One Week Later...

It’s been a week since Sandy Hook and the facts are settling into place.  Here’s what I know so far:

• Adam Lanza, 20, murdered his mother in her sleep with her own gun.  Adam had been diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome but had no previous record of violence, was a good student and his mother had lavished love and attention on him.

• Adam then drove to Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, where he shot his way into the building, killed six teachers and staff who tried to stop him and then systematically murdered twenty first-grade children before killing himself as police were entering the school. All the weapons and ammunition he used to commit these murders had been stolen from his mother’s house, and based on the multitude of weapons and ammo recovered at the scene, it is very likely that massacring the youngest children was only the first stage of a plan to wipe out the entire student population. 

This was an unspeakably brutal crime.  Nobody disputes that.  Murdering helpless children revolts us, as it should, and we can only imagine the horror those poor children experienced as they were gunned down by a homicidal maniac.  Their families and friends are devastated, their lives are ruined, they will probably never recover from this horrible tragedy.  It is human nature to want to do something to prevent something like this from ever happening again, but I recall the words of Rahm Emanuel, former Congressman, former Chief of Staff to Priest-King, current Mayor of Chicago and bare-knuckle politician extraordinaire: “You don’t ever want a crisis to go to waste; it’s an opportunity to do important things that you would otherwise avoid,” and I instinctively put up my guard.

1) Mrs. Lanza bought, registered and used her firearms legally.  She taught her son how to handle firearms not only because it was the responsible thing to do but because it involved him in an activity they could do together.  If Adam stole her guns and killed people with them, then those are crimes for which laws already exist.

2) Adam was diagnosed with a mental illness and laws also already exist to prevent the mentally-ill from buying or owning guns.  Passing more laws will only waste more paper and criminals will ignore those laws as well as the laws already on the books.

3) If all private firearms in the country were gone tomorrow, criminals would just resort to other means to commit mass murder.  Building home-made bombs is illegal but that didn’t stop Ramzi Youssef and his co-conspirators from trying to blow up the World Trade Center in 1993, and it didn’t stop Timothy McVeigh from blowing up the Federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995.  IED’s have been employed in the thousands in Iraq and Afghanistan so if people want to build a bomb themselves and kills dozens of people with it, they can do it pretty easily.

4) Should we outlaw 3D printers?  Those devices have already been used to manufacture workable firearms that have no serial number, aren’t registered and are untraceable.  How far do we take this?

5) While it was good TV to see Priest-King wiping his eyes during his speech last week, I have to wonder exactly why he was upset.  After all, he has vigorously advanced the right to kill fetuses even after they somehow survive a botched abortion, so I guess the question hinges on when an innocent child is killed, not if.  (Two hundred babies were aborted on 14 December for every child that Adam Lanza shot, and two hundred more every day since then.)

6) Adam Lanza, like so many of these mass shooters, chose Sandy Hook Elementary School at least in part because it was a soft target.  Nobody was going to stop him.  He didn’t attack a police station or an Army base or NRA headquarters because doing so would get him killed, and he wanted to kill as many unarmed people as possible.  If he had started shooting his way into the school and the Principal had shot him with her own gun, then we’d be talking about something else today.

7) As much as the Left hates the Second Amendment, the Founding Fathers had very good reason for including it in our basic law.  They didn't want a large standing army because of their experience under British occupation; instead they wanted a small, well-trained militia to defend against foreign invasion or Indian attack.  Since the people would constitute such a militia, it was imperative that each able-bodied citizen have his own firearms and be trained in their use, and thus the people themselves would reduce the threat to liberty posed by a standing army commanded by a tyrant.  Alexander Hamilton said as much in Federalist No. 29: "...if circumstances should at any time oblige the government to form an army of any magnitude that army can never be formidable to the liberties of the people while there is a large body of citizens, little, if at all, inferior to them in discipline and the use of arms, who stand ready to defend their own rights and those of their fellow-citizens. This appears to me the only substitute that can be devised for a standing army, and the best possible security against it, if it should exist."

8) Hearing the Left object to armed guards being assigned to every school puts me in a twist.  They claim that doing so would be too expensive and that it wouldn’t actually increase security, both complaints of course being total hogwash.  (Chris Christie continues to dig himself deeper and deeper as he joins forces with the liberals.  If he thinks he’s ingratiating himself with ordinary Republicans, he’s out of his mind.) They’ve got to be kidding – we borrow $108.3 billion every month so we can send welfare checks to illegals but they draw the line at really securing our schools?  Second, have they not walked through an airport in the last eleven years?  Have they not noticed the armed guards patrolling the terminal with MP-5’s and dogs?  There’s a deterrence factor there. True, there was the JFK Airport plot in June 2007 and we’ve had thugs like Richard Reid and the Underwear Bomber on Christmas Day 2009 attempt to blow up airplanes, but overall, airport security has improved, not least because would-be terrorists can see the retribution right there on the scene waiting for them: They might want to die a martyr but being chewed by a dog and then riddled with submachine gun fire ain’t the way they want to go.  What about the shooting at the U.S. Capitol in 1998? Unfortunately, two Capitol Police officers were killed but they stopped a wacko from getting inside the building and killing even more people, and then there’s the shooting at the U.S. Holocaust Museum in 2009, where a private security guard was killed but stopped a lunatic from getting inside and doing the same thing.  (It so happened that a group of school children were touring the museum when the incident occurred.)  Armed guards have indeed prevented massacres like Sandy Hook, so why the opposition?

This all comes down to the Left having a fundamental philosophical objection to privately-owned firearms.  Rather than counter a potential threat with real, practical and effective means, they’d rather disarm everyone – everyone, that is, except the criminals. I mourn the children of Sandy Hook Elementary and I’m sorry that Adam Lanza isn’t alive to face our justice, but I’m not handing over my firearms just because Michael Bloomberg says so.  A government that fears its own people will seek to disarm them, and if our firearms are gone, with what are we left but tyranny?

Source: http://thomas.loc.gov/home/histdox/fed_29.html

The New Villeins

Besides savagely persecuting the Christians, Emperor Diocletian is known for decreeing that the peasant farmers who worked the land and grew the crops during his rule were legally tied to the manor – the villa rustica in Latin – or the noble who owned it.  This decree sought to remedy the decline in food production from peasants quitting the land en masse to escape disease, barbarian invasion or the aforesaid persecution, and like so many executive decisions, it had unintended consequences.  Forcing some peasant farmers to remain on the land seemed like a straightforward Roman way of fixing a problem (while ignoring the reasons why the farmers were fleeing in the first place) but it also created a new social class between freemen and slaves : the villeins.  Villeins were required to register themselves to a specific township and once registered, they could never leave it unless they were delivering a message or going to war, thus they were doomed to a lifetime of misery, filth and backbreaking labor.  Over the course of the next 1200 years, the term villain came to denote an ugly, dirty, foul-tempered scoundrel, and no wonder: With no relief from their wretched state, no hope, all their labor going to feed someone else, their only escape the sweet release of death, the villeins were only one step above the animals they tended and usually slept with.  In essence, they were slaves – serfs derives from the Latin servus, meaning slave.

As the year of our Lord 2012 comes to a close, His Serene Loftiness Barack Hussein Obama, Emperor of the Americas, Priest-King, Generalissimo and Supreme Leader of the People’s Revolution, seeks to return us to the glory days of fourth century Europe but with an interesting twist: The peasants become the lords and the lords become the peasants.  You see, socialist dogma demands that the industrial proletariat own the means of production and divide the wealth produced thereby equally, but that doesn’t mean that the proletariat can invent the means of production, secure the financing required to start it up, or take the risks and have the talent needed to keep it running – the proletariat just want to own the means and enjoy the profits as their medieval predecessors did. Conversely, the robber barons of the modern industrial age – meaning you and I – will be relegated to serfdom, chained to the estate in perpetuity, forced to plan and work and sacrifice so the proletariat can fatten themselves in their castles, so to speak.  We cannot change jobs, we cannot retrain into some other profession, we cannot retire, we certainly cannot leave.  We can only work ourselves to death for the comfort of others less able than ourselves.  We are the new villeins.

When Ronald Reagan left office in 1989, the top Federal income tax rate stood at 25%.  Twenty million jobs had been created, GDP averaged 4.1% annual growth, industrial production increased 28.5% and Federal revenue increased 28% in constant dollars during his administration, refuting the revisionist claim about depleting the Treasury.  (The problem, as always, was runaway spending, which increased over 35% in constant dollars over that period.  Although defense spending increased by over 50% during the period 1980-1989, the boogeyman frequently cited by Leftist politicians, it declined 15% during George H.W. Bush’s Presidency as the Cold War had been won and the so-called “peace dividend” appeared.  However, means-tested entitlement spending shot up 102% over the Reagan-Bush 41 administrations, not including Social Security and Medicare, and has been climbing ever since.)  In 2011, total Federal revenue was $2.3035 trillion, a staggering sum of money, but that staggering sum of money was dwarfed by $3.6031 trillion of Federal spending, a deficit of $1.2996 trillion or about $108.3 billion of new debt for every month of the year.  And as colossal as this level of debt may be, the real threat is the interest that is accumulating and must be paid.  The interest on the Federal debt represents about 3% of United States GDP and has been spiking during Priest-King’s administration.  With a stagnant economy (2.63% GDP growth or less) and high unemployment (7.7%, above 8% from January 2009-September 2012), there isn’t enough private wealth being generated to pay down the interest on the debt, let alone start paying down the debt itself, and since Priest-King continues to spend titanic amounts of money, there is the very real possibility that interest on the Federal debt will reach 12%, an unsustainable level, and trigger a U.S. Government default.  Priest-King would then blithely observe the disaster from his Presidential Library in Chicago, write his memoirs and blame George W. Bush for it all.

Socialism absolutely depends on a large group of talented, educated, hard-working people generating wealth so that wealth can be redistributed as the government sees fit.  If this group of industrious people should shrink or move away or die or do anything but grind away forever, then the whole scheme collapses into the dust.  (See Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece and a host of cities and towns in this country.  See California itself, where a bloated welfare system has attracted millions of low-wage, high-consumption illegals and driven 3.4 million more people out of the state than those who moved to California since 1990.) Subtract the incentive to work hard, subtract the profit motive, and human nature takes over.  Priest-King’s absolute refusal to throttle runaway entitlement spending represents the triumph of ideology over good sense, and it is the same triumph enjoyed by the Soviet commissars before their country disintegrated.  Yes, he’s upset that despite draconian taxes and stratospheric spending, the rich are still rich and the poor are still poor, he can’t admit that his approach, his political philosophy are failures, but if he cares one whit about the country le leads, he’ll make the compromises necessary to prevent the bankruptcy and depression that will surely come.  Is the only acceptable answer the permanent enslavement of ten percent of the population so the other ninety percent can cash their welfare checks?  If it is, and his answer fails, who will he enslave then?

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Villein_(feudal)

Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/moneybuilder/2011/09/30/2012-federal-income-tax-brackets-irs-tax-rates/

Source: http://www.usgovernmentrevenue.com/yearrev2011_0.html

Source: http://www.usgovernmentrevenue.com/debt_deficit_history

Source: http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2001/03/the-real-reagan-economic-record

 

Car Fever

After having lost the Presidency for the fourth time in the last six elections, after losing seats in the Senate and barely hanging onto a weakened majority in the House, the GOP is now under tremendous pressure to submit to Priest-King's demands for higher taxes and more spending in order to avoid the "fiscal cliff" looming on January 1. But before buying a car you don't want because a pushy salesman won't get out of your face, you walk away, and I would urge my Republican colleagues to do the same:

1) One of the core principles of conservatism is that taxes should be as low as possible. Low taxes allow the people to keep more of their own money and the people make better decisions with their money than government bureaucrats do. Low taxes put a brake on spending and thus the size and scope of government, and low taxes result in higher employment, higher GDP, a higher standard of living and higher government revenues, all good things. So given the top ten percent of wage earners already pay seventy percent of all Federal income taxes and given the economy is sputtering along at 1.7% GDP growth, we know that raising income taxes on anyone would be bad, so the GOP should not agree to anything that includes higher tax rates.

2) If the GOP caves and gives Priest-King the tax rate increase he wants, would that solve the problem? No, not even close. Raising the top individual income tax rate to 39.6% would result in about $80 billion in increased Federal revenue, or about enough to offset the Federal deficit for about three weeks, so for Priest-King, it's clearly not about the money but about the principle. (Note: Increasing income tax rates on the highest earners will also result in a decline in revenue after the first year, since those individuals and corporations will shift their assets elsewhere, a fact the Left never seems to learn.) Priest-King harbors a deep-seated animosity toward some of the wealthy (Warren Buffett, George Soros and other lefty tycoons get a pass), believing in his soul that they lied, cheated, defrauded and stole their way to wealth, so they must be punished. Their ill-gotten gains should be seized and redistributed to more deserving people, people who just happened to vote Democrat in the last election, and forcing the GOP to surrender on higher taxes will a) take the GOP's signature issue off the table for a generation or more; b) trigger a Republican civil war that will collapse the Party and thence resistance to his hard-Left agenda; and c) demonstrate his absolute political supremacy for his second term, during which he intends to complete the transformation of America into the grand socialist collective of his dreams. Republicans should resist higher taxes with their dying breath for these reasons alone.

3) Republicans will be viciously blamed no matter what happens, so if the legacy media will never love them, why agree to something they know is wrong? If the GOP agrees to higher taxes without major entitlement spending reform, they'll be blamed for exploding the deficit. If they agree to higher taxes and get major entitlement spending cuts in return, they'll be blamed for starving the poor and the elderly. If they cannot agree with Priest-King on anything and we go over the fiscal cliff, they'll be blamed for gutting the Defense Department (which Priest-King wants to do anyway but the blame for which he will gladly shift to the hapless Republicans), hundreds of thousands of new unemployed, the aforementioned starving poor and elderly and for higher taxes on the sainted middle class. So given they will be excoriated no matter what they do, how should the Republicans proceed? In my view, it comes down to answering this question: Do they act in their own self-interest or in the best interest of the country? If they're more concerned with their own political future, they'll make a hellish bargain with Priest-King that will bankrupt us all. (Bear in mind that Obamacare in its full horror will be implemented alongside any deal the GOP might make, including its own massive taxes.) However, if they act in the best interest of the country, they'll walk away from the negotiating table and let us go over the cliff. Sequestration would indeed take effect but simultaneous with cuts to the Democrats' precious social programs. The Bush tax cuts would expire for everyone, not just the top wage
earners, forcing those who currently pay very little or nothing for the welfare spending they consume to ante up. Priest-King's second term agenda would be upset, at least temporarily, costing him time and political capital, and perhaps the 2014 midterm elections - occurring as the full cost of Obamacare and his colossal deficits bite - would result in Shellacking Part II. Bottom line: No agreement is better than a bad agreement. You didn't want that car anyway.

Moocher Nation

"I will gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today."
J. Wellington Wimpy


I'm stunned, to state the obvious. Numb. The gravity of this defeat will take some time to register but
initially I feel disbelief. With an economy in shambles, soaring debt, 23 million people either unemployed or underemployed, a government that hasn't passed a budget in three years and borrows $4 billion a day, dead Americans in Benghazi, dead Mexicans and a dead Border Patrol agent because of Fast and Furious, Iraq and Afghanistan unraveling, Iran only months away from enough enriched uranium to make a nuclear weapon and the largest tax increase in American history looming on January 1, the American people deliberately choose more of the same. It's irrational.

Everything I predicted in 2008 has come true and we have no reason to doubt that our perilous situation will continue for another four years. Barack Obama is hell-bent on reshaping America into a Soviet collective in which fetuses may be killed inside and outside the womb, homosexuals are free to defile the institution of marriage, illegal immigrants enjoy benefits that American citizens are denied, college students can welch on their loans, the coal industry is killed, the prosperous are enslaved to the deadbeats and our enemies no longer fear us. Since so many millions of my fellow citizens are enraptured with this vision, my impulse is to say to Hell with them and to Hell with my country but then I think of my grandson and the country he'll have to face as he grows up and I can't do that. Not to him. So, slowly, I determine that continuing to fight for traditional conservative values -lower taxes, smaller government, free enterprise, individual freedom, a strong national defense, the right to life, traditional marriage - is the only thing to do, even if it means losing more elections. You can either go down fighting or you can surrender, and I spit on surrendering.

Mitt Romney was a good candidate. He raised tons of money, he hit Obama hard on the economy, he slapped him silly in the first debate, he tried to make the election a referendum on Obama's record and about big issues, and he lost. Paul Ryan would've made a terrific Vice President and he clearly articulated the fiscal danger we face. They had a great organization, they had the best Republicans in the country helping them, they left no stone unturned and they were rejected. Commentators who blame Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan are wrong and they're missing the point: The problem isn't with the candidates we supported, it's with our country.

Eighty years of social engineering have produced a population with their hands out. Losing four of the last six Presidential elections (and nearly a fifth - Bush/Gore in 2000) proves that. Taking charity from the government isn't as noble and rewarding as working for a living but it's sure easier. Aborting an innocent fetus is ugly and repugnant but it's easier than raising the child. Allowing homosexuals to ape marriage is abhorrent but it's easier than telling them no, you're a degenerate. Legalizing marijuana will rot our society but it's easier than fighting it. Spending money we don't have will bankrupt us but it's easier than standing up to the AARP. And in 2016, when everything has crashed and the full consequences of Obama's grand vision are plainly evident, the people will wonder how it happened, they'll blame the Republicans for the disaster, the media will glorify Obama's accomplishments and nothing will change. God help us.

Give Him Four More Years and He'll Finish Us Off

With the Democratic National Convention over and Priest-King having received the expected post-convention bounce, a number of Republican cassandras have given up hope that he can be defeated.  A torrent of polls indicate he has a substantial lead nationally and in various battleground states and the legacy news media (ABC, NBC’s various platforms, CBS, CNN, The New York Times, The Washington Post, etc.)  broadcast a steady message that he’s simply invulnerable, and an example would be George F. Will’s comments on ABC’s This Week, that if the Republican Party cannot beat an incumbent President with economic conditions as bad as they are, they should simply give up politics.  Mr. Will and his fellows simply cannot understand how so many normally intelligent Americans could favor a second term for His Serene Loftiness, given the awful mess he has created, but instead of wringing our hands, let’s try to explain this disconnect and then come up with ways to counter it:

• Some people who voted for Priest-King in 2008 still believe his message of hope and change even though Priest-King himself no longer mentions it.  This reveals a sort of blind loyalty, a desire to believe in a person’s rhetoric regardless of objective evidence that disproves it.  It’s the same kind of blind loyalty that the French gave to Napoleon, that the Russians gave to Lenin, that the Germans gave to Hitler, that the Cubans gave to Castro and that the People’s Church gave to Jim Jones.  Usually this sort of phenomenon is called a cult of personality and people caught up in it may be beyond convincing.

• Priest-King still enjoys a certain likeability.  People know that the economy is bad but they don’t blame him for it, as if he’s trying to right the ship but just hasn’t been able to do it yet.  They can’t imagine that he would lie to them or mislead them, or that he’s hugely incompetent, so they want to give him the benefit of the doubt.

• Bill Clinton, who was protected by the best mob lawyer in American history (Janet Reno), gave a great closing argument for his client at the DNC though it was his usual stemwinder.  People who liked Bill Clinton in the Nineties despite his lying, stealing and cheating take his word for it that Priest-King just needs more time.

• The parade of luminaries appearing at the Republican National Convention to the contrary, millions of minority voters simply cannot bring themselves to vote Republican.  Ninety percent of African-Americans or more will pull the lever for Priest-King on 06 November and no amount of empirical evidence will convince them otherwise.  Like Point #1, there is a certain percentage of these voters who represent a lost cause.

• The entitlement generation, which includes college students, seniors, the unions and welfare recipients, don’t want to see their benefits cut.  These are the people the Democrats have groomed for decades just for this purpose and underscore exactly why this trend has to be stopped.

I have recounted ad nauseum in this space the recessionary conditions that Priest-King faced in January 2009 and compared them to the even worse conditions faced by Ronald Reagan 28 years before, and over which he prevailed, so I think the first point that Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan can hammer home is that we can beat this, we’ve done it before.  Second, the debates give the Republican nominees an opportunity to confront Priest-King directly and make him defend himself: Go on offense and stay on offense.  Make him defend the stimulus bill, the bank bailout bill, QE1, QE2, QE3, 8% unemployment for his entire administration, 23 million people either unemployed or underemployed, the millions who have simply given up looking for a job, and $16 trillion in debt.  Make him defend a foreign policy that relinquishes American leadership for UN committees, that gives Russia and China a veto over our vital interests.  Third, drive home what we can expect if Priest-King is reelected, the agenda for a second term in which he would have perfect freedom to accomplish whatever he wanted, and watch people shudder:

The Supreme Court.  Antonin Scalia is 76 years old and is the longest-serving Justice, having been nominated in 1986.  Anthony Kennedy is also 76 years old and joined Justice Scalia on the Court in 1988.  Ruth Bader Ginsberg is 79 years old, has been serving since 1993 and is in declining health.  If Priest-King is reelected, there is the possibility that he could nominate replacements for up to three Justices, two of whom are Republicans.  This could transform the makeup of the Court from 5-4 in favor of the conservatives to 6-3 favoring the liberals, and since Chief Justice John Roberts has already demonstrated that he can be coerced into joining the liberals on the very biggest of cases (Obamacare), this could translate into an effective 7-2 liberal stranglehold over the highest court in the land, for which America would pay dearly:

Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin – This case, which the Court will hear this year, could decide the role of race-conscious admissions to the nation’s colleges and universities.  The Court could decide to continue a trend to deny well-qualified white students admission to the university of their choice in order to admit less-qualified minority students and promote ethnic diversity.

Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum – This case seeks to hold companies liable for human rights abuses committed with their products overseas.  If decided in favor of the plaintiff, this could paralyze trade.

Constitutionality of state laws refusing recognition of same-sex marriage

Constitutionality of the Federal Defense of Marriage Act

Federal recognition of same-sex marriage – The splintering of American society would accelerate like a rocket.  America turns its back on God.

Reinterpretation of the Second Amendment, denying individual citizens the right to own and carry firearms – This would overturn 225 years of American history and the Framers’ intent.  Rather than serving as a brake on authoritarian governments by giving the people the practical means of defending themselves, privately-owned firearms would be illegal because dictatorships fear their own people.

Doctor-prescribed euthanasia

Foreign policy. Priest-King’s halting, indecisive, lead-from-behind  strategy would have catastrophic consequences.  Since he agrees wholeheartedly with socialism and redistribution of wealth, Priest-King would encourage Germany to rescue its spendthrift neighbors in Europe even at the cost of its own economy.  Ultimately, the Eurozone itself will collapse since Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Ireland have deep-seated cultural differences with the Germans and they will refuse to adjust their national policies, instigating a new global recession.  Massive cuts in defense, either from sequestration or from Presidential fiat, would gut America’s ability to project power and protect its national interests, emboldening China in the Pacific and Russia in Europe.  Having announced our retreat from Afghanistan, the Taliban would undertake a powerful offensive to recapture the country in a fashion similar to North Vietnam’s conquest of South Vietnam in 1975.  Afghanistan would revert to being a terrorist safe haven and eleven years of sacrifice would be for nothing.  Minus substantive support from America, Israel would be forced to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities for its sheer national survival, triggering a war with militant Islam that would make the Global war On Terror look like a warmup.  God help us.

Domestic policy.  With the worry of reelection lifted, Priest-King could finish the work he started in 2009 to transform America into the socialist workers’ paradise of his dreams.  With or without approval from Congress whom he considers an unnecessary bother, he could decree unconditional amnesty for all illegal immigrants, creating a legal means for 21 million people to bleed the United States indefinitely for their own purposes.  We would see the full implementation of Obamacare with all its legal, medical and financial horrors coincident with the expiration of the Bush tax cuts, and as massive unemployment and inflation accelerated, a tide of bankruptcy would wash across state and local governments.  Desperate for any sort of cash, Obama could nationalize all privately-held retirement funds just as Argentina did in 2009 and suffer the same catastrophic consequences.  The $9.8 trillion or so held in pension funds in the United States would serve his immediate purposes but growth would be destroyed, confidence in the United States would disappear, and when there was no money to be had, the United States government would default on its debt and a new depression would ensue, more terrible than anyone can imagine.

The damage that could be done during a second Obama administration would be incalculable.  The United States would be returned to the year 1832, a large but poor and inconsequential country, economically, militarily and politically feeble, unable to support itself much less help its friends, and a bystander internationally.  Give Barack Obama four more years and he’ll not only finish his work: He’ll finish us off.

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/1696010.stm

A Tale of Two Cities

In Romneyopolis, the people are rejoicing.  They have plenty of money, they have two bright, articulate candidates with specific plans to address the issues of the day, the opponents’ worst attacks have largely failed and they have momentum.  Romneyopolis is growing in strength and numbers and the future looks bright.

In Obamaville, the sky is gray, the people are grim and agitated, they look like someone closed a door on their fingers.  They spend much more money than they take in, their candidates are tense, angry and frustrated, and one is a complete idiot; their plans for the future are the same plans that failed in the past, their vicious, petty attacks have cost them millions but gained very little ground, and they have the nature of a giant ship slowly settling in the water, engines dead and fuel tanks empty.  Obamaville was once a bustling, vibrant city full of hope and change but the hope has faded, the change that was promised is not the change that was delivered, and the people who live there are pessimistic: Those who haven’t fled already are thinking about fleeing.

This was not how the mayor of Obamaville envisioned things.  He bitterly criticized his predecessor’s administration and promised that under his gifted leadership, prosperity would return and be more fairly distributed, the city’s reputation with its neighbors would be restored, the merchants who brought the city to the brink of ruin would be tightly restrained and the poor would be lifted up.  However, after he was sworn into office, he borrowed huge sums of money to give to his friends and charged it to the city’s account, then kept doing so until the city’s credit rating suffered.  Now, as the city faces bankruptcy, he proposes more borrowing, more spending and heavier taxes on the city’s more prosperous citizens even though they already carry 70% of the burden; he castigates the merchants large and small in every speech at the same time he pleads for their support.  He insulted the city’s oldest and closest ally, failed in his negotiations with the city’s rivals and when faced with thorny problems his lofty intellect would seem well-disposed to handle, he hesitates, twisted with indecision, preferring to let others take the lead and the risk.  As the election draws near and his support withers, he curries favor with liberal women, spendthrift college students, people living and working in the city illegally, pensioners and his favored class, the poor, inflaming passions against the prosperous class and his opponent in an attempt to distract them from his dismal record.  And most pathetic, he continues to blame the city’s problems on his predecessor when that man has been three years retired from office.

Romneyopolis or Obamaville: Where would you rather live?

It's Been a Hell of a Last Ten Days

Wednesday, 15 August 2012:  Floyd Corkins walks into the headquarters of the Family Research Council in Washington.  Corkins, who had been working at the DC Center for the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community, is carrying a semiautomatic pistol, fifty rounds of ammunition and fifteen Chick-Fil-A sandwiches.  Without warning, he shoots a security guard in the arm as he tries to enter the premises and is then wrestled to the ground, shouting, “I don’t like your politics.”  While the guard, Leonardo Johnson, is hailed as a hero for preventing a massacre, the Southern Poverty Law Center, which labeled the Family Research Council a “hate group” in 2010 for its opposition to gay marriage and abortion, vigorously denies that its rhetoric encouraged Corkins to take such violent action.

Tuesday, 14 August 2012:  Speaking at a rally in Danville, Virginia, that included hundreds of African-Americans, Vice-President Joe Biden remarks that Mitt Romney wants to get rid of new Wall Street regulations Priest-King signed into law after the 2008 financial collapse. "Unchain Wall Street," Biden says mockingly, then follows up with, "They're going to put y'all back in chains," in a faux Southern accent.  The facts that Danville was the last capital of the Confederacy and that he just made a blatantly offensive reference to slavery seem lost on him.

Tuesday, 07 August 2012:  Priorities USA, a pro-Obama PAC, releases an attack ad featuring Joe Soptic, a worker laid-off at GST Steel, one of the companies that Bain Capital bought and reorganized.  In the ad, Soptic blames the death of his wife, who had been diagnosed with cancer, on the loss of his job and his health benefits and on Mitt Romney for closing the plant, essentially saying, “Mitt Romney killed my wife.”

The Obama campaign and the Left in general are coming unglued.  The closer they get to losing their grip on power, the more desperate, the more frantic their tactics become.  My wife and I went to Manassas last Saturday the 11th to see Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, whom Romney had introduced as his Vice-Presidential running mate only hours before at an event in Norfolk.  The crowd was electrified and Paul Ryan is absolutely fantastic, and I think the reality that Priest-King and his allies are being forced to confront the issues and actually have a debate is driving them insane.  Take the Joe Soptic ad.  First of all, companies fail all the time, people lose their jobs all the time, but the Left thinks that is simply unfair.  Companies should never fail and people should never lose their jobs, unless they’re Republicans, in which case, shut ‘em all down and let ‘em starve.  Mitt Romney left Bain Capital in 1999, two years before Bain bought GST Steel and reorganized it under bankruptcy, and it’s interesting to note that a) GST Steel’s bankruptcy was brought on by lavish union benefits that the company couldn’t sustain, the cost of which were passed on to the U.S. taxpayers;  b) Mr. Soptic refused a buyout from Bain Capital in 2001, then declined health coverage for his wife when he took a job as a school custodian after GST Steel closed; and c) Renae Soptic wasn’t diagnosed with cancer until 2006, when she was hospitalized for pneumonia and unfortunately passed away two weeks later.  So to tie it all together, Mr. Soptic blames Mitt Romney for his wife’s death when Romney didn’t run Bain Capital, for a cancer she didn’t have until five years later, and when he had at least two opportunities to help her.  With all due respect to the late Mrs. Soptic, her husband is a dumbass and the ad is a despicable piece of garbage.

Then we have Joe Biden.  Simply put, the man is a dolt.  What kind of knucklehead says something like, "They're going to put y'all back in chains," to a heavily black audience, in a fake Southern drawl?  What kind of jackass says something like that?  Nobody says that. If I said something like that, or Rush Limbaugh, or Sean Hannity, or any conservative you care to name, I’d be hanged and burned in effigy, peasants chasing me with pitchforks, and I’d have it coming.  Joe Biden says crude and stupid things because he’s a crude and stupid man.  He's a laughingstock, he's an embarrassment to his office and the sooner we get rid of that foolish old idiot, the better off we’ll be.

In Matthew 24:10, Jesus is sitting on the Mount of Olives with His disciples talking about the latter days and tells us, “And then shall many be offended, and shall betray one another, and hate one another.”  The Left takes offense at everything but especially at conservatives’ opposition to homosexual marriage, so it was just a matter of time before some Left-wing, gay-loving Christian-hater grabbed a gun.  It’s only logical: The Left demonizes conservative Christians relentlessly, pouring gasoline on the fire such that people on the ragged edge of sanity choose violence.  Praise God that Leonardo Johnson stood firm and prevented a bloodbath, but this incident is one more piece of evidence for my thesis – Priest-King is clawing at the air and on 06 November, will have a sudden stop.

http://faustasblog.com/2012/08/the-anti-romney-cancer-ad-steelworker-turned-down-coverage-and-a-buyout/

They Hate You

Friday, 08 June 2012, The White House

Priest-King: “The private sector is doing fine. Where we’re seeing weaknesses in our economy have to do with state and local governments.”

Sunday, 13 July 2012, Roanoke, Virginia

Priest-King: “If you’ve got a business – you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen…Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.”

Wednesday, 21 September 2011, Andover, Massachusetts

Elizabeth Warren: “I hear all this, you know, ‘Well, this is class warfare, this is whatever.’ No. There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own – nobody…Now look, you built a factory and turned it into something terrific, or a great idea – God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.”

Thursday, 18 September 2008, ABC’s Good Morning America

The Boob: “It’s time to be patriotic. Time to jump in, time to be part of the deal, time to help get America out of the rut.  And the way to do that is – they’re still going to be paying less taxes than they did under Reagan.”

Where do you start? With so much inane blather to choose from, how do you begin to address it? Like the unfortunate worker at a waste management plant sorting through the garbage for recyclables, we have to rummage through a pile of smelly refuse to find something we can use.

The overarching theme running through these foolish remarks – maybe we’ll start at the top and work our way down – is a seething resentment at the concept of individualism. Personal drive and commitment, motivation, sacrifice, risk-taking and keeping the rewards of those risks are bitterly despised but only for some people and not for all, since Steve Jobs, Warren Buffett, George Soros, Ted Turner, Michael Bloomberg, the Clintons and the Kennedys and the Obamas can make and keep as much of their fortunes as they like with perfect impunity because they’re liberal.  A conservative entrepreneur who wants to keep what he’s earned, who distrusts government bureaucrats and politicians to make good decisions with his tax dollars, who believes government should be restricted to its core functions and live within its means will face the brunt of liberal fury.  “How dare you think you succeeded on your own? How dare you deny that government is the engine of your prosperity? How dare you deprive your neighbors, who are just as smart and who work just as hard as you, of their just portion of your profits, you greedy, selfish right-wing bastard?” Or sentiments to that effect. There is a righteous indignation in Priest-King’s voice and Elizabeth Warren’s, though not so much in Joe Biden’s – I compare him to a North Korean propaganda poster, something too ridiculous to be taken seriously.  They fume at the notion that their model of prosperity (success is only possible as part of a group, regulated and controlled by a liberal-dominated government that manages everything, favors some people over others and that bestows some rights and withholds others) is not universally shared. They viciously attack individualism, they see it as a threat and a betrayal and try to crush it, try to stamp out the drive to excel because if some people cannot or choose not to achieve excellence, then no-one can.

A patriotic duty to pay higher taxes to a government $15 trillion in debt that is hopelessly inept at managing money is a patently stupid assertion, as is to assert that people get rich because of public roads.  Consider that according to the Small Business Administration, 565,000 new businesses are started in the United States every month and 90% of those businesses will fail within the first year.  Consider also that the top ten percent of wage earners paid 71% of all Federal income taxes in 2009, compared to the bottom fifty percent of wage earners who paid only 2%, such that if someone starts a business and succeeds against the odds, they will pay a heavy price for their success, their hard work and intelligence will be scorned and insulted by their elected leaders who will then demand even higher taxes from them, to be distributed as the politicians see fit.  Given such a hostile environment, it’s a wonder that anyone would open a business these days and clearly such hostility from the Left is hurting our economy.

“…paying less taxes than they did under Reagan.” When Ronald Reagan signed the 1986 Tax Reform Act, the top individual rate was lowered from 50% to 28%.  The rate has since risen to 35% and Priest-King wants to raise it to 39%, and double the capital gains tax rate from 15% to 30%.  Besides the punitive effects of raising taxes in a sluggish economy, Biden’s statement underscores for the umpteenth time that we have a total nincompoop for a Vice President.  Thirty-nine is more than 28 and thirty is more than fifteen and to state otherwise is to display an intellectual vacancy that insults us and his office. The people of Delaware owe the rest of us an apology.

Similarly, to deny the reality of class warfare and then wage it furiously is just dishonest.  Elizabeth Warren’s audience may have been brainwashed with Leftist dogma such that they didn’t notice or care what she said, but some of us listen carefully and can reason for ourselves.  How much is “a big hunk” and who gets to decide what we keep and what we must give up?  No, Cherokee squaw speak heap-big nonsense.

The Internet was developed for national security purposes and was the result of a wide-ranging effort that included not only government agencies like NASA and the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) but MIT, UCLA, Stanford Research Institute, the University of Utah and other university researchers.  It was not created by the Federal government solely and Priest-King knows that, but his instinct to take credit for the Federal government for everything blurs his judgment and drives him forward, and for us, it gives us insight into what he really thinks.  This man (and dopes like Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden) wants government to dominate our lives and that is absolutely antithetical to the Constitution and the intent of the men who wrote it.  He holds you in contempt, my friends, and frankly, I return the favor. His concern is not with the millions he’s thrown out of work but with the governments we support with his heavy taxes.  My fellow citizens, it’s time to rekindle hope and change and that means throwing this bum out in November, and all his sorry crew.

The Statesman

He was punked by Hugo Chavez at the Summit of the Americas.

The Chinese refused to support tougher sanctions against Iran and Syria and refused to allow greater Internet access and freedom of expression for their citizens.  They also undertook aggressive action to control the oil-rich Spratly Islands while we failed to support Japan and the Philippines, two key allies in his new Pacific strategy.

The Russians also refused to support stricter sanctions against Iran and Syria and insisted on the removal of missile defense radars in Poland and the Czech Republic, to which he readily agreed, exposing our NATO allies to political criticism and the very Russian missiles the radars were intended to deter.  He followed that up by confiding to then-President Medvedev (publicly, as it turned out) that he would be “more flexible” concerning nuclear arms cuts after the November election, confirming that he assumes an attitude of submissive inferiority to the Russians.

His overture to Iran “without preconditions” was a failure.  Iran not only refused to stop its nuclear program but increased the number of gas centrifuges required to enrich uranium to weapons grade.  Now Iran threatens to close the Strait of Hormuz in the face of international sanctions and he says nothing.

He refused to support the pro-democracy demonstrators in Teheran in 2009 when strong U.S. involvement could have led to the regime change he says he wants.  He was confused by the Arab spring of 2011, paralyzed with indecision by the choice in front of him: Do I support the demonstrators who are chanting for democracy but who are led by jihadists or do I stand with the Arab strongmen who jail and torture their political opponents?  Unable to answer his own question, he did and said nothing until France took the lead in bombing Libya and he suddenly found his courage, then lost it again when faced with Bashar Assad.

His answer to the financial crisis that threatens to bankrupt Europe is to raise taxes and spending in America.

He leaked national security information to the press (the double agent in Yemen, the Flame virus that has infected and disabled much of Iran’s information systems, the extent of the Predator strike program) in an attempt to raise his foreign policy prestige in an election year.

His answer to the bloodbath in Mexico was to allow Mexican drug traffickers to buy more American guns.

After his inauguration, he cancelled a joint press conference with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, presented him and his family with cheap gifts and removed a bust of Winston Churchill from the Oval Office.  He also criticized British colonial policy in Kenya (his grandfather was arrested during the Mau Mau uprising in 1953) and endorsed negotiations over the Falkland Islands which the British consider sovereign territory and over which they fought Argentina in 1982.  He then invited British Prime Minister David Cameron to a State Dinner at the White House when it was politically expedient.

He took eight months to approve a troop surge in Afghanistan, “the war we have to win” in his parlance, then sent fewer than were requested, then announced that we would retreat.

At a time when China and Russia are pursuing aggressive policies, when a war between Israel and Iran seems imminent and when we are still faced with global Islamic terror, he cuts the Defense Department by $500 billion.

He promised to close the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay and signed an Executive Order to that effect, then reneged.

His foreign policy is marked not by the bumbling naiveté of Jimmy Carter but by the tense frustration of an Ivy League professor whose meticulous theories begin to fail when put into practice, then consistently fail, then fail utterly; like an aficionado of chess who has studied the game for decades, studied and memorized the strategies of the great masters of the past and is sure he can beat any player in the world, but when playing the game for real, finds himself trapped and stares at the board unblinkingly, frozen by the certainty of defeat.  All his supposed brilliance and eloquence, all his gifts for diplomacy and nuance, his magnetic personality, have slammed into reality and fallen lifeless to the ground, and we are left to wonder, “Is this the best you got?”  America, the world’s lone superpower and the undisputed leader of the Free World for seventy years, is itself leaderless, a papier mache figure set in the White House for display, inanimate, idle, obsolete.  But can we do better than a well-dressed mannequin?  Can we regain the respect of our allies and enemies alike?  Can we demonstrate the firm resolve and powerful action that is our hallmark?  Yes, of course we can, if we simply put our minds to it.  Barack Obama has failed: It is time for him to step aside and let a steadier hand take the wheel.

Equality of Results

A trend has developed in recent years to award every participant in junior sports a trophy or ribbon regardless of their actual performance, the logic being that children’s self-esteem is fragile and must be protected from the ignominy of failure.  If little Johnny reports for every practice and every game with his uniform clean and pressed yet consistently strikes out, muffs ground balls and falls asleep in the outfield, he nonetheless receives a small trophy at the end of the season (to no small delight of his parents) because it is Johnny’s intentions that matter, not his performance, and because the adults want to shield him from the stigma of losing.  This practice, however well-intentioned, nonetheless defies reality and beyond that, creates a sense of entitlement in the little tykes that they will carry forward into later life.  They will expect to be rewarded no matter what they do and to receive the benefits of success without the sacrifice required to succeed, and when they are eventually disabused of such an expectation, they will be angry, bitter and resentful.  They may even turn violent, not at the deception to which they were victim but at the person, agency or government that refuses to play along because the addict doesn’t resent the drug that is ruining his life but the police who stop him from obtaining it.

This scenario is playing out in Greece, in Wisconsin and in the Occupy movement worldwide with thousands of angry, bitter and resentful people who have been promised lavish government benefits rioting in the streets, raging against the notion that the money has run out.  The governments of France and Greece have recently been turned out by these people, punished for daring to control the entitlements they crave and replaced by old-fashioned socialists who love spending money they do not have on programs they cannot afford.  This is the sad consequence of the Left’s overarching goal, equality of results for every human being and it is of course completely avoidable.

If little Johnny only gave it some thought (and the adults who inculcate his expectations), failure and success are inescapable realities of life.  Johnny’s favorite player, however talented and famous he may be, still commits errors in the field, gets caught stealing, strikes out with men on base and will never hit safely in even half his turns at-bat.  Johnny’s favorite team does not win every championship or even every game and Johnny would scoff at the suggestion they should be rewarded for losing.  Generals who lose battles receive no medals and defeated armies are not treated to ticker-tape parades.  Human beings naturally admire and reward success in whatever enterprise interests them, yet liberalism finds such instinct snobbish and elitist, stewing indignantly at the idea that the benefits of success should be reserved for those who actually earn them, as if winning itself were abhorrent.  Plaudits and perks should be distributed equally, liberals demand, because winners aren’t better than losers.  Of course, they demonstrably are, but liberals seek to right what they see is an outrageous wrong throughout human society.  To them, everyone must have the same amount and quality of education (busing, the subsidization of poorer districts by wealthier ones, grade inflation), the same model of automobile (Chevy Volts for everyone!), cell phone, iPad, washing machine and the same type of home to put it all in, the same quality of health care and retirement fund and the same income level and if the elitist “winners” balk at sharing their wealth to make all this happen, then the liberals just take it from them.  This is the approach that Europe has taken and it has led them to the edge of economic disaster, and as Europe strains against bankruptcy on a continental scale, Priest-King watches from across the Atlantic and blithely insists that it cannot happen here, though he undertook the same approach (and achieved the same results). 

Life isn’t fair but it is also predictable.  If a person undertakes a huge risk and succeeds, then that person reaps huge rewards.  If a person abhors risk, then that person reaps much smaller rewards.  Priest-King’s constituents squatting in Wall Street and elsewhere want to invert that function and reap huge rewards while accepting no risk, for instance, demanding that banks simply forgive their student loans after their college education is complete, thereby attaining the same station as someone who paid as they went.  This is the essence of Priest-King’s philosophy, that others should be forced to pay for his dreams and should be punished for outdistancing him, as if he were cheated, an odd position for someone who enjoyed the benefits of an Ivy League education and preferential treatment, and it is ridiculous.  America is great because everyone has the opportunity to go as far as their ability will take them, and trying to replace equal opportunity with equal results is doomed to fail.

Malum In Se

Sunday, 06 May: Joe Biden announces his support for gay marriage on Meet the Press.

Monday, 07 May: Education Secretary Arne Duncan announces his support for gay marriage.  White House Press Secretary Jay Carney states that Priest-King's position is still "evolving."

Tuesday, 08 May: North Carolina voters strongly approve a state ban on gay marriage.  This is an embarrassment for Priest-King given the Democrat National Convention will be held in Charlotte this year, so the White House calls ABC News and asks Robin Roberts to fly down to DC to interview Priest-King on Wednesday morning.

Wednesday, 09 May: Priest-King announces his support for gay marriage on national TV.  Doing so energizes the gay lobby and helps keep the defeat in North Carolina out of the news, as does a 11-page report in The Washington Post about Mitt Romney's alleged hazing of a possibly gay classmate in 1965.  The objections to this report, raised by the family of the now-deceased classmate, are given scant notice.

Thursday, 10 May: Priest-King attends a $40,000-a-plate fundraiser at George Clooney's house in Los Angeles where his support for gay marriage goes over very well with the liberal Hollywood elite.  Priest-King raises $5.6 million but the White House announces that $15 million was raised because that would make it the largest amount ever raised at a single event, even though that figure includes receipts going back weeks or even months.  Priest-King's message is that support for gay marriage is extremely popular and the bully Mitt Romney is out of touch with mainstream America.

It's all about the money, folks.  For anyone who believes the White House or George Stephanopoulos or Karl Rove that this was all an unplanned reaction to Joe Biden's remarks on Meet the Press, I have a bridge in Brooklyn I'd like to sell them.  Priest-King is a politician for whom image is everything (the speech in Berlin and his acceptance speech in Denver) and who cannot function without a teleprompter (his candid answer to Joe the Plumber got him in serious trouble, as did his live-mic comment to Russian President Medvedev regarding "flexibility" on NATO missile defenses after the general election).  Although he had publicly supported gay marriage as early as 1996, he had backtracked from that position in 2004 for political expediency's sake when he ran for the U.S. Senate in Illinois.  Gay marriage is a hot-button topic and nowhere near widely-accepted - the defeat in North Carolina was the 32d the gay lobby has suffered nationwide - so Priest-King used the gaffe-prone Vice President as his surrogate hoping to tip the scales in his favor without having to commit publicly himself.  If North Carolina rejected the measure, Priest-King would get something for nothing; if North Carolina approved the measure as they did, Obama could roll his eyes and claim that Biden was just being Biden and then weigh in himself: Having lost in the Tarheel State, there would be no point in delaying a public announcement any further.  Ordering a hit piece on Romney and collecting $5.6 million/$15 million from his Hollywood friends then turns a stinging defeat into a win and preserves his self-image as a modern, sensitive leader not only in tune with popular opinion but leading it.

Money is the lifeblood of politics as it is with so many things and Barack Obama has to have it.  He cannot raise the millions he needs by emphasizing the economy because that's a loser, what with unemployment above 8% for his entire Administration, growth crawling along at 1.7%, gasoline at $4 per gallon, a stimulus plan that failed, a bank bailout that failed, a green energy plan that failed, $15 trillion in debt and an Affordable Care Act that will cost at least twice as much as advertised.  So Obama picks cultural fights with conservatives, blares about a Republican "war on women," mandates that religious institutions provide insurance coverage for contraception, demands discounted student loans for his college-age constituents, and announces his support for gay marriage so he can appear as the champion of liberal causes and rake in the dough.

Beyond the crass political maneuvering, though, this episode demonstrates once again Priest-King's obssession with fundamentally restructuring America into a true socialist state.  He has already ordered the Justice Department to forego enforcement of the Defense of Marriage Act of 1996, a bald violation of his Constitutional responsibility to "take care that the laws be faithfully executed," and now he goes even further by openly avowing his support for homosexual marriage.  Understanding that younger, more liberal voters approve of gay marriage (like the college students to which he has been pandering recently), he would eventually order the DOJ to challenge state bans directly, hoping that in a second term, he would have enough votes on the Supreme Court to overturn them permanently and have public opinion behind him.  That, plus Obamacare, amnesty for illegal immigrants, cap-in-trade legislation and compulsory union membership would rebuild the United States into the country of his dreams, a Balkanized polyglot of socialist collectives where mediocrity overrides talent and depravity is celebrated, not scorned.

Yet there are millions of Americans who reject Priest-King's vision, who reject homosexual marriage in particular and homosexuality in general, who deny that marriage can be defined to suit whichever left-wing radical inhabits the White House, and who exercise their denial through the ballot box.  These Americans embrace the traditional definition of marriage, the Biblical definition of marriage, the true definition of marriage as a legal, physical and spiritual union of one man and one woman for life and who ardently oppose efforts to expand the definition to include anyone else.  For one thing, once marriage is redefined to include homosexuals, what guarantee do we have that it will not be redefined again?  Polygamists will demand recognition, and pedophiles, and people who want to marry their pets, and the gays will not be able to scoff at such notions as being immoral and ridiculous because the line was already moved for them and then society collapses.  Conservatives have fought abortion and pornography and taxpayer-funded contraception and legalized marijuana and gay marriage for forty years because these vices rot society and rotting things die, regardless of how wonderful Ellen DeGeneres or George Clooney or Barack Obama declare them to be, and anyone who sneers at that prediction should simply look at where we are.  American society is coarse, vulgar and degenerate, nowhere near healthy, moral and thriving, and as the Romans lost their empire after 500 years because of weakness and depravity, Americans may wake up one day and discover they've lost their country to a stronger people.  Anybody who welcomes this fate for the greatest, freest and noblest country the world has ever seen is nuts, and if Barack Obama himself stands in favor of it, then we should all stand against him.

The Smartest People in the Room

One of the fundamental failures of liberalism is the way liberal policies conflict with each other and nowhere is that conflict more apparent than when discussing energy.  Liberals worship the Earth as a god, they love clean, renewable energy like wind and solar and pond scum (Priest-King's latest favorite) because they want to avoid offending their god and there's a certain internal logic there, but it all falls apart when you start connecting one position to another.  Any third-grader will tell you that trying to force like magnetic poles together is an exercise in futility, but try telling that to a liberal: They can overcome Nature, don't you know.

For example, liberals love clean, inoffensive energy but they also say they want a prosperous economy, at least in the way they define prosperous:  Wealth is distributed equally from top to bottom, nobody has any more than anyone else and employment is concentrated in manufacturing and building trades, fields historically dominated by the Democrat Party but which also require abundant, reliable and relatively inexpensive sources of energy which from the Industrial Revolution onward have been drawn from oil and coal, the two greatest demons in the tree hugger's philosophy.  So the liberal attacks oil and coal, forbids drilling offshore in the Gulf of Mexico and the Alaska ANHWR (Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and former EPA Administrator Carol Browner were condemned by Federal courts in June and July 2012 for publishing a report that purposely distorted the views of a White House-appointed panel that opposed the Administration's moratorium on offshore drilling), forbids fracking that would extract more oil from existing wells (EPA Region VI Administrator Al Armendariz, in a speech in 2010, asserted that his enforcement policy toward oil and natural gas companies was comparable to the Romans' practice of crucifixion), stops construction of the Keystone pipeline (forcing the Canadians to sell their oil the Chinese, boosting their economy and not ours), imposes draconian fuel mileage standards on the automakers to kill production of the trucks, minivans and SUV's that Americans prefer, issues drastic clean air regulations designed to close coal-fired power plants that provide 40% of our electricity, presses for cap-in-trade legislation that would kill the coal industry entirely, and imposes stiff sales taxes on gasoline to discourage consumption (U.S. oil consumption has fallen over 1.6 million barrels per day from 2004-2010 but still not enough to satisfy the socialist one-worlders).  As if that were not enough, the liberals provide billions of dollars in Federal loan guarantees to the solar power industry, fully aware the American public has largely rejected solar power and that individual businesses are on shaky financial ground, then stand aside as Solyndra, Solar Trust and other companies go bankrupt.  They mandate the total replacement of incandescent light bulbs that have been the norm for over 125 years in favor of fluorescent bulbs that are more expensive and are the very devil to dispose of (the EPA recommends evacuating a room in which a CFL bulb breaks, airing it for 5-10 minutes, shutting off the home's central air system to avoid circulating poisoned air and removing any debris outside).  Still not finished, the liberals pour billions into electric cars, hoping that the love that the white, affluent, environmentally-conscious elite have for their toys transfers to the general public, then scratch their heads when the Chevy Volt, Fisker Tesla and Nissan Leaf either fail to sell or are so prone to mechanical failure that production is halted.  (The Tesla apparently turns into a "brick" if the battery drains, such that it must be returned to the factory for a total overhaul.)  The net effect is an economy that struggles to grow, deprived of the energy it needs, and the strangling of the very industries that the liberals claim to champion, and this paradox never occurs to the liberals nor to the unions who traditionally throw their support behind them, proof that liberal energy policies can never succeed because they literally cancel each other out.

What about gasoline prices?  Liberals always complain that the rising price of gasoline unfairly affects the poor and middle class and that the oil companies are gouging the public, but they never offer to reduce or eliminate the heavy taxes they attach to the sale of gasoline, or reduce the heavy regulations that throttle the construction of new refineries, or remove restrictions on new drilling, or do anything that would increase supply, lower demand and therefore prices.  Priest-King blocked the Keystone Pipeline that would have increased trade with a friendly country and reduced our dependency on Middle East oil while he flatly stated that "we can't simply drill our way out of this problem, " when in fact we could if he would only get out of the way.  In ten years' time, we would have tapped enough of our own reserves (and Canada's) that we could indeed reduce gasoline prices, create new jobs, boost our economy, cut our foreign oil imports and bolster our national security, but these benefits are all secondary to the desire to revert to a horse-drawn, agrarian, pre-industrial economy that would be at one with Nature and which, of course, would be completely inadequate to sustain a nation of 310 million people.

Source: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/09/15/despite-stimulus-funding-solyndra-and-4-other-companies-have-hit-rock-bottom/
Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/02/us-solartrust-bankruptcy-idUSBRE8310ZV20120402
Source: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/297070/epa-expands-its-mission-crucifixion-charles-c-w-cooke
Source: http://www.epa.gov/cfl/cflcleanup.html

If You Ain't Cheatin' You Ain't Tryin'

Attorney General Eric Holder’s recent comments about the supposed nonexistence of voter fraud in the United States and his opposition to voter ID laws in Texas and South Carolina are the latest proof that he is just another liberal hack and an embarrassment to his office, with apologies to Janet Reno. After refusing to prosecute the New Black Panther Party for voter intimidation in Philadelphia during the 2008 election, after calling America "a nation of cowards" for supposed reluctance to discuss racial issues, after instituting a policy at Department of Justice that there would be no investigations against minorities for civil rights violations in the Obama Administration, after announcing that Khalid Sheikh Muhammad and other Gitmo terrorists would be tried in New York City in civilian courts (and then renegeing after a groundswell of protest), and after overseeing Operation Fast and Furious, in which Mexican drug lords were allowed to purchase guns in the United States and take them to perpetrate murder, including the murder of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, and lying to Congress about his knowledge thereof, Mr. Holder now stubbornly refuses to approve voter identification laws passed by the Texas and South Carolina legislatures because they would unfairly impact minorities, the poor and the elderly, at least in his distorted view. Since the Voting Rights Act of 1965 requires that states in the Old South submit their election laws to the AG for review and approval in order to prevent Jim Crow-style voter suppression, Holder sees himself as a champion of the disadvantaged in this case, ensuring that every voter has the chance to cast their ballot.

…instead of ensuring that every legitimate voter has the chance to cast their ballot as these voter ID laws attempt to do. Free and fair elections lie at the heart of our democracy. The people have a right to expect that elections are conducted lawfully, that cheating, rigging and fraud are vigorously prosecuted, and that the results of every election are genuine. Since the presentation of photo ID is required throughout our society (I can’t check into a hotel without identifying myself) and since photo ID’s are free of charge to registered voters in the states in question, Mr. Holder has no reason for his obstinacy other than a desire to facilitate fraud such that the greatest number of liberal-leaning, pro-big government, entitlement program-consuming people reach the polls on Election Day, legal or not. And as for Holder’s comment that voter fraud in the U.S. is "nonexistent," a view echoed by The Washington Post, The Huffington Post, CNN and the George Soros-funded Brennan Center for Justice, that view is based on the deliberately misleading reference to the relatively low number of voter fraud convictions reported nationwide. It’s a vicious circle: Minus photo ID’s, voter fraud is easier to commit and harder to prove; the harder voter fraud is to prove, the fewer voter fraud convictions are obtained; the fewer voter fraud convictions are obtained, the greater the perception among liberals that voter fraud is "nonexistent." The fraud can continue, Democrats get elected and Republicans’ efforts to stop it are frustrated.

But voter fraud convictions are not the only indicator that voter fraud is actually occurring. Take for example last week’s incident during the Washington, DC city election in which an associate of James O’Keefe, the filmmaker who exposed ACORN’s voter fraud operations in 2008, approached a poll worker at Eric Holder’s own polling place and could’ve cast a ballot for the Attorney General without any identification (he didn’t). This incident has caused some embarrassment and anger on the Left, liberal commentators have simultaneously dismissed it as a harmless prank that proves nothing and attacked Mr. O’Keefe as a right-wing muckraker (“It’s no coincidence that these so-called examples of rampant voter fraud consistently turn out to be manufactured ones"), but the point is that committing voter fraud in the nation’s capital in the Attorney General’s name was ridiculously easy and nobody was arrested or charged, let alone convicted.

And what about ACORN? In 2009, the left-wing activist group was investigated for various forms of voter and election fraud in fifteen states during the 2008 general election that included the following:

- Nevada officials charged ACORN, its regional director and its Las Vegas field director with submitting thousands of fraudulent voter registration forms. Larry Lomax, the registrar of voters in Las Vegas, said he believes 48% of ACORN's forms "are clearly fraudulent."

- Prosecutors in Pittsburgh, Pa., also charged seven ACORN employees with filing hundreds of fraudulent voter registrations before the 2008 general election.

- Fred Voight, deputy election commissioner in Philadelphia, protested after ACORN (according to the registrar of voters and his own investigation) submitted at least 1,500 fraudulent registrations in 2008. "This has been going on for a number of years," he told CNN.

- Washington state prosecutors fined ACORN $25,000 after several employees were convicted of voter registration fraud in 2007. The group signed a consent decree with King County (Seattle), requiring it to beef up its oversight or face criminal prosecution.

In September 2009, Mr. O’Keefe and a female associate, posing as a pimp and a prostitute, videotaped employees at ACORN’s Brooklyn, New York, office helping them obtain public funding for a brothel to be staffed by underage girls who were also illegal immigrants. ACORN subsequently lost its Congressional funding – a fact that is by itself embarrassing – and was shut down, but apparently Mr. Holder doesn’t consider widespread and systematic voter fraud committed by one of Priest-King’s favorite groups (community organizer Obama started working with ACORN as early in 1992 and has sat on its Board of Directors) as actual fraud, a strange position for the nation’s top law enforcement officer to hold.

What if we go back further, to say, 2004? In 2008, the Milwaukee Police Department released a report of its 18-month investigation into voter fraud in the city in the 2004 general election and concluded that there had been an "illegal organized attempt to influence the outcome of an election in the state of Wisconsin." This organized attempt included the following examples:

- Twenty-nine voters were registered at a county office building that featured no residential living.

- Between 4600-5300 more ballots were cast than voters that could be accounted for.

- The ballots of 540 people who registered on-site and then voted (allowed under Wisconsin law) were not counted.

- Eighteen convicted felons were hired as elections inspectors, eight of whom had been hired by ACORN.

- Out-of-state people were allowed to vote (and their votes allowed to stand).

- One hundred twenty-eight voters used a homeless shelter as their address of record.

- Over 2600 students at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee who were registered to vote in Milwaukee, living at one residence hall, were also eligible to vote in another jurisdiction.

- Dead people voted, people voted multiple times and addresses used to register to vote did not exist.

Given that John Kerry won Wisconsin by a grand total of 11,000 votes out of 2.9 million cast, I think it would be reasonable to conclude that the full-court press put on in the City of Milwaukee put him over the top, hardly a "nonexistent" example of voter fraud.

Same-day registration on Election Day facilitates voter fraud and the lack of photo ID makes it worse. That Eric Holder embraces the former and opposes the latter is a stark indicator that he’ll do anything to help his boss win: After all, if you’re not willing to cheat, you must not want it bad enough.

Source: http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/295431/why-we-need-voter-id-laws-now-john-fund
Source: http://blog.heritage.org/2008/09/15/voter-fraud-puts-ohio-election-at-risk/?query=Voter+Fraud+Puts+Ohio+Election+at+Risk
Source: http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entries/doj-official-calls-okeefe-voter-id-stunt-manufactured

Source: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/285771/if-fraudulent-vote-falls-woods-christian-schneider
Source: http://media2.620wtmj.com/breakingnews/ElectionResults_2004_VoterFraudInvestigation_MPD-SIU-A2474926.pdf
Source: http://www.heritage.org/research/commentary/2010/04/voter-intimidation-black-panther-style?query=Voter+Intimidation+New+Black+Panther+Style