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/