Thursday, June 30, 2011

Lead? Who, Me?

by John Hinderaker - June 29th, 2011 - Powerline

Sometimes the things Obama says are so breathtakingly hypocritical, or – this is the other possibility – stupid, that it is hard to know what to make of them. Now, he realizes that “one of the most important and urgent things we can do for the economy” is “reduce our nation’s deficit.” Really? Just when did he figure that out? Because in February of this year, he offered a budget for FY 2012 that contemplated, even based on the ridiculously rosy assumptions embedded in the numbers, burgeoning deficits as far as the eye could see.

As much as I agree with Hideraker on most of his criticisms, as usual he joins other establishment Republicans in going over the top with his defense of the Wall Street demand for lower tax rates.

Clearly Obama is lying with his claim that taxes are lower than they have been since the 1950s. That does not alter the facts. The chart that Hinderaker includes shows that (with the exception of two short periods during the 'roaring twenties' and late in the Reagan boom years at the end of the 1980s) taxes are at historically low rates.



Our argument should be that it is not tax rates that we need to worry about 'right now'. It is tax revenues, which will not go up until the economy is kick started. Raising rates, no matter how little, will not get the economy going. It will damage the economy. That I agree with.

Looking at the graph though, I wonder about those Republicans who try to claim that we MUST LOWER RATES. With rates at close to their lowest levels in the last hundred years, the arguments for that better be impressive. So far I have heard nothing serious to justify the knee jerk demand for tax reductions that some Republicans always trot out. Leave the rates alone. We have more important issues to address.


Tuesday, June 28, 2011

President Quixote's Legacy:

Confused, Ill-Educated and
Not Too Bright


by Monty Pelerin - June 28th, 2011 - The American Thinker

How dangerous this delusional man might be is moot. What seems no longer at issue is Obama's "superior intelligence." Obama's belief system is dominated by the dismissed exploitation theories of Karl Marx and the 60's-style radicals he grew up around. The Reverend Wright preached to him for twenty years about exploitation in terms of Black Liberation Theology. An unrepentant terrorist, Bill Ayers, was a close friend and arguably author of one of Obama's autobiographies. His personally selected "Czars" are the sorriest collection of Presidential advisors ever, at least in terms of reflecting American values and beliefs.

Many went on the same intellectual voyage that Obama did. Most of us outgrew this nonsense, usually by our mid-twenties. Obama never did. He is still a child, intellectually undeveloped and locked into the ideas from the 60's -- both the 1960s and the Marxist 1860s. In that sense he is an intellectual dwarf, frozen in the equivalent of a state of intellectual puberty. His "knowledge" is based on nothing but the discredited ideologies of Socialism.

The claim that Obama is the smartest man to ever hold presidential office is absurd and a reflection on the state of our media who insist on propping up this man-child. Obama's obsession with keeping his college records and personal past secret is prima facie evidence that the claim is untrue. His knowledge base and dismal performance on the world stage is even more damning.

Instead of having a superior intellect, we likely have the most ignorant, ideological, brainwashed dupe this country has ever elected to high office.

The rest of this article is a well document litany of why this summation above is so accurate. With references to the astute analysis by Thomas Sowell (including a couple of links to articles by Sowell that are brilliant in their assessment) Mr. Pelerin eviscerates the constant mantra from the deluded left that Obama is not a socialist and not an extremist. He is both. And even worse, not too bright.

What is sad is that so many are still suffering the same delusion they suffered in 2008. Though getting fewer with every day that passes, the truth about Obama's narcissistic incompetence is clear to see. Our corrupt left wing extremist teachers have done their brainwashing well or he would never have been elected to being with.


Sunday, June 26, 2011

The Past Is Prologue;
The Future Is Bleak

by Frank Miele - June 25th, 2011 - The Daily Interlake (Montana)

It was rightly said some years ago that the Constitution is not a suicide pact. Too bad the same cannot be said about modern American education.

Unfortunately, the seeds of our own potential destruction as a nation and culture have been sown into the fertile ground of our high schools and universities for at least the last 100 years.

How can that be? Don’t we spend billions of dollars every year to train our young people to be prepared to enter society and take their part as the future leaders of the country?

Well, no — actually we spend billions of dollars every year to teach our young people to question the value of our society; to doubt the legitimacy of our history; and to mistrust our leaders, our traditions and our laws.

It wasn’t always so.

Education has not always worked against the values of America.

Frank Miele continues his campaign to wake up America with his brilliant presentation of our history and the corruption of the progressive political movement. There are times when I despair. When I read his prescient summation of how our nation has gone so wrong it fills me with dread. I agree his criticism is useful. I agree it is needed. I only wonder whether the last part of his title is so true that it is too late.

Our future is bleak. That does not mean we cannot overcome it and transcend the problems. It does mean it is going to be harder than many want it to be. Do we still have the moral strength to stand up and fight? Or have we become so corrupt that the battle is lost?

It is our choice.


Thursday, June 23, 2011

Ayn Rand Was Right:

Wealthy Are On Strike Against Obama

by Wayne Allyn Root - June 21st, 2011 - Big Government

The Census proves that Obama’s tax and spend philosophy is a dismal failure, an economic disaster killing jobs. It is no coincidence that 1.9 million FEWER Americans are working than before Obama’s stimulus. It is no coincidence that jobs are not returning to the private sector. It is no coincidence that tax revenues have dropped dramatically and cannot support Obama’s bloated Big Brother government. The innovators, risk-takers, and wealthy he demonized and punished are on strike.

The high tech revolution has killed the progressive-liberal tax-and-spend dream. Because of the Internet, email, Facebook, Twitter, Skype, Satellite TV, I-phones, I-pads, and cell phones, business owners are no longer prisoners of Big Brother.

[Snip]

Taxpayers, business owners, jobs creators, retirees with assets are fleeing the high tax, big spending, Big Brother states — the states being run like Obama is running the nation.

Progressives be afraid, be very afraid. If Obama is re-elected, these valuable producers will pick up and leave America altogether. There is a big world out there begging them to come. Places like Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, Monte Carlo, Belize, Costa Rica, Panama, Bahamas, and Cayman Islands are low-tax havens that appreciate business owners and their sacrifices. They welcome wealthy ex-patriots. They celebrate individual achievement. They reward instead of punish business owners and financial risk-takers. They are wonderful places to live and are aggressively pursuing Americans.

I am just one small businessman, a third-party Libertarian political leader. Yet I personally have heard from thousands of fans, friends and supporters who have left America, are thinking of leaving America, are visiting other countries right now to decide where to go, or making preparations to leave in case Obama is re-elected. Just as Ayn Rand predicted, business owners are going on strike. Permanently.

The rage against the fundamental transformation of America is getting more powerful every day. This article is intriguing in its prediction that the successful in America are fleeing our country. If true it is a sad indictment of the hate mongering by the progressive left. Spewing hate at those you want to provide you with a free ride never did seem all that smart.

There are some rich who feel guilt at their success. However they are usually people who inherited wealth or acquired their wealth through entertainment. Neither of those groups create wealth. However their way of acquiring it is not how most wealth and success is garnered. Most success comes from creating wealth through hard work, applied intelligence, innovation and sacrifice. For those people, it is difficult to inspire guilt at their success. In fact for those it is just the opposite. They rightly feel that stealing from them to give to others who will not work is not tolerable. Obama is a communist organizer, also erroneously called "community" organizer. It is the same thing. He thinks the rich got that way unfairly so he wants to take away their wealth.

Those who create wealth are the ones who are preparing to flee the Socialized States of America that Barack Obama is so clearly determined to bring into being.


Monday, June 20, 2011

Don't Blame Us

by Ross Kaminsky - June 20th, 2011 - The American Spectator

Keynesian-in-Chief Paul Krugman, in his latest conspiracy-under-every-rock article for the New York Times, argues that "rentiers" who have [or] own large quantities of U.S. government bonds (which is to say who have done Americans the favor of loaning cheap money to our government) benefit from the low interest rates that usually accompany a weak economy.

Therefore, according to Krugman, this "Pain Caucus" works to "protect the interests of creditors, no matter the cost." One would think that a Nobel Prize-winning economist (though Nobel's shine has lost some luster given its awards to Yasser Arafat, Al Gore, and Barack "maybe I'll earn this one day" Obama) would know better than to offer such claptrap. Or maybe he does know better but assumes -- probably correctly -- that most of his readers don't.

To argue that people with money are sabotaging recovery so that they can benefit from being paid low interest rates is so obviously stupid that only someone like Krugman who couches his argument in convoluted Keynesian idiocy would even try.

People with a bias for Keynesian economics are never going to concede the failure of their religion. And that is the problem. It is a religion. Having touted this gibberish since their college days, and having made fortunes promoting the concept, they see their own success as proof that it must be correct. Any evidence to the contrary is presumed false irrespective of how much data proves them wrong. They cannot give up their religion.

That is why they mock economists like Milton Friedman and Thomas Sowell. They never allow themselves to be challenged in a proper forum. If their only audience is politicians and everyday people who have not studied the extreme flaws in their logic, they get to continue to con people with their hypothetical brilliance.

It also allows them to denigrate as evil anyone who disagrees with them. That is one reason they love to smear Republicans with outrageous false charges. How can anyone dispute their charges when the people they are smearing are so "evil"?

The problem is that like most socialist concepts, they fail miserably every time they are tried. Carter failed and nearly destroyed our nation in the process. Obama is failing with equally disastrous results. Yet the "evangelist" of Keynesian economics, Paul Krugman, cannot stop smearing his opponents and screaming that someone must be sabotaging Obama's efforts since they absolutely positively have to work. He cannot be wrong. He knows it in his soul.

Socialists will never ever concede they are the ones who must accept the blame for their failed results. "Don't blame us" is an ignorant plea.


Saturday, June 18, 2011

Sarah Palin, Paul Revere And...

...the Importance Of An Armed Populace

by Bill Flax - June 17th, 2011 - Forbes

The latest Sarah Palin controversy over Paul Revere distracts from the essential lesson of this pivotal slice of American lore. Whether Paul Revere warned the British not to tangle with the heavily armed minutemen or whether she botched the tale makes engaging blog banter, but other than Palin’s credibility, it’s largely moot.

It matters greatly though why the British marched and how the Colonists responded. Dissension had been brewing between the colonies and London for some time, but it only cascaded into violent revolution when the British sought to seize the colonial magazine at Concord.

The minutemen understood something lost on most Americans today, that disarming the people is always the necessary precursor to tyranny.

That is the lesson that Sarah Palin was pointing out from the first. It is also the reason that the MSM intentionally misunderstood what she said and claimed she got it wrong. She didn't. They did.


Friday, June 17, 2011

A Curious Insularity

by Victor Davis Hanson - June 15th, 2011 - National Review

In the world of Barack Obama, inflating tires and “tuning up” modern car engines precludes off-shore drilling. Four-dollar-a-gallon gas prices can be ameliorated by having the average consumer trade in his 8-mpg clunker. Medical bills soar because doctors unnecessarily rip out tonsils and lop off limbs. “Skyrocketing” power bills and bankrupt coal companies are abstractions, and do not involve personal tragedies. One third of the border fenced means that the fence is “basically” completed. Nine percent unemployment is due in part to automation like ATMs, which apparently first came on the scene during the Obama administration to eliminate jobs. Shovel-ready jobs were not so shovel-ready. Criticism is dismissed as “enemies” deserving “punishment” or opponents relegated to the “back seat” or adversaries caricatured with “moats and alligators.” And so on.

Two themes predominate: a cluelessness about how things work outside the Ivy League–Chicago–D.C. political nexus, and a sense that nothing is ever Barack Obama’s fault.

There is little chance that anything will change as long as Barack Hussein Obama remains our President. He does not understand our country at all. He does not understand freedom at all. He does not understand the advantages of free enterprise at all. He does not understand why those who love America and love freedom despise him with a passion that is palpable. He has as little awareness of the gulf that separates him from most Americans as he has of why he is ridiculed for his 57 states gaffe. Born into a red diaper family, raised in a foreign country first, then tutored by a communist pervert who hated our nation in a state, Hawaii, where half the citizens want to break free from America, finally coddled in a culture of radicals and extremists during his entire schooling, Barack Obama is not American. He never will be.


Confession Of A
Reluctant Tea-Partier

by Luba Sindler - June 15th, 2011 - The American Thinker

My husband and I applied for US citizenship the day we became eligible. I think my examining officer got the shock of his life when during the interview I recited the Bill of Rights, named all Supreme Court justices and added the names of all elected officials of the state including our hapless congressman. Talk about useless knowledge! After that we proudly voted in every election, but the idea of venturing a political opinion never crossed my mind (an unfortunate result of being brought up in a totalitarian society where keeping your mouth shut is a basic rule of survival). There was something unseemly in proclaiming my deep love and appreciation of America for all to hear.

When candidate Obama showed up, I realized that I had heard his typical stump speech every single day of my old Soviet life from big and small Communist party bosses -- the same structure, the same cadences, the same bogeymen, the same demagoguery, the same targets. The American people had no defense against this rhetoric. The result of the elections was totally predictable. To me it was a "Back to the Future" moment.

I struggle with the right definition to describe how willing most Americans are to throw away our freedoms while those from foreign states that know true tyranny are dying (literally) to come here. Is irony the right word?

How is it that those who have never known anything but freedom can become so frustrated with the trivial flaws of our nation. They seek to embrace the clearly evil flaws of socialist utopia as if the evidence of its horrors are not documented repeatedly in the annals of history. They cannot grasp what they are going to lose in their greedy reach for their hypothetical dream world - based on a totalitarian government that will fix all ills. How can anyone be that gullible?


Monday, June 13, 2011

The Dark World Of The
Arab Child Slave Trade

by Stephen Brown - June 10th, 2011 - Front Page Magazine

In a story last week in the British newspaper The Sun, a private investigator stated that Madeleine McCann, the subject of probably the world’s most famous unsolved kidnapping case, is in the United States. The British girl was three years old when she went missing five years ago from a seaside resort in Portugal, where her parents were vacationing. The Portuguese police, in what has been termed a “bungled investigation,” at first accused the parents of the abduction but later cleared them. Portuguese security officials halted their investigation to find the missing child in 2008 after stating she had probably been “stolen to order.”

Since her disappearance, numerous alleged sightings have been made of the little girl across Europe, Africa, in North America and in Australia. The investigator making the latest claim concerning McCann’s whereabouts is an amateur sleuth originally from Angola. He told The Sun that a Portuguese pedophile ring, also responsible for other child abductions, took the McCann girl and has handed his findings over to authorities. The claim that a pedophile ring is responsible for McCann’s disappearance has been made before, especially concerning one in Belgium. And while Madeleine McCann may have very well been snatched by such evil hands, it is surprising that an equally depraved institution — one of gigantic size — has never even been considered by investigators or the media as McCann’s possible kidnapper: namely, the Arab child slave trade.

What I find bizarre about this article, is the evasiveness of the title in not attributing the Slave Trade to Islam and the Muslim religion. Though the term Arab is intended to imply this, it is in reality a continuation of the dishonesty about the relationship between Islam and slavery that has been so adamantly embraced by Democrats (progressives) and blacks for the last sixty years.

It is politically correct to state that an enslaved girl might be in the United States.

It is politically incorrect to acknowledge that slavery has for eight centuries been promoted by Islam. Its favorite victims are blacks. It has been true since the time of Muhammad. And it is still true.

While most civilized people nowadays recoil in horror from the idea of slavery, especially when it involves children, many fundamentalist Middle Eastern Muslims do not. In fact, they view the psychological death and destruction of innocent lives as their legal right. Under sharia law, which rules the Sudan and the Gulf States, Muslims are legally allowed to own slaves. Bernard Lewis, the eminent scholar of Islam, writes “…the institution of slavery is not only recognized but is elaborately regulated by Sharia law.” Another reason for this inhuman sense of entitlement is the prophet Muhammad was also a slave owner, setting the example for the fundamentalists.

You have to wonder if Pastor Jeremiah Wright would be so anti-white if he understood the historical legacy of Islam in the creation of the slave trade to the new world. It is also ironic if not bordering on idiocy that Louis Farrakhan embraces the religion that was the foundation for black slavery in the new world while reviling the white people whose creation of the abolition movement ended slavery in Western Civilizations. It is only in the Islamic countries that slavery against blacks is still an active practice.

It was as recently as 2008 that the widow of the Emir of Abu Dhabi and her daughters were caught keeping more than 20 slaves in their home in Brussels, Belgium. She was outraged when the Western authorities freed her slaves. The article also talks about the tolerance for this practice by the so-called "civilized" nation of Kuwait, for whom America shed blood and spent a fortune freeing it from Saddam Hussein. There a female legislator promoted the idea of buying Russian women who were captured in Chechnya so that Muslim men could be "protected from adultery" by using the Russian women as sex slaves and prostitutes.

Where in a civilized nation would someone tolerate such an abhorrent statement?

Even our black President seems to be immune from any idea that Islam be held accountable for its ongoing tolerance for slavery. It is politically incorrect to even state that it is happening. And Barack Obama is nothing if not politically correct.


Saturday, June 11, 2011

Obama's Phone-It-In Economy

by Kevin Jackson - June 11th, 2011 - The American Thinker

Whether it's homelessness or the unemployment figures, I'd like to inform Obama: You're going the wrong way!

Obama has invested almost $2T in his strategy, and unemployment is going up. If you think Obama has learned anything, think again.

Job growth in right-to-work states from 1993 to 2009 was 37.9%; in "forced union" states, it was only 19.6% during the same period. You don't need a Harvard degree to understand that you get twice the job growth in right-to-work states compared to forced union states. Guess where Obama gambled our money.

Add to this the staggering statistic that the private-sector growth in the last decade was a paltry 1%, but government grew 15% during the same time period. Even with Obama's Big Government, according to the U.S. Department of Labor, 14.8 million Americans remain unemployed, 6.1 million of them having been out of work for 27 weeks or over.

This figure has been challenged by the Union of the Unemployed, who provide statistics that the actual number of unemployed Americans is 31 million.

Barack Hussein Obama does not listen to anyone. Except for the tax cheat Geithner, every economic adviser Obama has picked has fled the scene in shame. Real unemployment is higher than it was during the great depression, exceeding 20%. That is hidden though because now we have government bureaucrats who can lie that it is not that bad.

Obama calls his abysmal failures a "bump in the road". Nothing bothers him. Why should it? It is all George W. Bush's fault. Did you know that? The longest failure to recover in our history is not the fault of the current President but a President who has been out of office for nearly 3 years and was burdened with a Democrat dominated congress for 2 years before that.

Democrats have controlled our economy for 5 years, since before the recession started. Yet they are now arguing that because Republicans control a single house of congress, fixing everything is the responsibility of Republicans. When Democrats controlled both houses they could do nothing. Now the Republicans control one house and it is totally their fault. Democrats are not ever responsible for anything. They are masters at blaming others but incompetent at ruling our nation.

If nothing else Obama is proving to be a typical tax and spend liberal on steroids. The worst of this disaster has not even happened yet.


Thursday, June 09, 2011

The Rise Of The
Post-American Empires

by Daniel Greenfield - June 8th, 2011 - Canada Free Press

When the Utopians of the left talk about a Post-American world, they mean a great borderless globe ruled over by international law, where there are no more citizens or nations, just people who happen to enjoy working and living in New York, Shanghai or Islamabad. This digital jet setting globocratic version of John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’ is their envisioned outcome of globalization. No more governments. Only one single world girdling government.

But what the Utopians have never realized is that this vision is not universal, it springs from a Western liberal messianism that is big on faith in progressive government, and disdains national and tribal identities. And that means it is a vision that most of the globe does not share. And is never likely to share. The Utopians want an end to national power and cultural imperialism, but their globalist vision is cultural imperialism backed by national power.

Daniel Greenfield is becoming like Thomas Sowell. A man who has wide ranging views that are almost always based on truly understanding what is taking place.

This article does a magnificent job of explaining the incredibly naive view that world government can come out of the U.N. taking power over all governments. The power of the U.N. to influence third world countries is the power of the Western Civilizations to use their economic and military force for good. Yet the takeover by the U.N. abandons and destroys the very force on which the U.N. currently relies for its power. The Utopian dreamers do not seem to get this.

I love the following paragraph from the article:

You can’t export a revolution based on the rights of the individual, to cultures that don’t believe in the supremacy of the individual over the system. China’s Confucianism and Islam’s theocratic fascism have their own definition of law, and they don’t derive from the rights of the individual. While Americans rapturously praise democracy, they [non Western cultures] don’t see the point. One man, one vote, is nothing special to cultures that don’t believe one man counts for anything unless he dies gloriously in battle or shoveling manure on a collective farm.

Dream world illusion is the basis for a political movement that is touting destruction of the power for good that they rely on to influence the rest of the world. How can these people be so unconnected to reality?

We are in serious trouble. Barack Obama daily attacks the economic power of the nation he rules with no understanding of the need for that power to allow him to rule. Half our nation shares his delusion.


Wednesday, June 08, 2011

Decline And Fall Of
The American Empire

The economic powerhouse of the 20th century emerged stronger from the Depression. But faced with cultural decay, structural weaknesses and reliance on finance, can the US do it again?

by Larry Elliot - June 6th, 2011 - London Guardian

The US is a country with serious problems...

The assumption is that the problems can be easily solved because the US is the biggest economy on the planet, the only country with global military reach, the lucky possessor of the world's reserve currency, and a nation with a proud record of re-inventing itself once in every generation or so...

Let me put an alternative hypothesis. America in 2011 is Rome in 200AD or Britain on the eve of the first world war: an empire at the zenith of its power but with cracks beginning to show.

The experience of both Rome and Britain suggests that it is hard to stop the rot once it has set in...

Scary thought. Yet many are starting to think it. Rarely does a week go by that someone does not write an article about another American institution that is coming apart at the seams. People are starting to wonder if they would not be better off if their states were no longer a part of this nation. Hatred for fellow Americans has long been a staple of the extreme left. Now there are some on the right who have reached a point of visceral disgust with our nation's voters as well.

Republican leadership actually denigrates a huge minority, if not the majority, of its own voters. Democrats have had 5 years of control of congress and 3 years of total control of congress and the executive... yet the President and leader of that party insists he is not at fault for anything. He is trying to clean up the mess of Republicans blah blah blah. He too smears the same Republican voters that the Republican leadership smears.

No one is taking any actions to actually fix anything. The country is headed for a cliff and all that the leadership of either party does is posture for the next election.

If that is not a country headed for decline and fall, no description will ever fit.


It's Obama's Economy, Stupid

by Jonah Goldberg - June 7th, 2011 - Los Angeles Times

... Obama acts like he knows everything. From Day One, this White House has been cocksure about how to get us out of the economic ditch. In every major relevant speech, he has stuck with a consistent message: We know what to do and the Republicans don't. "I will not sacrifice the core investments we need to grow and create jobs," Obama insisted yet again in his April budget speech.

So what does this guy have to do to get the blame for the bad economy? Mark Halperin, an analyst for MSNBC and Time magazine, was asked on the "Today" show over the weekend about the political impact of the bad economy. He assured viewers that the president was totally engaged in the need for job creation. "The Republicans, though, have the onus on them to come forward with some ideas... "

This article is an excellent summation of the standard line the Democrats have been touting. Though the current recession was caused primarily by Democrat legislation passed by a congress, both houses of which have been totally controlled by Democrats since 2006, they never ever stop blaming Bush and the Republicans.

With the election of Obama in 2008, we now have had 5 years of Democrat legislation including 3 years of absolutely total control by that party, and still they cannot produce even a budget, much less a plan to end the recession. Even worse, the recession is getting worse and heading towards a depression. Home prices have now declined more under Democrat control than they declined during the depression. Manufacturing is collapsing. Inflation is rampant due to Obama fiscal policy. China is abandoning loaning us money.

The Democrat assessment? Republicans need to come up with some ideas... which of course the Democrats will ridicule with a cocksure confidence, based entirely on the knowledge that the MSM will never criticize Democrats. Republicans have finally (this year) gotten a small finger in the dike of spending by taking over the lower house of congress, but Democrats act like they don't control the upper house of congress and the entire executive branch. All they do is whine about Republicans.

Democrats have spent trillions of dollars of borrowed money and unemployment is higher than it would have been if they had simply done nothing. How many years will it take before someone says, "You own it. Fix it!"

Well, finally, someone has had the guts to do that. This is one of Jonah's best articles ever.


Sunday, June 05, 2011

Liberal Commentator
On Palin's Media Disdain:

'Refreshing to See Someone Say
Screw You to People Who
Treat Her Like Garbage'
-- Kirsten Powers


by Noel Sheppard - June 4th, 2011 - News Busters

Are the media just furious that after almost three years of tearing this woman apart, they haven't been able to finish her off? Rush Limbaugh commented on this Friday:
They hate her, they despise her, they are frustrated that they haven't destroyed her. They can't believe she's still smiling. They can't believe she's still drawing crowds. They can't believe that she's enjoying life. They can't believe her family is still together. They can't believe her husband hasn't walked out on her. They can't believe any of this. Folks, you know this as well as I do: When they set out to destroy you, they mean just that -- and Palin's not playing along with the script. She's not acting destroyed. She's not asking for forgiveness. She's not begging them to leave her alone. She's not changing in order to make them lighten up or anything. She's just looking at 'em and smiling.

Indeed, and its galling the lot of them...

The reality is that Democrats mean business when they start an Alinsky smear. You are supposed to be destroyed. They invented this evil technique for that purpose. It is not a joke. It is war. When they start to smear you, dammit you are supposed to crawl way in shame. How dare Sarah Palin not understand that.


What’s for lunch?
Whatever The
Mama Grizzly Wants!

by Frank Miele - June 4th, 2011 - The Daily Interlake (Northwest Montana)

A lot of people wonder why I like Sarah Palin so much.

No, she isn’t polished. No, she isn’t sophisticated. In fact, she can best be summed up with an anagram of her last name: Palin is Plain. Plain-spoken. Plain dealing. Plain and simple.

Does that mean she is not smart? Hardly.

Does it mean she is not competent? Hardly.

Does it mean she is dangerous? Only if you think complicated lies are better for the country than the plain truth.

Because what Palin and a lot of other conservative women [and men] bring to the table is a passion for honesty, simplicity and righteousness. That’s not something you learn in college. It’s something bred into the bone.

As Alexis de Tocqueville observed more than 150 years ago, in a simpler era, “The Americans ... have not required to extract their philosophical method from books; they have found it in themselves.”

Thus, Palin, unlike many other modern politicians, does not need to be told what she believes. She does not need to put her finger in the air to see which way the wind blows. Nor does she revise her right and wrong to adjust to the latest fashion.

She is who she is — take it or leave it.

A lot of people wonder why I like Frank Miele so much. It is because of articles like this one.

With references to Sun Tzu and Tocqueville (along with some truly appropriate quotes from each) Frank Miele easily eviscerates the arrogance of the MSM (Main Stream Media for those who are not up on Internet lingo) and describes some of the attributes that are causing Palin to remain so popular with a huge segment of our nation.

On the trite and trivial attacks against Palin that have dominated the last week, Frank Miele writes:
We’ve heard the media complain about virtually every aspect of the bus tour, even ridiculously claiming that Palin was putting reporters’ lives at jeopardy because they didn’t know where she was going, so they might do something stupid to try to keep up with her.

We’ve heard liberals who would loudly support anyone’s right to burn the U.S. flag as a matter of principle roundly criticize Palin because she had dared to show a stylized representation of the flag on the side of the bus and thus broke the “law.” (She didn’t.)

We’ve heard politicians grumble that she had rained on Mitt Romney’s parade by visiting Massachusetts while he was announcing his hopeless quest for the presidency in neighboring New Hampshire. (Poor Mitt!)

We’ve heard her denounced because she plainly ISN’T running for president, but just wants to make money. And we’ve heard her denounced just as vociferously because she plainly IS running for president, and refuses to say so!

We’ve even heard her and Donald Trump blasted for eating pizza with a knife and fork. Dastardly knaves!

In other words, we’ve heard all kinds of whining about how Palin won’t play by the rules [their rules], darn her.

I love it. And clearly the masterful writer Frank Miele loves it as well. I will never fail to look up Miele's editorials. He has become for many on the Internet required reading. His closing line here is masterful. I highly recommend you click on the link to his editorial and read it for yourself.

One quote in the article that I will use again is the line of Tocqueville about American women, [Who even while a young girl] "already thinks for herself, speaks with freedom, and acts on her own impulse... The vices and dangers of society are early revealed to her; as she sees them clearly, she views them without illusions, and braves them without fear; for she is full of reliance on her own strength, and her reliance seems to be shared by all who are about her.”

That sums up American women, including Sarah Palin, pretty well.


Saturday, June 04, 2011

Wanted:
A Grand Strategy
For America

Editorial - February 13th, 2011 - Newsweek

“The statesman can only wait and listen until he hears the footsteps of God resounding through events; then he must jump up and grasp the hem of His coat, that is all.” Thus Otto von Bismarck, the great Prussian statesman who united Germany and thereby reshaped Europe’s balance of power nearly a century and a half ago.

Last week, for the second time in his presidency, Barack Obama heard those footsteps, jumped up to grasp a historic opportunity … and missed it completely.

This is a dated article but it still has relevance, even now. Obama is still fumbling with an attempt to explain what he thinks we should do to influence events in the Middle East. Yet every attempt shows he does not have a clue. In four months he has not yet found anything that he can do that does not either prove his efforts fruitless, or sometimes more damaging than if he simply shut up.

He has alienated our enemies. Okay, not so bad. Except he has alienated them by his incompetent attempts to reach out to them and be their friends. So maybe not so good either.

He has alienated our friends. Really bad. In an area where we had few friends, probably only one that we could count on, he has shattered the efforts for peace that he claimed to be encouraging.

Of course the problem may well be the idea that Obama, or any American, can do something that is useful in a region where peace has been illusive for centuries. If that is true, couldn't Obama at least stop attacking our friends? Couldn't he acknowledge that we are not neutral arbiters seeking to reach compromise? Can we ever admit this is a region where many of our supporters are not all that nice but the alternative is worse?

The left has pounded Newsweek for their criticism of Obama. Yet it still is true. Obama has no strategy. He is struggling with and ad hoc set of actions that show him to be an amateur and prove that he is over his head. For the world's sole super power, this is not good.


Thursday, June 02, 2011

Humpty Obumpty And
The Arab Spring

by Spengler - June 1st, 2011 - Asia Times

I've been warning for months that Egypt, Syria, Tunisia and other Arab oil-importing countries face a total economic meltdown (see Food and failed Arab states, Feb 2, and The hunger to come in Egypt, May 10). Now the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has confirmed my warnings.

[Snip]

"Should we be borrowing money from China to turn around and give it to the Muslim Brotherhood?" Sarah Palin asked on May 27.

"Now, given that Egypt has a history of corruption when it comes to utilizing American aid, it is doubtful that the money will really help needy Egyptian people. Couple that with the fact that the Muslim Brotherhood is organized to have a real shot at taking control of Egypt’s government, and one has to ask why we would send money (that we don't have) into unknown Egyptian hands," the former Republican vice-presidential candidate added.

What is interesting is that Sarah Palin repeatedly reacts with intelligent responses to issues that arise. Those who claim she is "inexperienced" never seem able to explain how she can rapidly explain the same rational strategy that serious intellectual conservatives agree address these same issues. Just luck according to Republican leaders. She seems especially annoying to the moderate Republicans who seem just as willing as the Democrats to send the American taxpayer's hard earned money to countries and peoples who hate us. Moderate Republicans are also just as quick as Democrats to smear Palin. Why is that? Especially since she was known as a good partner with both moderates and Democrats when she was Governor. There was a reason she had an 80% popularity rating!


Wednesday, June 01, 2011

Wounded Soldier To
Receive Medal Of Honor

... For Action In Afghanistan

by Staff - June 1st, 2011 - Army News Service

An Army Ranger who lost his right hand and suffered shrapnel wounds after throwing an armed grenade away from his fellow Soldiers will be the second living Medal of Honor Recipient from the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

On July 12, 2011, President Barack Obama will award Sgt. 1st Class Leroy Arthur Petry, with the Medal of Honor for conspicuous gallantry. Petry will receive the Medal of Honor for his courageous actions during combat operations against an armed enemy in Paktya, Afghanistan, May 26, 2008...

"It's very humbling to know that the guys thought that much of me and my actions that day, to nominate me for that," said Petry, on learning he had been nominated for the medal.

It is still true that America produces men of courage and valor. This is one tough and honorable man. The following excerpt from the article lists the others from the current conflict, living and dead, whose actions have been recognized with the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Included among those recipients are Spc. Ross A. McGinnis, Sgt. 1st Class Paul R. Smith, Petty Officer 2nd Class Michael A. Monsoor, and Marine Corps Cpl. Jason L. Dunham, all for actions in Iraq. Staff Sgt. Salvatore Giunta (living), Staff Sgt. Robert Miller, Sgt. 1st Class Jared C. Monti and Navy Lt. Michael P. Murphy were awarded the Medal of Honor for actions in Afghanistan.

God bless them all.


Everything You've Heard
About Fossil Fuels
May Be Wrong

by Michael Lind - May 31, 2011 - Salon

Are we living at the beginning of the Age of Fossil Fuels, not its final decades? The very thought goes against everything that politicians and the educated public have been taught to believe in the past generation. According to the conventional wisdom, the U.S. and other industrial nations must undertake a rapid and expensive transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy for three reasons: The imminent depletion of fossil fuels, national security and the danger of global warming.

What if the conventional wisdom about the energy future of America and the world has been completely wrong?

What is sad is that this article is so hesitant to repeat known science in its own defense of the premise that so-called renewable energies are a joke. The title hesitantly says the knowledge 'may be wrong'. Unquestionably wrong is the real truth. The reason is as obvious as the hostile and ignorant comments that the denizens of Salon have made following the article. This article is politically incorrect and appeared in a site that is politically correct. None of these people are willing to consider that their biases are wrong. The whole premise of green energy is a chicken little hysteria based on lies.

The article acknowledges the prime reason why opposition to oil and natural gas is stupid. These fuels are not derived from fossil sources. They are a naturally occurring materials created constantly from two of the most abundant materials on earth. However the article still repeats the unproven hypothesis that coal comes from fossils, an hypothesis that is not yet proven false - thus is accepted as conventional wisdom for now.

A more useful article on this same subject is "Oil is NOT a fossil fuel and AGW is non-science" from Peter J. Morgan. It goes into great detail about the scientific research that long ago proved that oil and natural gas are naturally occurring materials that continue to be produced. They are not, and never were, related to fossils. That article also addresses the political manipulation that has tried to fraudulently create the impression that man is contributing to global warming.

AGW is a fraud.

Fossil fuels are a fraud.

The assumption of a shortage of carbon energy is a fraud.

Wind and solar are part time energy sources that only an idiot would try and rely on. As a result they too are a fraud.

When will our politicians accept that fraud after fraud after fraud after fraud - cannot be the basis of a sound energy policy?