: "... the start of a new Ice Age is marked by a magnetic pole reversal, increased volcanic activity, larger and more frequent earthquakes, tsunamis, colder winters, superstorms and the halting of the Earth's precessional wobble... Unfortunately, all of those conditions are being met."

Since it is imperative that we must have more energy for us to deal with whatever happens, we need to stop those who have decided that cheap energy must be abandoned and expensive energy used in its place. Yet that mistake is exactly what Barack Obama and the progressive dominated Democrat Party has currently decided to force us to do. Stop all efforts to produce cheap energy and subsidize expensive energy instead.

We do not need government to be waging war against cheap energy. That is insane.

America's Naivete About Egypt

Don’t buy the hype about the moderate Muslim Brotherhood.

by Kirsten Powers - February 3rd, 2011 - The Daily Beast

When the protests first began in Egypt, I was in constant contact with an Egyptian relative who is a successful businessman, university professor and astute student of world politics. As my husband and I panicked for our family’s safety, this relative was calm, assuring me that Hosni Mubarak would appoint an interim government and that there would likely be an important role for Omar Suileman, who is a well respected leader in Egypt. Both these things quickly came true. Day after day he assured me that everything would be fine. He was sure that the Muslim Brotherhood—which he regards as a radical Islamist group – was not organized enough to gain any significant power.

Today, he was not so calm. Our family in Egypt is shocked and alarmed by what they are hearing from Western voices and even the apparent leading opposition candidate Mohamed ElBaradei—who has partnered with the Muslim Brotherhood -- who claim that the Brotherhood is a moderate group that should not be feared.

As Coptic Christians—native Egyptians who comprise the largest religious minority in the Middle East—they are especially attuned to the double-speak of Islamist groups trying to attain power.

Kirsten Powers needs to watch her back. Progressives in America are rarely tolerant of one of their own who dares violate the rule against disagreeing with the "true story" as progressive leadership defines it. If you doubt that, talk to Juan Williams. The progressive mantra is that no one need fear the Muslim Brotherhood.

This article is suggesting the same things that some conservatives have been saying. Watch out for the double speak coming out of the Muslim Brotherhood. Because Kirsten has relatives in the Egyptian Coptic Christian community who she trusts, she has dared to suggest that the progressive line may be naive. Her relatives are not so accepting of what is passing for conventional wisdom among the progressive "experts."

Judge Vinson Also Smacks Down Crony Capitalists

by C. Edmund Wright February 2nd, 2011 - The American Thinker

Judge Vinson's individual mandate ruling is seen -- properly -- as a defeat for ObamaCare and a win for individual freedom. And it is all of that, of course.

But there's more. Perhaps almost as pleasing as the affirmation of individual freedom and the dismissal of a government run-society is the smack-down Judge Vinson's ruling gave to the concept of "crony capitalism." And that may be just as important in the long run.

After all, no government-run society is even possible without corporatists and crony capitalists eager to jump into the sack with the statists who will design laws to force unwilling customers to those corporations. This is something the statists will do under threat of sending IRS and other bureaucrats to harass every unwilling business or individual. You do remember that it was sixteen thousand new IRS agents -- not sixteen thousand new doctors -- that ObamaCare has plans to employ, don't you?

Gee, you think maybe ObamaCare was about control and not health care?

The problem Vinson addresses is not as simple as Democrat versus Republican. Nor is it progressive versus moderate. Most of the problem is simply the inability of many to understand that any form of government control is statism. Labels are useless when people have no clue what the labels mean. Which explains why this discussion itself about whether ObamaCare is about control or health care is not proceeding as any kind of logical debate.

As an example, the Republican Party has a large number of statists itself. These Republicans are owned by Wall Street. It frustrates me since it is so clear that Wall Street has long since abandoned free enterprise and capitalism and adopted crony capitalism (or as it can also be called - corporate socialism) as its working theory of profit. Mergers and acquisitions are the process by which competition is eliminated so that fat profits can be gleaned by overcharging the customers who have the reduced choices Wall Street offers. Complicity with government who passes rules to stamp out the competition from small business is an obvious next step. Why would any Republican back a group like Wall Street that gives 75% of its campaign contributions to Democrats? Does this not offer a red flag of how little common interest there is between Republicans and Wall Street? Yet most Democrats and even the majority of Republicans fail to make the connection. They simply do not understand the truth.

That lack of understanding is the problem. So few truly understand what these labels or terms really mean they are nearly useless in the discussion. To most progressives everything they see as wrong is "right wing". They are ignorant of the original basis for the progressive premise that right wing means Nazi or Fascist. That charge came from Stalin. Since Stalin dismissed anything that was not a statist political philosophy as invalid -- to him only the statist ideologies of Communist, Fascist and Socialist were relevant. When he then insisted that both Fascists and Socialists (Nazis were Socialists) constituted right wing philosophies (as compared to communism), Stalin provided communists with the idea that anyone who disagreed with them could be called "right wing." That concept evolved until even fascists and socialists called anyone they disgareed with right wing, and used the Nazi and Fascist labels to mean right wing.

After the Nazi gas chambers became an issue of revulsion, the right wing could also be smeared with the genetic superiority flaw, another progressive or liberal idea (read your George Bernard Shaw) even though it too was a statist concept those on the right had always rejected. That leads us to today. Socialists (who are the same as Nazis in ideology) smear conservatives as Nazis because they are ignorant of the genesis of the term as a smear. When I say the charge is ignorant, they refuse to accept it and insist I am an "idiot" who doesn't have to be listened to. Actually, history is what it is. Stalin created the concept of Nazi (socialist) as right wing. Nazi does not fairly apply to moderates, conservatives or libertarians who all reject socialist ideology and eugenics as irrational concepts. I actually had one progressive try and argue with me that it was still fair to call me a Nazi since I "agreed with them." When I pointed out this fact that libertarians reject both socialism and eugenics, the prime beliefs of the Nazis, and asked him how it could be claimed I agree with this, his solution was to curse me and claim I was too stupid to understand. That is the standard knee jerk response of progressives. "You are stupid and an idiot."

Already I have seen numerous posts on progressive blogs that call Judge Vinson stupid, an idiot, a Nazi, all the standard Alinsky smears that are trotted out to personalize attacks from those who arrogantly reject the possibility they are wrong about anything. I agree with this article. I agree that Vinson's ruling condemns "crony capitalists" as much as the Constitutional flaw. I just wish the Wall Street wing of Republicans would also abandon support for crony capitalism. Maybe now they will have to.

Why Egypt 2011 Is Not Iran 1979

by Professor Juan Cole - February 2nd, 2011 - Informed Comment

Alarms have been raised by those observing the popular uprising in Egypt that, while it is not itself a Muslim fundamentalist movement, the Muslim fundamentalists could take it over as it unfolds. The best-positioned group to do so is the Muslim Brotherhood. Some are even conflating the peaceful Brotherhood with radical groups such as al-Qaeda.

Suggested as a counter to my posting below, this opinion article by a left wing professor from the hotbed of Islamist thought in America, takes me and others to task for believing that the Egyptian insurrection now happening could possibly go the same way as the Iranian revolution. It is curious because the progressives in the 70s were just as adamantly sure that the Islamist jihadists like Khomeini could not take over the Iranian revolution. My prediction is not that it is the same as Iran, but that violent Islamist thought has become far more pronounced. Trying to pick apart superficial differences between the circumstances as if it has relevance are not persuasive when you look at the overall posture of the various groups. Islamist terrorists are a threat to fill any power vacuum in the Middle East.

The progressives also ridiculed the Bush administration for its concerns that the Taliban could rise from its ashes in Afghanistan and become a threat to the future stability of that country as well. Though I broke with Bush and the neo-conservatives over his attempts to impose Democracy by nation building in Afghanistan, I have never doubted that the Taliban was a cultural force that would recover from its first defeat, no matter how ignominous. I am pre-disposed to dismiss the arguments of those whose track record on predicting the future success of extremists in the Middle East is so abysmal. Certainly progressives were wrong in Iran, are wrong in Afghanistan, and are probably wrong about Egypt - in the long run if not now.

It is only possible to dismiss the propensity of the Muslim Brotherhood towards takeover by violence if you ignore the results in Gaza achieved by the wing of the MB organization known as Hamas. The ties between these two groups are well established and for those who accept their alignment, the arguments of those who dismiss the links ring hollow. The bias of Professor Cole is obvious if you simply note his calling the radical Muslim Brotherhood "peaceful" in his first paragraph. Such a characterization is simply bizarre.

As for more recent predictions, at least one of the commentors notes that predictions that Egypt was not like Tunisia have already been proven ill founded. No matter the outcome of the current discord, the Middle East (including Egypt) is going Islamist unless we start taking the consequences of nuclear Armageddon more serious.

'Al-Qaida On Brink Of Using Nuclear Bomb'

by Heidi Blake and Christopher Hope - February 1st, 2011 - The Daily Telegraph

Al-Qaida is on the verge of producing radioactive weapons after sourcing nuclear material and recruiting rogue scientists to build "dirty" bombs, according to leaked diplomatic documents.

A leading atomic regulator has privately warned that the world stands on the brink of a "nuclear 9/11".

Security briefings suggest that jihadi groups are also close to producing "workable and efficient" biological and chemical weapons that could kill thousands if unleashed in attacks on the West.

If this article is premature, it is still only a matter of time. Iran is closing in on having a nuclear stockpile. The reality is that Egypt is technically capable of producing a bomb. If the Islamists take over Egypt, as they appear destined to do both there and in Pakistan, nuclear technology will be easily available to any of the Islamist terrorist groups. It is then only a matter of a short time until the world will get the nuclear holocaust that was so feared throughout the 20th century.

It is too late for any more nation building in the Middle East. We need to prepare for all out war with the Islamists in the near future.

Judicial 'Death Panel' For Obamacare

by Betsy McCaughey - February 1st, 2011 - New York Post

Fourteen months ago, a reporter asked then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi if the Constitution allows the federal government to force people to have health insurance. Amazed, she answered, "Are you serious?"

It's looking more serious all the time: Yesterday, federal Judge Roger Vinson ruled the entire Obama health law unenforceable.

Vinson's decision won't take effect until a higher court rules. Indeed, the case will surely go all the way to the Supreme Court, with a final word likely before the 2012 presidential election.

But there's a solid chance that the whole ObamaCare law may be null and void.

Unfortunately there is nearly as good a chance that this ruling will be overturned. If Kelo v. New London taught us anything, it is that Anthony Kennedy doesn't give much of a damn about our Constitution or freedom.

It is looking more and more likely that this circus will continue to play out for most of this year. Sometime late this year or early next year we will get a ruling from the Supreme Court. With Hagan having to sit it out since she was a part of writing the law while in the Obama administration, it will be decided by 4 conservatives, 1 moderate (Kennedy) and 3 liberals.

Conservatives should not get cocky. This is a perfect case to increase court power. The final decision may have more to do with how the majority of justices think they can attain power than any concern for the rule of law.

In the meantime the left wing has launched their standard Alinsky smears against the judge who made the ruling. Judge Roger Vinson is unlikely to survive the litany of vile charges and denunciations currently being leveled at him by the same people who are outraged that anyone on the right dare say anything critical of them. Just the normal progressive double standard at work.