Moral Apathy and the Decline of the Nation

People who know that I am a conservative would probably think I’m celebrating all the bad press the Obama administration is finally getting this week. The long delayed look at the Benghazi terrorist attack and the huge IRS scandal are actually dominating the news right now. I doubt they would if the Feds hadn’t seized Associated Press phone records in an apparent fishing expedition for whistle blowers. No, none of this is happy news or even surprising.

Instead it feels like a continuation of the slow fall of the United States into a completely corrupt government like all before it. This is the death of the dream established by the founders of the nation, so it isn’t a cause for celebration. Frankly, I only see it as a symptom of what’s going on with the American people themselves.

Time’s Up, America

With the re-election of Barack Obama to the presidency, there is no chance of turning things around. My analysis of the race turned out to be wrong due to two factors: thinking the 2010 elections indicated a change in the electorate and believing the Democratic Party affiliation sample was overstated dramatically. Well, 2010 appears to have been a temper tantrum rather than a real desire to change course and this is no longer a center-right country, but a left wing nation. Blame will be put on Romney’s campaign, but the reality is that we really are a +6 Democrat country despite what Gallup said.

The gains by the Democrats in the House and Senate show that nationally and the Minnesota state legislature has switched back to the DFL. So much for Minnesota being in play, not to mention many other states so listed. Pot legalization passed in Colorado and Washington, while gay marriage did in Maine. The left now own the country and will continue to do so until the country fails.

The media claim there is no mandate for Obama with this close an election, but I disagree. You will be seeing a lot of executive orders bypassing Congress in the future, for humility is not a trait the President has in any quantity. So, yes, he has a mandate.

In the end, we always end up with the President we deserve as a nation, not what we as individuals may deserve. Things are going to go very badly from here on out, though it was probably unavoidable no matter the outcome of the election.

With that in mind, I call upon all who read this post to come unto Christ, for it is only through him that we can be saved – not by any mortal politician.

Locally, Greg Davids and Jeremy Miller both won with 58% of the vote in a district that went DFL for everything else. Both amendments failed easily as did Quist and Bills.

For me, this is most likely the last hurrah in national and international affairs, since I feel a deep need to get my personal house in order. I’ve been a news junkie for all my adult life and it is time for that to change. Having fought the good fight, I am content with what I have done. Time to focus on the things in my life I can control.

Why I Am Voting for Mitt Romney

Earlier this year, I would have told you that I was voting against Barack Obama because I didn’t expect to have a candidate I could vote for.

Four years ago, America faced a choice that would decide whether the country would continue on or embrace change while in the middle of a crisis. When the latter was decided on, many voters assumed that change for change’s sake was a great thing. However, many did not understand anything about Obama because much of his past was buried deeply by the main stream news media. As a result, change did come and things got far worse.

Change for change’s sake is a teenager’s concept of improving life. The results of four years of President Barack Obama has resulted in things listed in this post by anonymous blogger Zombie. Please read them since they include a great deal that you will never hear from the national media.

The Media Used to Love Presidential Scandals

Until Obama was elected, that is. One of the uglier cover ups in U.S. history has been playing out since September 11 of this year. The 9/11 anniversary attack on our consulate in Benghazi, Libya gets more upsetting with every new bit of information that comes out. Ostensibly caused by an anti-Muhammad film on YouTube, that story has been torn to shreds and now looks like it was put in place to protect the failure of the administration to protect our ambassador.

But it is worse than that, we now know. The attack was known to be a terrorist attack and we had special forces who could have intervened and saved Ambassador Stevens. They were ordered to stand down even when they had the enemy in their sights. Repeated requests for support and help were turned down.

In the past, this would be enough for the mainstream media to raise hell until heads rolled. Now they are actively participating in the cover up, with Candy Crowley in the second presidential debate being a prime example.

We have a government that can’t be trusted. We also have a news media that can’t be trusted. That’s a bleak place to be in and doesn’t bode well for the country.

Yet what sticks in my head is the realization that this administration has no desire to protect its citizens or soldiers. Assassination lists are fine with them, but actually protecting the people? I thought they could at least be relied on for that. Sadly, I don’t think they care one whit and only care about their political careers.

This should be bigger than Watergate, bigger than Iran-Contra, and bigger than Monica Lewinsky. I guess American lives don’t have any value anymore.

Third and Last 2012 Presidential Debate

Foreign policy is the subject of the last and probably least watched debate. On the anecdotal side, multiple people I know will not be watching this one who did watch the preceding debates. Make of that what you will.

Both candidates seemed a bit off at the very beginning. Lots of verbal stumbling and stuttering going on shows how the debates have worn them down.

President Obama was a jerk early and made things personal during the Libya question. Hitting Romney on saying Russia was the biggest geopolitical threat was predictable. Mitt was prepared for that and gave a very strong response. Obama said “clear” which is always a telltale he is about to fib big time. Seriously, he always does that.

It looks like his gambit will be to try to put words in Romney’s mouth, just like the previous debates and entire campaign. It must gall him that Mitt stands up for himself.

2012 Presidential Debate #1

Not much to say after watching the whole thing, other than that was the most one sided drubbing I have ever witnessed in a debate or forum at any political level. Romney utterly destroyed Obama who was reduced to a rambling, stuttering, and dissembling mess. It reminds me of the Hulk vs. Loki, it was that extreme.

Now I understand why the White House was downplaying expectations. Wow.

UPDATED: Had to correct the mistyped title, I was actually getting hits from other people fumble fingering searches – so at least I’m not alone!

Odds and Ends 9-15-2012

It baffles me that certain movies are not out on Blu-ray or took many years to get issued, such as Lawrence of Arabia. Having obtained a minty used copy of the special edition DVD set of The Right Stuff and watching it last night, I can’t understand why there is no Blu-ray of it. It is a stupendously beautiful looking and sounding movie that deserves the full high definition treatment. It also is the shortest over three hour movie I have ever watched. By watched, I mean repeatedly over the years.

While I like my Iview Cypad 7” Android based tablet, I do need more horsepower. The Google Nexus was a disappointment in my view, since it has no HDMI out or memory card slot. The new Kindle Fire HD 7” looks terrific, but still lacks the slot and leaves you tied to Amazon’s proprietary store. Even with that, it is the current top candidate for a replacement. Ainol, a Chinese manufacturer, has a new tablet, the Novo 7 Fire, that has everything I want, but there are some early technical problems involving overheating. Its specs beat both the Nexus and Fire HD, so if they work out the difficulties, that is the one I would like to get.

After many years, Black Mesa rolled out yesterday. Black Mesa is a mod for the Source engine that recreates much of the original Half Life with all the bells and whistles of newer technology. I did a short run as far as the highly annoying jumping the crates level and have to say the wait was worth it. The attention to detail is simply amazing and the voice acting isn’t bad at all. There is a possibility they may do the Xen levels later, but hardly anybody liked those. I can’t wait to get into the fire fights and see how they are executed.

Dueling Banjos

Sometimes it seems like politics is all about who shouts the loudest, but the reality is that the winner is often the one allowed to shout the longest. There is a limit to how effective such tactics can be and woe be onto the ones who try to base strategy on it. Here in Minnesota, Governor Dayton found out that lesson the hard way with a state shutdown calculated to catapult the DFL into retaking the state houses in 2012.

Instead of getting widespread support from the public, he got an earful from the proles in a tour the last week. It is no surprise even union members wanted a deal done and the budget passed now. Why?  Most union members are public employees these days, that’s why. They were the ones suffering the most. While a cutoff of beer to Minnesota may have been a factor, this is what most likely caused Dayton to blink.

Now there will be a passing of the last negotiated budget, which is still the largest increase in state history. A victory, but how much of one?

Meanwhile, President Obama continues to demagogue the debt ceiling and threaten the disabled, seniors, and military veterans with cutting off their August checks. Will he blink or is he bluffing? If he isn’t bluffing, the country will begin tearing apart very quickly. Take advantage of every crisis is the motto of this administration, but there is that pesky 2012 presidential election coming up. So who knows what will happen?

But I’d like somebody to ask the President if he’ll keep paying federal employees while he’s starving the elderly and disabled. Not very likely to be asked, is it?

I don’t think the disconnect between the ruling political class and the masses has ever been bigger. With the political class isolated from the day to day reality that the average citizen experience, they have no way of understanding what is at stake. A complicit and equally distant media aren’t helping when they should be bridging the gap. That’s a disaster.

Then there are Europe’s economic analysts, mad at the GOP because they want the debt limit raised in order for countries to buy more U.S. debt. They insist the issue of default be kicked down the road while acknowledging it is a problem. Why is that so important to them?  They want a safe haven for money to move to and apparently have no real faith in the European Union despite what they say publicly. In other words, the political class there wants someplace to stash money before the Euro collapses. Talk about a twisted mess!

It is little wonder that the people are losing faith in government and trust no one. That’s the biggest danger to maintaining order there is. The political class appears to be oblivious to this, especially on the Left. People compare Obama to Carter or Hoover, but perhaps we should be thinking about Nero.

Bad Moon Rising

There are those who actually believe we emerged out of the recession and are worried we are going into another. Well, we aren’t. We never got out of the first one and it isn’t a recession, but the early stages of another Great Depression. While we have more social safety nets in place, they aren’t going to last very long at this rate.

One myth on the Left is that Social Security is a “lockbox” and all the funds are safe there to pay it out. If that were true, how could President Obama threaten to not send checks out next month? Note that this is a threat in political speak and his verbal tones suggest he was eager to issue it.  While it is a despicable thing to do, it does unmask the fallacy of the lockbox.  Another Democrat President ended that isolation of Social Security funds from the general fund back in the 1960’s – Lyndon Baines Johnson. They are now controlled at the whim of our government and are not guaranteed.

But the most interesting thing about this is that there will be money to spend on Social Security and other needed things even if we can’t borrow money. It means drastic cuts elsewhere, but that is at the discretion of the Treasury. Which means it is at the discretion of the President. In other words, Obama is threatening to cut off benefits for political gain in the 2012 elections. Some servant of the people he is.

Being on Social Security Disability, this hits me directly. Loss of Social Security means no food, no shelter, no Internet, and the loss of everything I have.  I can’t say I’m surprised how cavalier the President is about the people who will be affected as he is part of the Chicago Machine which is all about thuggery. The willingness to hurt the elderly and disabled just to damage the Republicans shows the quality of Obama’s character.

Sadly, that is only the beginning of our problems. The debt ceiling will mean nothing in the near future because an economic catastrophe has already begun across the globe. Large things tend to be slow moving and people don’t notice the changes until they hit critical mass. And much like an avalanche, they can’t be avoided.

The jobs report for June in the United States is an unmitigated disaster. 18,000 jobs were purportedly created when we need 150,000 new jobs created each month just to match population growth. Notice I used the word “purportedly.” At The NY Post it is revealed that 131,000 jobs were estimated out of thin air to pad the number upwards. In the United Kingdom, their latest report on employment isn’t quite as grim, but it isn’t good.

Meanwhile, the PIIGS crisis in the European Union continues unabated. Ireland just got relegated to junk bond status and Greece continues to be a bottomless sink hole despite hundreds of billions of Euros dumped into it. I don’t even want to discuss the problems China is having with inflation and bad loans. Two ballyhooed stimulus packages have failed to do anything positive at all and now they are talking about another one, QE3. Throwing money that doesn’t exist at something caused by spending money that doesn’t exist is not a sign of intelligent or even sapient behavior.

What will the second Great Depression look like? That’s hard to tell, since there has been so much wealth generated worldwide since the end of World War II. As mentioned before, there are safety nets in place that weren’t previously in developed countries. But there has never been so much debt in place as we have today. It will hit slower than in the 1920’s and 30’s and it has already begun.

We have much more to lose, so the possibility of it being more dramatic and catastrophic increases due to the simple fact the masses aren’t acquainted with real hardship anymore. What happens when food supplies become permanently disrupted? What happens when fuel is too expensive to allow easy migration to better places? What happens when electricity becomes unreliable with rolling blackouts the norm? What happens when groups begin hoarding resources? Those are all questions the world is going to have to face very soon.

Here in the U.S., we have a cultural divide that is now unbridgeable. The Left have gone so far away from common ground with the middle and right that the political frictions we see now are going to look quaint by comparison when the real crisis hits fully.  Though the truth is the middle will do whatever the group in charge tells them to do, so really they don’t matter. It is a sad thing, but the result of apathy/fence sitting is the loss of any real say in things.

My prediction is greater division and rising violence, both of which have already begun. Frustrations will continue to grow and the political class will continue to play games as long as they are comfortable. By the time anything will be attempted seriously, it will be too late.

So where does that leave the little guy? Up a creek without a paddle in most cases.

All we can do is prepare ourselves for the worst outcome and pray for the best. Storing food for more than threes days of supplies is a beginning. Having the ability to protect yourself wherever you are means exercising your 2nd Amendment rights here in the States, no matter how you feel about firearms. Most of all, you need to be spiritually prepared.

In God you can trust, but not man. I wish people would remember that whenever the latest demagogue of any political persuasion shows up.

Maybe now Trump and the Birthers Will Go Away

 

Obama’s long form birth certificate has finally been released and you can download it here.

One of the red herrings that has had conspiracy theorists going nuts has been the lack of a full birth certificate being released.  Foolish dreams of President Biden and a public spectacle of a resigning president have just gone up in smoke. This whole issue has been ridiculous to me from the beginning, since a local newspaper had his birth recorded at the time.

Hopefully, Donald Trump’s ego and celebrity driven candidacy can go up in smoke as well.  He’s no conservative and a constant failure at business, which is precisely what we don’t need.  The only thing he’s been good at is promoting himself and trading in wives for younger models as they get older. That’s cold reality there, much like Obama being a natural born citizen.

Why did the White House wait so long to release it?  Mainly to avoid other records being released as the President made it clear to the media his family was off limits to them.  The suspicion that his grades weren’t great is a valid one given his performance in office so far. But it is his wife’s dealings and family’s dealings in Chicago corruption that are the real issue, in my opinion.  It also has been a great distraction from dealing with the real issues with his presidency and split independents from the Republican party.

In the meantime, the “birther” movement has made themselves look like idiots and that has been to the benefit of President Obama for some time.  With the latest polls showing an increase in people believing he isn’t a citizen and Trump unofficially launching a candidacy, something had to be done to reign it back in. 

By the 2008 election, we entered an era where people can’t tell what the differences between truth, lies, and speculation are. Now demagogues from all facets of the political spectrum are running rampant and things are becoming nuts as a result.  Time to stop being so emotional people!  Coldly focus on what needs to be done or there will be no hope of fixing anything.

What a sad joke our country is becoming.

Odds and Ends

Will be working on a post about the Tea Party in Winona last week and about the Republican Congressional District 1 endorsement convention this past Saturday to put up this week.

In the meantime, a few items that caught my eye the last two weeks:

A follow up on the couple beaten in New Orleans last week by leftwing protesters.  The Palin pin part of it has been debunked, but it is very clear this was a politically motivated attack. The mainstream media shows that they are well beyond simple bias by ignoring this one.  If conservative protesters had done this to a pair of Democrats it would be the overkill story for weeks.

Dr. Helen aka the Instawife has an interesting piece up about how psychologists are moving to social activism in their therapy.  This is damning stuff and worth checking out. The desire to control other’s lives is getting to be the hallmark of the left.

Speaking of controlling people, the FDA is going to start regulating salt in prepared foods.  This serves two goals:  controlling the population even in the most miniscule way and to inflate the number of government employees (they’ll need to hire more to administrate this, of course). Idiocy. Look for more of this under the guise of lowering the government’s cost of providing healthcare.

There is no way ObamaCare can be funded, it is simply impossible.  But the Democrats will keep trying and one way they want to raise taxes is by adding a VAT (Value Added Tax). That hasn’t worked out so well for the Europeans and is yet another way to retard the growth of an economy.  In our case, it would kill it dead. Best quote:

In 2008, the average resident of West Virginia, one of the poorest American states, had an income $2,000 a year higher than the average resident of the European Union, according to economist Mark Perry of the University of Michigan, Flint.

Oh yeah, we really need to emulate those Europeans.

Denial of reality seems to be a big part of leftwing big government.  Over in California they are doing their best to be like Europe and ignore the financial catastrophe they are in.  Entertainment comes first but the piper will have to be paid eventually.

Meanwhile, that unpronounceable volcano in Iceland is still hampering flying and a bigger eruption is possible.  But just how unsafe was it to fly?  Turns out that the grounding was based exclusively on computer models and nary a single weather balloon was sent up to get real data. The religion of computer models has already given us the fraud of man made global warming and now this is going on. Once again reality is being ignored in favor of theory.  I’m afraid science is dead.

The relationship between Israel and the United States is on life support as well.  The hostility of Obama and his cronies toward the Israelis  has been palpable of late and has generated a great deal of concern. I’ve been warning people he is slowly building a case for armed conflict with Israel and been greeted with dismissal.  Better look again, as this refusal by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to rule out shooting down Israeli planes crossing Iraqi airspace to hit Iran. The ghost of Jeremiah Wright is alive and well in the Obama administration.

The Great Divider

For some time I have considered Obama to be “The Great Divider,” especially in regard to racial issues.  The Democrats have been inflaming things by making false accusations of racism and violence by Tea Partiers.  Be sure to read all the links in those posts.

These accusations are flat out lies designed to smear average Americans who don’t want to see the country turn into a socialist state or dictatorship.  Claiming a rock was thrown through a Democrat office window when the said office is on the 30th floor of a building is probably the most ludicrous of the lies.

The end result of this is that there can be no coming together, no bipartisanship, and no reconciliation (not the Senate maneuver) between the right and left in America.  It simply isn’t possible when the left plays these games and if you think things are polarized know you have no clue.  Unless Republicans take back Congress and repeal ObamaCare, I predict a civil war by no later than 2015.   We now have irreconcilable differences and a president who has no interest in building bridges or listening to the people. 

The irony of the smear tactics being used by Obama and his enablers in Congress is that they may breed that which they are lying about.  Not only are they genuinely angering conservatives and libertarians with their lies, those lies are believed by people on the left who have no clue what is really going on.  With the real tendency toward violence on the left, I will not be surprised if we start seeing violent acts against Tea Partiers.  Oh wait, we’ve already seen that with the SEIU thugs.

I think the Democrats have forgotten the important fact that every government must be afraid of the people because that’s where the real power lies.  Instead, they insist on imposing their elitist socialist views on an unhappy populace.  By fomenting anger with lies the leftists think they can control things. They will reap the whirlwind if they keep on this path and I had hoped I wouldn’t be around to see the day when the country was torn apart. Sadly, that is looking very unlikely now.

This is why it will be critical to throw the Democrats out of office in November.  If the House and Senate aren’t taken away from them, ObamaCare will be the least of our worries.  A civil war is not something to want or desire.  It makes me think of Theoden’s speech to Gandalf in the movie LoTR: The Two Towers:

“Simbelmyne. Ever has it grown on the tombs of my forebearers.  Now it shall cover the grave of my son. Alas that these evil days should be mine. The young perish and the old linger. That I should live......to see the last days of my house.”

We need to take action now to undue the damage being done. The voters need to send a clear message in November.

If You Think U.S. Politics Are Bad…

 

Coming off the rather lame healthcare summit that was done for political cover, most of the coverage has dealt with the testy exchange between President Obama and Senator McCain. That was nothing compared to what goes on in other countries.  Check out this withering verbal assault on the President of the European Union.

 

At first it seems like a Monty Python skit, but then the tempers really begin to flare. It makes our politicians look good by comparison doesn’t it?

Back to the summit – I think that was a clear win for the Republicans as the Democrats only had pity inducing stories for ammunition.  The GOP came ready and had their A gamers at the top of their form. Obama did not help things as he gave the Democrats twice as much time to speak than the Republicans.  Then he gave himself more time that either!  If they think this will swing the public over to supporting reconciliation they are sorely mistaken.

 

del.icio.us Tags: Obamacare,summit,Nigel Farage,Obama,McCain,politics

State of Disunion Speech

Well, that was a dismal performance last night.  Watching the talking heads on PBS try to spin the State of the Union speech being a great performance was to view an exercise in futility, as even Mark Shields admitted the speech wasn’t one that would be remembered in history.  I didn’t catch the entire thing but what I saw was a vintage Obama campaign speech.  That means it was devoid of substance, filled with lies, and highly partisan.

The AP put out a fact check that took the President to task on multiple statements and promises he made during the speech last night.  All are valid points and I’d like to add the one that managed to really anger me:  the claim to have supported the protesters in Iran.  Those of us who have followed the protests there have been frustrated with Obama’s refusal to support them and weak criticisms of the ruling dictatorship he wants to negotiate with so badly.

Despite the voters in Massachusetts rejecting Obamacare in shocking fashion earlier this month, the President showed himself to be no Bill Clinton.  There was no attempt to triangulate, or at least no intelligent one, by moving away from health care “reform.” Instead, Obama showed himself to be utterly committed to passing that corrupt bill no matter the cost.  Nobody is buying that it will lower costs, Champ.

Of course, he whined constantly about inheriting all the problems and this shows the Democrats inability to do anything other than “blame Bush.” That isn’t going to work anymore and will be completely without effect by the elections in November.

Another thing jumped out at me was when he announced the spending freeze and that it wouldn’t hurt people today because it would be implemented next year when the economy was better.  No applause when he made his typical “stop for the adulation pause” and scattered laughter followed.  Mr. Cool lost his cool and glared at Congress and ended up evoking more laughter.

Empty promises are the medium politician work with, but this one was such a whopper that even a chamber full of pols couldn’t believe it.  Obama believes everyone is so stupid that they’ll buy into the ridiculous concept of making an emergency cut in funding after it is no longer needed!  That way it won’t hurt!

Oh, please.

More people are waking up to the fact that President Obama is a con man who doesn’t really care about the people of this country.  If he keeps throwing out farcical pronouncements like the spending freeze, his only supporters will be the diehards in the Democratic Party.  It is already getting dangerously close to that as recent special elections have shown. By the time November rolls around, the Democrats in Congress will be in dire shape.

But we are stuck with this fraud in the White House for another three years and he will do a great deal of damage through the bureaucracy.  Barack Obama is simply the wrong man at the worst possible time to helm America.

 

ADDENDUM

I forgot to mention the direct attack on the Supreme Court that was made to their faces.  That was not a Presidential action and showed just what a demagogue Obama really is. Trying to cajole Congress into writing what would be another unconstitutional law to override the SCOTUS decision freedom of speech shows what disdain the so-called Constitutional scholar has for the Bill of Rights.  It also made clear how little value he has for the separation of powers across the three branches of government.

Barack is not a class act.

Brown Wins Senate Race in Massachusetts

All the networks are calling it for Brown with 70% of the precincts reported in.  He won convincingly, 53% to 46% for Coakley and it will be interesting to see if the percentage holds up.  Given the voter fraud that gives Democrats around 5% extra in the race, this was a very solid win.

Good news for now and we’ll have to wait and see if this kills Obamacare.  I suspect it will as Democrats up for re-election this year will be very scared after this debacle.  The last minute campaigning by President Obama did nothing to stem the populist tide and may have hurt things.

November is looking good for the Republican Party.

The Fort Hood Shootings

UPDATED: 

Hasan may be linked to the 9/11 hijackers.  The Telegraph has more on his connections including worshiping at the same mosque in Virginia at the time they attended. Simply incredible that he was kept in the military. Once again, why do I find these things in foreign papers first?


Now that it is days later, we have a more complete picture of what happened.  The shooter is a devout Muslim psychiatrist that was under suspicion of posting pro-jihadi statements online six months ago.  Major Nidal Malik Hasan was about to be deployed to Iraq Afghanistan and had gotten bad reviews in his evaluations.  Hasan is American born of Palestinian parents and believed the war on terror was a war against Muslims.  He refused to have his picture taken with women. He was devout, attended a mosque – yet claimed no religion or preference in his military records. He shouted “Allahu Akbar!” before firing two handguns into a crowded room. We also know he gave away many of his belongings, something that a jihadist does before preparing for martyrdom.

So the media is spinning it as some kind of combat stress by proxy, since he has never served overseas. The media concern is over how Muslims will be treated over this, more so than the plight of the real victims.  Funny how we are always being accused of persecuting Muslims when something like this happens.  This suggest we behave otherwise, hat tip to Instapundit. *sigh* Reality has become optional in today’s age.
I’m wondering if this is a watershed moment, where it becomes very clear there are two America’s: one bent on political correctness unto insanity and the other that see’s what is really going on but feels completely muzzled by the former.

It isn’t like this is an isolated incident, we had a Muslim shooter in Utah last year, there was the black Muslim convert who fragged his squad mates in Iraq years ago, a conspiracy to attack Fort Dix, and we are beginning to see honor killings in the United States.  What we are seeing is a clash of cultures that aren’t very compatible, if at all. Ignoring that or spinning it as something else isn’t going to make the problem go away.  Individual jihadists are still jihadists.

Meanwhile, we take casualties here at home.  The soldiers were unarmed and felt far from combat when Hasan attacked them.  Because he was supposedly one of them and it happened here, they feel betrayed and violated.  We all should as this man should not have been in the military.  With his record he should have been booted out as a security risk, but PC rules all in governing now.

The soldiers who died and were wounded came from all over the country, so this truly is a national tragedy.  What makes tragedies tragic is that they are preventable and are based on the flaws of people. In this case, the many flaws of Hasan were apparent for some time. If he ever gets wakes up and comes off the ventilator keeping him alive, I predict a media circus as more facts come out – fact that won’t fit their narrative. Though I wonder if they even have a clue about what is real anymore.

President Obama’s performance still rankles me, made worse by that idiotic “shout out” attributed a Medal of Honor to a man who doesn’t have one.  There is no excuse in not knowing the difference between it and the Medal of Freedom, just as there is none for the levity shown beginning the speech. The superficiality is simply amazing with this man.  There is no question in my mind that we are less secure with him at the helm.

Mass Shooting at Fort Hood

Horrible day in Texas,  12 dead and 31 wounded by at least one other soldier.  The shooter was killed, but there are eye witness reports of a second shooter who is in custody with a third as possible accomplices. The FBI has been brought in to assist in finding out the motivations.  Fort Hood is under lock down. Please pray for all involved.

As jarring as that was, President Obama coming out to address an Interior Department conference waited minutes before speaking about it, doing pump up motivational material for the attendees -- even going as far as giving a “shout out” to one the people in the audience!  Reprehensible and disrespectful, the shootings should have been brought up immediately.  From there he rambled as he does without a teleprompter.  The man is an embarrassment to the country and to his office.

Is the Economy Really Growing Again?

The Feds announced the end to the recession today,  but dig deeper into what’s being reported and it seems premature at best.  Personally, I’ve never bought into the concept of a “jobless recovery” and much prefer the drier term “recalculation” to describe the employment situation.  To be blunt, if the jobs don’t come back and new ones are not being created, it isn’t a recovery.

Ed Morrissey (formerly of Captain’s Quarters) blogs at Hot Air about some of the hidden problems of the 3.5% growth rate, pay particular attention to the commercial property market quotation.  This is the other shoe waiting to drop in real estate, as I’ve posted before that banks are failing because of loans in this sector.  Most of the growth noted is based on Cash for Clunkers and tax credit breaks for homes that will go away in the next quarter, so I suspect we’ll see worse figures next quarter.  Negative growth wouldn’t surprise me, but there will be Christmas shopping to temporarily buoy things.

Meanwhile, the jobs are still vanishing and people are running out of unemployment. The stimulus is not doing much to help and to further exacerbate the problem the Obama administration has come up with a bogus figure of 30,083 jobs saved.  Even the AP had a hard time buying that and figured out that 5,000 of those don’t exist.  With work scarce and salaries being reduced, consumer confidence index is still poor at 47.7.  That bodes poorly for consumer fueled growth.

Oh and if you thought Cash for Clunkers was a brilliant stroke of genius, please read this and you may change your mind.  With the major downturn in auto sales following the end of the program, it is obvious this was a poorly thought out stunt for PR purposes by the administration.

Right now, I don’t trust anything this government is saying or doing about the economy.  Things are looking bleaker as more instability is appearing on the horizon. I’ll cover that in my next post.

Weekend Links: The Decline of American Politics?

One of the great myths fostered by the mass media is that Republicans march in lockstep, all with the same set of beliefs, as opposed to the diversity of the Democratic Party. That myth is being expanded to extend to all critics of President Obama and his policies.  That's a foolish move, for it may unite the scattered and bickering factions made up of those who call themselves 'conservatives.'  The last two elections were won on the weaknesses of the political right, rather than the strengths of the political left.  Keep the right divided and the administration will get their way.

But Chicago politics is a brutal and oppressive atmosphere, hence the desire to shut down all criticism of the administration.  This is why Fox News is under attack, as it is one of the last hold outs in a compliant media doing Obama's bidding.

Because We Say So

An attempt was made to block Fox News from a pool interview with the pay czar of the administration.  The other networks quietly stood up against this and the White House backed down.  At first, only Fox News themselves reported on this attempt at black listing.  The only other broadcast television outlet to eventually report on it was CBS, though there was some spin to it.

Meanwhile, at NPR analyst Ken Rudin dared to describe the Obama administration as being "Nixonian."  The desire to control every aspect of reporting has always been there with presidents, but the constant demonizing of Fox News alarmed him.  Until he was sat on and made to issue an apology, that is.  The creeping power to suppress free speech this White House has is something everyone should be frightened of, but if the public never hears about it in the first place it become the proverbial tree in the forest falling. It all reminds me of the monolithic Wesayso corporation that controlled everything in the old TV series Dinosaurs.

So That's What He Was Doing in College

I don't think President Obama respects the Constitution and Bill of Rights one whit.  There is evidence of this as his college years are slowly being uncovered.  His hatred of the free market is also made clear in the paper, which would explain why he is more than happy to destroy the economy. How? By absorbing as much of it as he can into the government.  Yes folks, he is a communist like his parents before him.  No wonder there was a total embargo on his college years in the media during the election.

UPDATE:  Turns out the website linked is a satire site.  Sadly, the satire was all too believable given Obama's extreme left wing approach to the economy and free speech.  He's still a communist in my opinion.

It is interesting how we still don't know much about our current President's college years, that kind of secrecy doesn't happen unless there are things to hide.

Conservative Rebellion in the Air

Meanwhile, the fiscal conservative uprising that is the Tea Party movement has begun to challenge the GOP leadership.   The Tea Parties are about smaller government and people from a wide spectrum of beliefs form the movement.   Being truly grassroots, there isn't a united leadership, but a whole lot of discontent. What they are united on are less government, less taxes, and a hostility toward political parties in general. Attempts to paint the movement as RNC controlled or as astroturfing by the insurance industries are foolish, especially by the left. They may profit from the movement if the Republicans don't listen to the protests.

Calls to vote out all sitting politicians is not uncommon at the rallies.  The GOP leadership are not comfortable or happy with the Tea Parties for this reason and because they are too blue collar.  So there will be challenges like in NY-23 fueled by anger at big government Republicans. That could spell major trouble if the Republican party keeps trying to ignore the movement.  The worst case scenario is a third party challenge, which would hand everything to the Democrats as the right splits its vote.  Hopefully, those in the movement will understand they are more powerful criticizing politicians than they would becoming ones.

Snippets:

An interesting post about how white the most progressive cities in the USA are.  A fascinating article worth reading.

At Reason magazine there is an interesting article/book review about the end of the Cold War.  It is very lengthy but worth the read.

The Dollar IS Dying

 A month ago, I posted about the U.S. dollar being in trouble.  Things have progressed in the short time since then, with a slew of new headlines culled from around the Net.

Let's start with the New York Post article Dollar Loses Reserve Status to Yen & Euro. In it, we learn that 63% of money being put into reserves by banks went to the Japanese Yen and the E.U. Euro in the last three months.  Traditionally, around 66% would be put in the dollar, but only 37% was. Over at Bloomberg, they report the same while pointing out that world leaders are following through on their threats to diversify.  Apparently, they don't approve of how U.S. economic woes are being handled by the new administration.

In another article at Bloomberg, they report that the dollar is down 10% against other currencies in the eight plus months Treasury Secretary Geithner has been in charge. In fact, they go so far as to call it the Obama Dollar. At this point, the current mess is now owned by the Obama Administration so I think the honeymoon is over. Meanwhile, the Pound Sterling is having problems as well, based on the fear that inflation is decreasing in the United Kingdom.

It looks like the shift from the Anglo currencies has finally begun, as the economies of the United States and Great Britain have lost the confidence of foreign investors.  Interestingly enough, these are the two countries that enacted the biggest stimulus packages during the current economic downturn.  I don't think this is a coincidence.

Runaway hyper inflation is around the corner, what with oil going up and consumers unable to spend more due to being tapped out on credit,with many losing jobs and giving up on full employment. I don't blame other countries bailing out on the dollar, as it is a race to get any kind of value back from what they sank into our treasury bonds before they become worthless. Talk of another stimulus will just continue the flight from the dollar and I think our political elites in both parties have failed the country and the world completely in how they've handled things.

It took a world war to bring the country out of the Great Depression.  I hope that won't be required this time.