This is almost too much to bear...

 

The Auschwitz Album

Visualize Unemployment

In January, 2007, the Democrats took control of both houses of congress. Now watch the graphic visualization of the unemployment rate increase.



No hiding this decline.

Change We Can Believe In

Jake Tapper, at ABC News, has an article in which Michael Douglas – Star and producer of “The China Syndrom” – favors Nuclear Power. Now this is change we can believe in…

Employment: Public vs Private Sector

The significance of this chart showing the disparity between public and private sector unemployment

... ought to motivate the following question: why is public sector unemployment an impediment to economic recovery?

The answer is that the salaries of public sector employees are largely taken from those employed in theprivate sector. Every dollar spent by the public sector (whether for jobs or guns) represents a transfer of wealth from the private sector.

Thus, total jobs are not a particularly good measure of the health of an economy. The number of private sector jobs are directly proportional to the creation of wealth, i.e., the expansion of an economy. Just to add two historical notes to this argument: First, the U.S.S.R was, and Cuba and Communist China are all examples of countries with virtually 0% unemployment. Second, after six-plus years of huge government expenditures for jobs programs (e.g., building dams, railroads, highways, and bridges) unemployment rose from 18% in 1932 to 18.6% in 1938. FDR's massive government spending did nothing to bring the economy out of the Great Depression.

It's time you people who believe in the efficacy of government to solve economic problems face historical and economic reality.

This Just In: Politician Makes Excuses

Sen. John McCain: I was misled on bailout

 

Unlike many of my conservative friends, I like John McCain and I think he would have done a much better job as President than Obama. However, the truth of the matter is that most people do not want leaders to make excuses. In this report, McCain’s is a particularly bad one because, in effect, he argues that he is easily misled and therefore Arizone residents should give him a pass and reelect him to the Senate.

 

This is not a good moment for the Senator.

The Apologists Begin

Reason.com, an unashamedly libertarian website belies its name with Steve Chapman’s article titled, The Real Reason for Obama’s Unpopularity. The piece is not particularly interesting except for its penultimate sentence:

 

The good news for Obama is that he has lost ground with the electorate mainly because of things he can’t control.

 

Uhhhhh, ‘scuse me!!!!  Can you say Porkulus, Cap ‘N Trade, Health-Care, dithering over Afghanistan, claiming credit for the victory in Iraq,…?

 

These were failures and excuse-makings of Carteresque proportions – Each and everyone of which were completely under his control – He initiated them and he campaigned relentlessly for them.

 

When you leave the actual bill creation to Congress whose leadership consists of the most liberal members from the most liberal districts – representing the views of perhaps 20% of the electorate – how can anyone with even a bare iota sense imagine that all of this was out of Obama’s control?

 

These were his decisions, his policies, his choices – his responsibility. Period.

 

Obama was not only correct, but prescient

The U.K.’s Guardian reports that yet another Climate scientist has withdrawn claims of rising sea levels. So, let’s give credit where credit is due: Obama claimed that sea levels would cease to rise if he were elected President.

 

The Warrior Song

The content of this song will make real men want stand up and fight for what they believe. It will make women, girly-men, and Democrats weep over their spinach quiche and egg-white omelets.

Truly I tell you, no matter who you are, you will enjoy a full-on visceral emotion.



Here are the lyrics

The Warrior Song

I’ve got the reach and the teeth of a killin’ machine,
with a need to bleed you when the light goes green
best believe, I’m in a zone to be, from my Yin to my Yang to my Yang Tze
put a grin on my chin when you come to me,
‘cuz I’ll win, I’m a one-of-a-kind and I’ll bring death
to the place you’re about to be: another river of blood runnin’ under my feet
forged in a fire lit long ago, stand next to me, you’ll never stand alone
I’m last to leave, but the first to go, Lord, make me dead before you make me old
I feed on the fear of the devil inside of the enemy faces in my sights:
aim with the hand, shoot with the mind, kill with a heart like arctic ice I am a soldier and I’m marching on
I am a warrior and this is my song
I bask in the glow of the rising war, lay waste to the ground of an enemy shore
wade through the blood spilled on the floor, and if another one stands I’ll kill some more
bullet in the breach and a fire in me, like a cigarette thrown, to gasoline
if death don’t bring you fear, I swear, you’ll fear these marchin’ feet
Come to the nightmare, come to me, deep down in the dark where the devil be
in the maw with the jaws and the razor teeth,
where the brimstone burns and the angel weeps
call to the gods if I cross your path and my silhouette hangs like a body bag
hope is a moment now long past, the shadow of death is the one I cast.
I am a soldier and I’m marching on
I am a warrior and this is my song
my eyes are steel and my gaze is long
I am a warrior and this is my song
now I live lean and I mean to inflict the grief,
and the least of me is still out of your reach
the killing machine’s gonna do the deed,
until the river runs dry and my last breath leaves
chin in the air with a head held high,
I’ll stand in the path of the enemy line
feel no fear, know my pride:
for God and Country I’ll end your life
I am a soldier and I’m marching on
I am a warrior and this is my song
my eyes are steel and my gaze is long
I am a warrior and this is my song

You can read all about the song here.

Stupid or Willfully Ignorant? You decide

The Obama administration has rationalized its mirandizing of the Christmas Day bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab on a number of ground, the most ludicrous of which is that they were simply following the precedent set by the Bush administration when the shoe bomber, Jose Padilla was arrested.  Here’s what John Brenna, President Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser wrote in a USA Today op-ed:

 

“Terrorists such as Jose Padilla and Saleh al-Mari did not cooperate when transferred to military custody, ….”

(My emphasis)

 

The Obama administration’s understanding of this account is manifestly (willfully?) wrong. The fact is Jose Padilla sang like a canary, but only after he was transferred from civilian custody to military custody. Here’s the chain of events:

1. Jose Padilla was arrested at Chicago’s O’Hare airport on May 8, 2002.
2. A few hours later he was mirandized and rearrested on a material witness warrant and transferred to the Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) in New York city.
3. He remained at MCC for one month while the Bush administration explored its options.
4. In June, Padilla was designated an enemy combatant and transferred to military custody.

 

Padilla then began to talk. Here are some of the unclassified admissions made by Padilla while in military custody.

1. He admitted to attending a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan in September-October, 2000.
2. He admitted to accepting a mission to blow-up several apartment buildings in the United States.
3. Padilla was living at the “safe house” in Khandahar when the U.S. military bombed the house and killed his boss, Hafs al-Masri, a top Al Qaeda military commander.
4. Padilla collaborated with KSM and Abu Zubaydah during a stay in Pakistan to devise a plan to attack the U.S. with a “dirty-bomb”.

 

The Bush administration knew full well that Padilla’s admissions were not admissible in a civilian court, so the Bush administration built a civilian case against Padilla on charges that had nothing to do with his terrorist mission to the U.S. Once completed, Padilla was transferred back to civilian authorities and convicted on unrelated charges.

 

So, here we reach the critical distinction between collecting evidence for a prosecution and collecting intelligence for fighting a war. We know that Padilla was here in May 2002 to carry out Al Qaeda’s bidding. Padilla and multiple other al Qaeda detainees have confirmed Padilla’s role. But while Padilla was in the FBI’s custody he said nothing, Zip. Zero. Nada. Authorities were unable to gain any actionable intelligence until he was interrogated while in military custody.

 

For a more complete account, you may want to read Andrew McCarthy’s take here and another excellent summary by Bill Burck (former deputy counsel to President Bush) and Dana Perino (former press secretary to President Bush).

Victory Has a Thousand Fathers

Obama administration shamelessly claims credit for victory in Iraq.



Here's the recap

Q Robert, the Vice President last night said that Iraq could end up being one of the President's great achievements. Given that the Vice President was in favor of a partial partition of the country and the President opposed the surge that helped stabilize it, how is that one of the President's great achievements?

MR. GIBBS: Well, putting what was broken back together and getting our troops home, which we intend to do in August of this year.

Q But the Status of Forces Agreement to bring troops home was signed before the President took office.


MR. GIBBS: Something that -- something that I think the political pressure that the President, as a then-candidate, helped to bring about.

Look, I think that we will long debate Iraq. We will long debate whether at a very important moment in our efforts to root out terrorism particularly in Afghanistan and on that border region with Pakistan, whether we took our eye off the ball.

I think historians will debate that long after we're gone. I think they will come likely to the conclusion that no single event took our eye off of what needed to be done in order to -- in order to occupy a country that, until we got there, didn’t have a single member of al Qaeda.

So, look, obviously -- look, the Vice President has been deeply involved in fixing the political process there so that elections can be held and so that our troops can come home as scheduled this summer.

(H/T The Weekly Standard)

Good Advice?

In 2001 George W. Bush assumed the Presidency and a tanking economy. Here’s what Paul Krugman, Noble Laureate in economics and editorial writer for the New York Times advised President Bush:

To fight this recession the Fed needs more than a snapback; it needs soaring household spending to offset moribund business investment. And to do that, as Paul McCulley of Pimco put it, Alan Greenspan needs to create a housing bubble to replace the Nasdaq bubble. (My emphasis)

Women today: Fish and Bicycles

This is a repost of one of my earlier postings in my other blog – The Moral Christian.

Enjoy

Gloria Steinhem famously said that a "woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle". With this aphorism, Ms. Steinhem aptly expresses the notion that has predominated feminist rhetoric since the late 60s, i.e., that males are useless at best. Indeed, in women's studies programs, much of the mainstream press, Hollywood, and a number of religious denominations, masculinity itself is the problem. I do not wonder that today's women, after 3 decades of this mantra, are unable or unwilling to understand the men in their lives - much less treat them with dignity and celebrate them as husbands, fathers, and brothers.

In a society in which females are taught to view males as irrelevant at best, women and men are released from the deep structures of being mothers and fathers, wives and husbands, daughters and sons, and sisters and brothers. Somewhere along the way, the women's struggle for equality changed to one of independence. Are we surprised, therefore, that men have responded by viewing women as sex objects, the only female-male relationship left to them.

Alas, I am not sanguine about restoring a proper balance to our society - A society that has so little understanding of the mutual obligations between men and women, as to seriously entertain the idea that homosexual marriage is the moral equivalent of traditional marriage. To restore balance will require, at a minimum, that our culture reinvigorate its understanding of the marriage covenant, but more importantly, elevate the value of traditional marriage and the protections it provides, above that of eroticism and companionship.

Public Schools as Propaganda Mills? - You be the judge

This is a brochure handed out to school children at Perry Local, Massilon, Ohio

Th

Courtesy of Atlas Shruggs

The Problem With Democracy? A Contentious Public

The principal problem faced by the Democrats in Congress and the Obama Administration in attempting to pass health-care reform is, it seems, the contentiousness of the public. The L.A. Times has a new report (not an opinion piece) by Noam N. Levey titled,

Democrats quietly working to resuscitate healthcare overhaul

The piece is of a kind that advances human nature and lack of political will as the problem. In summary, the idea behind this article is especially well-expressed about mid-way through. Quoting a lefty healthcare policy “expert”, Drew Altman, Levey writes

Almost all of the proponents of a healthcare overhaul are desperate to avoid a repeat of the contentious public debate and deal-making that consumed Capitol Hill last year.

"In a 24-hour news cycle, with the Internet and bloggers and cable news, sometimes a lot more can be accomplished, especially with healthcare, when it happens behind closed doors," said Drew Altman, a healthcare policy expert who heads the nonprofit Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. (my emphasis)

No where in this news article cum lefty apologetic is there mention of the public’s substantive objections to ObamaCare. The reporter is simply and openly making the case that contentious public debate is a bother and that legislation of this importance is best fashioned behind closed doors and enacted through parliamentary tricks.

Victor Davis Hanson: Obama In Free Fall

Victor Davis Hanson, one of the pre-eminent historians and scholars of the day, echoes Michael Goodwin’s take that Obama

…is a young and talented celebrity whose worldview, we now know, is an incoherent jumble of poses and big-government instincts. His self-aggrandizing ambition exceeds his ability by so much that he is making a mess of everything he touches. He never advances a practical idea. Every proposal overreaches and comes wrapped in ideology and a claim of moral superiority. He doesn't listen to anybody who doesn't agree with him.

The difference is that where Mr. Goodwin sees an empty suit, Dr. Hanson puts meaning to the vacuum that is Obama’s governance.

After Van Jones, Anita Dunn, the Skip Gates mess, the "tea-bagger" slurs, the attacks on Fox News, the Copenhagen dashes, the bowing, the apologizing, the reordering of creditors, the NEA obsequiousness, the lackluster overseas-contingency-operation front, the deer-in-the-headlights pause on Afghanistan, the pseudo-deadlines on Iran, Guantanamo, and health care, the transparency and bipartisanship fraud, and dozens of other things, Obama simply does not have the popularity to carry unpopular legislation forward. Indeed, he is reaching a point where he may poll more negatively than his agenda does. "Let me be perfectly clear" and "make no mistake about it" are now caricatures.

Uf Da…

Visualize The Spending Freeze

This pretty much puts Obama's "spending freeze" in perspective.