Conservatism is the natural political outgrowth from the real life experience. Humans are naturally flawed, greedy, and untrustworthy. Conservatives recognize that fact and promote the market system and divided government in order to pit one greedy person against another.

Conversely, the left continually denies and fights against human nature (inevitably losing to it). For leftists, it’s always a matter of finding the right human to rule — the disinterested regulator, the consumer-protecting bureaucrat, the messianic president, etc. That is the nature of the OWS protests: to replace one group of self-interested people on Wall Street with another group of magically not self-interested people in government. But because government isn’t magic, utopias never quite work out in real life — not even in Zuccotti Park. In one news story after another, Thatcher’s “facts of life” are on display. Let’s look at four examples.

Conservative Fact of Life: Give a man a fish, and he’ll stick around for another.
Providing for folks in need is a good thing, but handouts are dangerous tools. At any point in the giver-receiver relationship, there’s a risk of doing more harm than good. If the recipient becomes dependent or feels entitled to his benefits, his initiative atrophies like an unused muscle. Too often the receiver is left less prepared and less likely to succeed in the future. Thus long-term well-being is sacrificed in the name of short-term “help.”

The negative effects of welfare can appear quickly, as OWS recently learned. Zuccotti Park has become a hotspot for vagrants in search of free food. Protestor Lauren Digioia recently explained to reporters that OWS has “compassion toward everyone,” but that “there are rules and guidelines.” Specifically, “[i]f you’re going to come here and get our food, bedding and clothing, have books and medical supplies for no charge, they need to give back.” Digioia added, “There’s a lot of takers here and they feel entitled.”

Conservative Fact of Life: Everybody is wealthier than somebody, but that doesn’t give anyone the right to take from others.
Protestor Nan Terrie allegedly came to Zuccotti Park with a $5,500 Mac laptop (near the top 1% of portable computers, perhaps). One night after Terrie succumbed to fatigue after a long day as a kitchen volunteer, preparing meals for fellow protestors, a thief made off with the high-end computer.

“Stealing is our biggest problem at the moment,” Terrie told reporters. A problem indeed. Suddenly it didn’t matter that the computer was $2,000 more than even the most tricked out MacBook Pro available in the Apple online store. Or that scores of laptops exist at a fraction of the price (the computer I’m using to write this article was 1/10 the price of the Terrie’s stolen Mac). No, the only thing that mattered was that taking something that someone else earned was wrong. That fact holds for a college student’s electronic devices as well as a hedge fund manager’s compensation.

Conservative Fact of Life: Rugged individualism is the only sensible approach to life.
America was built by people who refused to wait around for someone else to make them a living. From the frontiersman who left everything to chase his dreams in the American West to the entrepreneurs of the Forbes 400 list, Americans who make their own way are the most successful.

It didn’t take long for protestor Peter Hogness to learn whom he could trust. Angry about empty promises regarding the protestor status in Zuccotti Park, Hogness stumbled upon true wisdom. “One thing we have learned from this is that we need to rely on ourselves and not on promises from elected officials,” Hogness told reporters.

Conservative Fact of Life: Though she’s a seductive mistress, Utopia never quite works out as a wife.
Conservative author and columnist Dr. Thomas Sowell once said that he would love to live in the kind of world envisioned by the left. In such a world we would have few inequalities, few wants, and men would act as angels, working for the common good. The problem for the left is that their vision is based on a premise that does not exist in the real world.

The longer the OWS protests last, the more they confront the real world. As money has begun to roll in from supporters (reportedly $500,000), life has only become more complicated. “F**k Finance,” said Bryan Smith when he couldn’t get access to the funds he wanted. “I hope Mayor Bloomberg gets an injunction and demands to see the movement’s books.”

When Elija Moses requested $8,000 to replace his vandalized drum set, he was turned down. “We don’t have the power for [purchases that large],” explained Finance Committeeman Pete Dutro. “They have to go to the General Assembly.”

Moses put it best when he simply said, “I’m really frustrated.” Yes, Utopia can be quite frustrating for anyone who believes it can exist. Alas, an earthly Eden does not exist, and its mortal imitations are no more than an unwieldy collection of committees, assemblies, and frustrated citizens.

It’s unlikely that these experiences will change minds among the Occupiers. (But there’s always hope — even Sowell was once a committed Marxist.) Unfortunately, once Occupy Wall Street has picketed its final bank, sung its last rendition of Cumbayá and gone home, it will take just one sentence to define the movement: “The truths of conservatism stared them in the face; sadly, they failed to notice.”

HT: American Thinker

The growth for the fourth quarter of 2010 was also reduced to 2.3%, meaning that for the last nine months the economy has grown a minimal 1.5%, barely treading water as the weekend Wall Street Journal described it. For comparison purposes, economic growth during the first seven quarters of the Reagan recovery in the 1980s boomed at an average of 7.1%. Economic growth during the first seven quarters of the Obama non-recovery has now been reduced to an average of 2.6%, barely a third as much.

Historically, as the Journal also reiterated, “the deeper the recession, the more robust the recovery.” So the idea that the recovery is so bad because the recession was so bad doesn’t wash. Based on the historical pattern, we should be in the second year of a booming recovery by now. President Obama? instead is mired in three and a half years of stagnation with worse to come.

Keynesian Economics, RIP
This catastrophic failure for America’s working people has resulted from President Obama doggedly following exactly the opposite of Reaganomics in every detail. In particular, Obama came into office with his Rip Van Winkle attitude pretending not to notice that anything has happened since 1981, and returning to the failed Keynesian economics of the 1970s with a vengeance.

As the Journal explained it this weekend, President Obama “deployed the entire arsenal of neo-Keynesian policies to lift domestic demand,” including “nearly a $1 trillion in stimulus, plus a battalion of temporary and targeted programs: cash for clunkers, cash for caulkers, tax credits for homebuyers, 99 weeks of jobless benefits, ‘clean energy’ grants, subsidies to states, and so much more.”

Keynesian economics is the doctrine that economic growth and revival is caused by increased government spending and deficits. The increased spending and deficits are supposed to increase aggregate demand for goods and services, which supposedly causes producers to produce more. If you listen to President Obama carefully, he is always saying that economic growth and prosperity comes from increased government spending.

If the idea that increased government spending and deficits create prosperity doesn’t seem to make sense, that’s because it doesn’t. Keynesian economics has never worked, not when it was born in the 1930s and not when it finally crashed and burned in the 1970s with double-digit inflation, roaring unemployment, and deep recession all at the same time. That is supposed to be impossible under Keynesian economics, because you can’t have both too little aggregate demand (the supposed cause of recession and unemployment) and too much aggregate demand (the supposed cause of inflation) at the same time.

The central fallacy behind Keynesian economics is that the money for the increased government spending and deficits has to come from somewhere. If the government borrows a trillion dollars out of the private sector to spend a trillion back into the private sector, it hasn’t done anything to increase the economy on net. If it seizes a trillion dollars in taxes out of the private sector to finance the trillion of increased spending, the result is worse. The economy has not been expanded on net, and the increased taxes reduce the incentives for production, resulting in a net loss to the economy.

Keynesian economics survives not as a matter of logic, but because it provides cover for what the politicians want to do: increase spending and deficits to buy votes for their political machines. For a Chicago machine politician like Barack Obama, that is catnip.

The Failure of President Obama
What drives economic growth and prosperity, however, is not government spending and deficits, but incentives for production. That was the insight behind Reaganomics, and the reason why it was so successful.

Lower tax rates increase the incentives for production by allowing producers to keep more of what they produce. Deregulation increases incentives for production by reducing the costs of production, increasing the resulting reward. Restrained, anti-inflation monetary policy expands the incentives for investment to increase production because investors know the value of their investment will not be depreciated by inflation and a declining dollar. Reduced government spending and deficits reduce the government drain on private-sector investment funds.

Moreover, these are not policies suited for a particular time and its policy challenges. These are timeless free-market economic policies enduring for all time. As I argue in my new book, America’s Ticking Bankruptcy Bomb, if we would only restore these planks of Reaganomics, within a year the economy would take off on a new, generation-long economic boom. As the Journal again said this weekend, “The only way out of this mess is to return to the growth policies that nurtured the boom of the 1980s.”

The disgrace of Obamanomics is that its rigid, unreconstructed Keynesian economics was discredited in both theory and practice over 30 years ago. The historic success of Reaganomics was a demonstrated fact for all the world to see (and subsequently imitate) over 20 years ago. But President Rip Van Winkle, playacting dumb, takes us back to the future of the 1970s, reflecting the devout prep-school Marxism of his youth.

He is not the only one. Witness the spectacle of the equally self-absorbed Ezra Klein , who in his uninformed blog for the Washington Post just last month ridiculed the Republican Cut, Cap and Balance Plan for failing the test of Keynesian economics. He writes:

The only way to prevent massive layoffs, the only way to give the unemployed some help and the underpaid some relief, is for the federal government to spend. And yet we want to write into the Constitution a requirement that spending remain at 18 percent of the previous year’s GDP? That is to say, a requirement that the federal government needs to make recessions worse rather than drawing on its unique capacity to make them better? Are we mad?

Klein is blissfully unaware that there is even any dispute over Keynesian economics, let alone that it was thoroughly discredited 30 years ago, and replaced by an historical success proven over 20 years ago. Indeed, he is so behind the curve in recognizing the economic policy debate that he indicates that anyone who doesn’t genuflect to the 1930s wisdom of Keynesian economics must be “mad.” That only raises, and answers, the question of whether Klein can helpfully comment on today’s politics and public policy in America when he is not even following, let alone understanding, a central, decades-old, fundamental economic policy debate.

That is apparently not a problem for the Washington Post, which institutionally presents an open question of whether it is so behind the curve of what is happening in America today that it can even cover and report on current politics adequately for its readers. Certainly no one relying on that paper for political coverage in 2010 would have had any idea of the New Deal-sized political earthquake coming in November. That little item was first predicted in this space, by contrast, in 2009.

But arguably even worse: the New York Times, whose resident economics scholar, Paul Krugman, argues that the only thing wrong with the Keynesianism of Obamanomics is that the spending stimulus wasn’t several times bigger. He offers as his model the spending of World War II. Federal spending in 1943 was 43.6% of GDP, with the federal deficit at 30.3% of GDP. In today’s equivalent terms, that would mean a federal budget of $6.54 trillion, or over 70% higher than today, and a federal deficit of $4.55 trillion, almost 3 times higher than today.

Talk about mad. The runaway Keynesian spending spree we have already suffered has driven the nation to the edge of bankruptcy. Do we have to drive America over the bankruptcy cliff before Krugman acknowledges the proven failure of Keynesian economics? The answer is no, because his devotion to the doctrine is religious, not intellectual, and so it can’t be falsified.

Professor Richard Rumelt of the UCLA Anderson School of Management timely reviews the economics of World War II spending and other policies in the weekend Journal. He explains that it wasn’t Keynesian-increased consumption from all that World War II spending that ended the Depression, writing:

Government policy didn’t stimulate personal consumption, as Keynesian policy makers aim to do today. During World War II, there was no investment in civilian infrastructure and the government placed severe restrictions on consumption.… Thrift restored personal balance sheets, ultimately setting the stage for the postwar boom.

Rumelt adds that contrary to Keynesian economics:

During the 1941-1945 war years, over 22% of disposable income was saved. This high savings rate was driven by fiat. Thanks to wartime rationing, Americans were only allowed to purchase small amounts of sugar, butter, meat, gasoline, tires, shoes, bicycles, processed foods and other goods. Plus, there was virtually no production of new cars, radios, home appliances, or housing. In fact, when inflation and increased working hours are taken into account, consumption per hour worked actually declined for the bulk of civilians during the war. Civilian living standards stayed at Depression-era levels.

Rumelt explains that it was actually after World War II, when government spending was reduced by nearly two-thirds as a percent of GDP, and the deficit was nearly wiped out, that the economy boomed. The foundation for that boom was not the Keynesian consumption spending of the World War II years, but the increased personal savings and debt repayment of those years. So Krugman completely misinterprets the government spending effects of the war years.

The more sophisticated (I would argue sophistic) defense of the tragic failure of Obamanomics states that recoveries that follow financial panics are supposedly slower. But that has not been the experience of the American economy. Over the last 70 years, recessions in America have previously lasted only 10 months on average, with the longest previously being 16 months. Moreover, again, the deeper the downturn, the stronger the recovery. Yet, we are three and a half years beyond the last recession’s starting date, and there has been no effective recovery.

It was only the Great Depression itself, prolonged with Keynesian economics, where the human suffering dragged on for over a decade. Historically, recessions or downturns have often been accompanied by financial panics, a classic feature of the business cycle. The sophistry of this argument is just an attempt to devise a political excuse for the failure of President Obama and his outdated, benighted economic policies.

HT: American Spectator

Meanwhile, for the Chinese and other fast-growing economies, it’s full speed ahead on new energy projects. Chinese oil companies are pursuing new oil and gas exploration on a global scale, even in the mainland U.S. They are buying up oil and gas leases in Asia, Africa, Latin America, Europe, and North America, including just offshore Louisiana in the Gulf of Mexico.

But China is not limiting its options to petroleum. It is acquiring vast reserve of coal, importing U.S. coal that environmentalists have put off-limits to electric utilities in the United States and securing ownership of coal mines in Australia, Asia, and Latin America. The purchase of Felix Resources by China’s Yanzhou Coal in December 2009 was the largest coal acquisition in Australian history, but it was by no means the last. Asian buyers are now competing for another big prize: Whitehaven Coal. Soon, even if American policymakers were to wake up to the threat we face, there will be no more major coal properties available for purchase.

The situation with uranium supplies is equally dire. At present the U.S. is the largest nuclear energy producer in the world, but China is out to change that. As reported in the Wall Street Journal, China plans to build 60 large nuclear reactors by the end of this decade, and it is acquiring the uranium necessary to fuel these facilities along with its existing plants. Chinese state-owned companies are bidding on uranium-rich companies around the world, including Kalahari Minerals, owner of large uranium deposits in Namibia.

In response, the Obama administration has not approved a single one among the pending 21 applications for new nuclear facilities in the U.S. With no action on the part of regulators, American companies are loath to acquire rights to new supplies of uranium. They have been largely absent from bidding for the world’s remaining supplies.

This review is not intended as a criticism of China, which is simply pursuing the kind of coherent, long-range energy policy that is lacking at present in the U.S. China is acting in the rational self-interest of its people, and its people will reap the reward of this effort in the decades ahead.

Obama’s policy, on the other hand, is simply “none of the above.” America will also reap the rewards of its energy policy under Obama and Energy Secretary Chu. With no additional nuclear facilities under development, with the withering away of domestic coal-power production, and with no access to major new Alaskan and offshore oil supplies, America faces a future energy shock of unprecedented proportions. Once the effects of Obama’s restrictions on drilling begin to be felt, today’s gas prices are going to seem like a blue-light special.

The question is, why does Obama want to forestall access to so many of our energy resources just at the moment when gas prices are hitting $4 a gallon and experts are predicting they will go higher? Either the President is out of his mind, or he is intent on wrecking our future. Since spiraling gas prices are also going to hinder Obama’s re-election, it is a difficult question to answer. The truth may be that he just hasn’t thought about it. He’s too busy shooting hoops and hosting rappers like Jay-Z in the White House Situation Room.

Unless reversed by a conservative president and Congress following 2012, Obama’s failed energy policy will have devastating consequences. Americans will pay much higher prices for energy in the future, as high as $12 a gallon for gas and four times the current price of about 15 cents per kilowatt hour for electricity. More important yet, high energy prices will sap economic growth, and slower growth will result in structurally high unemployment, declining living standards, and a weakening of our national defense. Maybe this is what Obama wants — I believe that it is — but it is not what most Americans hope to see.

Slow growth and a weakened military may not seem like such an awful fate to the fashionable idiots on the left. It is, in fact, exactly what they are seeking: an America brought to its knees, one weak little nation among many, no more powerful or influential than Bolivia or Peru. A nation that sits happily on the sidelines of history, content to consume its “fair share” of the earth’s resources and live at the average level of the world’s economy, somewhere between Nigeria and Moldova.

That is the happy future that Obama has in mind for your grandchildren and great-grandchildren. A pair of plastic sandals and a government-issued bike for transport, a bowl of rice for supper, a three-month wait for a visit to the physician’s assistant, and a hundred-square-foot apartment with a wall screen permanently tuned to MSNBC.

There are some Americans who are born communists — those who fancy the Mao suit, the masochistic fall-into-line mentality, the fondness for self-abasement and diminishment. These natural-born comrades, eager to hand over their liberties to some vicious and inscrutable dictator, must like what they see in Obama. The rest of us will continue fighting to preserve our liberties.

HT: American Thinker

After months of refusing to cut any spending, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D.-Nev.) finally came out with a Democratic offer to cut spending for this current fiscal year by a mere $4.7 billion. The budget deficit for the current fiscal year is projected to be $1.6 trillion. So, the Senate Democrats’ spending cuts would lower the federal deficit by a mere .004%.

“At a time when Washington is borrowing about $4 billion a day, Democratic leaders want to cut about four and a half billion in government spending for the rest of the fiscal year and then call it a day,” said Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R.-Ky.).

When the Democrats’ spending proposal came to the floor for a vote last week, Reid could not even keep his own Democrats on board because the spending cuts were so insignificant. When the Democratic alternative spending bill came to a vote in the Senate, 11 Democrats voted against it. The final vote was 42-58.

In contrast, the Republican House-passed Continuing Resolution (CR) which cuts government spending this year by $61 billion got more votes (44-56), but did not meet the 60-vote threshold needed to pass. McConnell held together all his Republicans for the CR (H.R. 1), except three who wanted even deeper cuts, Jim DeMint (S.C.) and freshmen Mike Lee (Utah) and Rand Paul (Ky.). So all of the Republicans in the Senate and 11 of the Democrats want to cut government spending this year, while Reid and other Democratic leaders fight to keep almost all the taxpayers’ money in Washington.

The Democratic House and Senate last year did not pass a budget or any of the appropriations bills. To keep the government from shutting down, McConnell and Obama negotiated a three-month CR in December. On February 19, the House Republicans passed a CR (H.R. 1) that cut $61 billion in government spending for the current fiscal year, which goes through September 30.

Reid at first refused to take up the House CR, calling the cuts “draconian,” and Obama said that he would veto the bill if it passed the Senate. So to keep the government funded after March 4, Congress had to pass a short-term CR. However, Boehner said that any short-term CR to keep the government funded while budget negotiations continued would have to include cuts in spending. Thus, the House passed a two-week CR last week that cuts spending by $4 billion and expires March 18.

While the Senate Democrats blocked the House CR, the House Democrats were claiming that they had already compromised on spending cuts. Pelosi said last week that the House Democrats “have, I repeat, have cut $41 billion from President Obama’s budget already.”

“We’ve come up more than halfway to meet the Republican proposals, Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D.-Md.) told reporters this week.

But, the Democratic leaders’ saying that they had already cut spending is merely a reference to the December CR which was $41 billion less than Obama’s proposed budget, which was never enacted. So the House Democrats are not willing to cut a single penny from current spending, but claiming that they have already come “halfway”.

To be fair, the Democrats learned how to claim bigger spending-cut numbers from the example set by the House Republicans. When Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R.-Wis.) first announced the CR in early February, he said that it met the Republicans’ “Pledge To America” by cutting spending back to 2008 levels and saving $100 billion from the President’s budget. But when the actual numbers were released, it was clear that Ryan’s CR did not bring spending back to 2008 levels and cut only $32 billion from current 2010 levels.

The House Republican leadership spent days trying to spin reporters by saying that the Pledge to cut $100 billion was always in reference to Obama’s proposed budget and was for a calendar year. But it was the backlash from the freshmen and the conservative wing that forced Speaker of the House John Boehner (R.-Ohio) to ask the Appropriations Committee to cut more discretionary spending. By the time the CR came to the floor for a vote, the Republicans had cut another $29 billion from this year’s spending.

So, the Democrats’ claim that their $41 billion is halfway to $100 billion means that both sides are citing non-existent cuts to hypothetical spending levels. Bottom line: Both sides are cooking the books to make their political points and improve their image with the public.

While the Senate debated the House spending bill last week, President Obama put out his second veto threat. The White House said that Obama would veto H.R. 1 if it passed the Senate because “the unbalanced bill would undermine the nation’s economic recovery and its ability to succeed in a complex global environment.”

Obama has now put out two veto threats, but has not participated at all in the negotiations with Congress on the budget.
“Where is the President?” asked an outraged Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R.-Va.). “We continue to hear from him and the White House that, ‘We are going to meet you halfway.’ Well, where is the President?”

Instead, Obama named Vice President Joe Biden as his “chief negotiator” with congressional leaders on the CR. But, Biden left the country before the Senate vote to travel to went to Finland, Russia and Moldova.

“The Vice President is the main negotiator; the Vice President is not even in the country today. We have less than a week and a half to go. You ask the press secretary at the White House, ‘Well who’s the lead negotiator with the Vice President gone?’ ‘Can’t tell you that.”” said Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R.-Calif.) last Wednesday.

Biden’s only involvement with the CR was to make phone calls to Boehner and McConnell. He tried calling Reid but they did not connect (There is more than one phone line on Air Force 2. I know; I’ve flown on it many times.)

So what are the next steps?

The House will vote on Tuesday on a three-week CR that will cut an additional $6 billion in spending. The House Republicans are putting the CR out a week earlier than the deadline in order to disarm the Democrats from making accusations of shutting down the government. The Senate and President are expected to go along with the new CR.

For the negotiations on the long-term CR to occur, Republicans insist that the Democrats have to come up with real spending cuts in order for them to negotiate down from the $61 billion level. But so far, the only offer on the table is the $61 billion from the House CR, which failed to pass the Senate last week.

“Where is the Senate Democrat plan? I’m not going to sit up here and negotiate with myself!” an indignant Boehner said last Thursday.

The negotiations between the House Republicans and Senate Democrats will have to resume, but the resolution and the final level of spending cuts is still unpredictable.

HT: Human Events

Faced with stifling debt, bloated pensions and intractable government unions, liberal Midwestern legislators have fled those states — paralyzing Republican fiscal reform efforts. Like Monty Python’s Brave Sir Robin and his band of quivering knights, these elected officials have only one plan when confronted with political hardship or economic peril: Run away, run away, run away.

Scores of Fleebagger Democrats are now in hiding in neighboring Illinois, the nation’s sanctuary for political crooks and corruptocrats. Soon, area hotels will be announcing a special discount rate for card-carrying FleePAC winter convention registrants. Question: Will the White House count the economic stimulus from the mass Democratic exodus to Illinois as jobs “saved” or “created”? More important question: How much are taxpayers being charged for these obstructionist vacations?

Voters have spoken: In Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio and across the heartland, they put Republican adults in charge of cleaning up profligate Democrat-engineered messes. Instead of defending their same old tax-hiking, union-protecting, spending-addicted ways, Democrats are crossing their state borders into big government sanctuary zones — screaming “la, la, la, we can’t hear you” all the way.

Wisconsin Democrats warned that their delinquent members — evading state troopers and literally phoning it in — could be gone “for weeks” to prevent a quorum on GOP Gov. Scott Walker’s modest plan to increase public union workers’ health insurance and pension contributions, end the compulsory union dues racket and rein in collective bargaining powers run amok.

Big Labor insists its intransigence isn’t about money, but about “rights.” But the dispute is about nothing but money and power — the union’s power to dictate and limit its members’ health insurance choices to a lucrative union-run plan, for example, which adds nearly $70 million in unnecessary taxpayer costs.

On Tuesday, only three of 40 House Democrats in Indiana showed up for legislative debate on a similar bill to end forced unionism and join 22 other “right to work” states. Hoosier media reported that some of the fugitive pols may be headed to Kentucky in addition to President Obama’s old political stomping grounds.

The White House and Beltway Democrats have paved the way for subverting deliberative democracy, of course. If only Republicans in Wisconsin and Indiana had followed the Obama/Pelosi/Reid model and rammed their behind-closed-doors-crafted legislative agenda through in the middle of the night on a holiday weekend, the Fleebaggers wouldn’t be on the lam today. But GOP legislators just don’t roll that way. It’s Democrats who cut and run — abroad in wartime and at home in crisis.

Almost eight years ago, more than 50 Texas Democratic state lawmakers holed up in Oklahoma and New Mexico for weeks to stymie a vote on Republican-sponsored redistricting plans they opposed. Over the past week, it was thousands of public school teachers in Wisconsin who faked illness and boycotted their classrooms. And it’s union henchmen calling out loud for statewide strikes to bring Republican reformers to their knees.

The Party of Truancy has become a laughingstock — and Americans aren’t waiting for left-wing late-night comedians to bring down the hammer of well-earned mockery. The Internet has lit up over the past week with “Wanted” posters and all-points-bulletin alerts for missing Democrats.

Blogger John Hayward of the conservative Human Events newspaper joked that “the next issue of National Geographic will track the migratory patterns of fugitive Democrats across the great plains.” Seton Motley of the Washington, D.C.-based Media Research Center weighed in: “First, Wisconsin. Now, Indiana. When we said ‘runaway government,’ it was a complaint — not a suggestion.” Comedian Stephen Kruiser snickered that OFA — the Democrats’ political organizing arm, Organizing for America — now stands for “Organizing Fleeing Americans.”

Note: Many of the loudest Washington and Hollywood critics of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s decision to resign from office in 2009 are themselves now AWOL on the Wisconsin and Indiana AWOL-ians. Who’s all for mocking “quitters” now? Anyone?

One mortified Wisconsin taxpayer speaks for many. “As the daughter of former Wisconsin Senate Minority Floor Leader William R. Moser (D-Milwaukee, Dist. 6),” Mary Magdalen Moser told me, she’s humiliated by the “flee-bagging” politicians. “I am ashamed of the actions taken by the minority party to subvert our system of government by boycotting its legitimate processes. Anarchy is undemocratic, and I know that my Dad is spinning in his grave right now. … I do not support refusing to participate, because that will not solve any of the issues facing our state.”

Remember the 2008 Democratic Party chant: “Fired up! Ready to go!” Well, there’s a new Democratic Party motto in town: “Ready to go? OK, then, let’s blow this pop stand!” It’s difficult to see how Obama and his absconder allies can “win the future” when they’re stampeding over each other to escape the present.

HT: Townhall.com

It is Europe’s autumn of discontent. All across the continent, people are taking to the streets to protest the austerity measures of their governments. The governments have to cut for a simple reason: They are broke. They no longer have the money to sponsor the kind of padded lifestyles to which their citizens have grown accustomed. This in turn makes the citizens angry — so much so that they are willing to turn their countries upside-down in order to obtain benefits their governments simply cannot provide.

In France, where the deeply unpopular President Sarkozy is trying to raise the retirement age of 60, things have turned decidedly unpretty. Across the country, cars are getting burned, shop windows are getting smashed, garbage is left uncollected, roads are being blocked, and people are getting beaten up. Nearly one fourth of France’s twelve thousand-plus gasoline stations are suffering shortages. Even secondary schools are being blocked and disrupted.

Across the border in Belgium, a rail workers’ strike halted rail transport across the country. Only in the northern region of Flanders — which is the less socialistic part of Belgium — were some trains running intermittently last week. According to Agence France-Presse, “the strike triggered massive traffic jams on Belgian roads and also disrupted the services of the Eurostar train line which links London, Paris and Brussels.”

Late last month, a strike in Spain shut down much of the country’s industry and paralyzed transportation services. As many as 70 percent of Spain’s workforce walked off their jobs. “The strike has been an undoubted success,” gloated a union leader.

Greece now seems to be in a perpetual state of unrest and protest. Two weeks ago, protesters — mostly government workers — besieged and then occupied parts of the ancient Acropolis. Meanwhile, on the other side of town, rail workers and students marched on the Greek parliament. Even though it is bankrupt and dysfunctional, the Greek government still managed to rally the riot police to beat up on the state’s hapless wards.

The Frenchmen’s sense entitlement to Big Brother’s dough is truly staggering. It apparently makes itself felt early in life, as evidenced by Laura Tanniou, a 22-year-old student, who probably spoke for many in her generation when she said, “We may be only students now, but we still want to make the most of our retirement.” What she actually meant by the word “retirement” was state-provided retirement.

In the past, students used to dream about how they would become rich and make it big through their talents and efforts. But now, under the welfare state, they are fantasizing about how they will retire on generous government pensions. In light of the young lady’s statement, the expression “forward-looking young people” gains an entirely new meaning.

While the youth of France is dreaming about easy retirement, some of their mature compatriots think that work may pose a danger to health. Véro Du Cheyron, 51-year-old social worker, said this to a reporter: “They say that people are living longer so they have to work longer, but they don’t say anything about the health problems that come by doing that.”

This is a strange claim, especially when coming from France, where people are not known to overextend themselves during their working years. By law, they enjoy a 35-hour working week, which they tackle, for the most part, at a less-than-breakneck pace. Their blasé attitude toward work is not surprising, given that more than half of Frenchmen work either directly for government or in government-related jobs. Yet there are people in France who think that adding two more years of this to a person’s work-life could endanger their health.

What we see happening in France and across Europe are the devastating effects of the welfare state. We see a citizenry whose work ethic, morals, power of reason, and grasp on reality have been grievously damaged. They balk at hard work, yet they want to enjoy lives of plenty and ease. Their governments are bankrupt, but they still keep demanding benefits that are impossible to deliver. And while they refuse to engage in hard labor themselves, they see nothing wrong with living at someone else’s expense.

The welfare state — once the pride and glory of European democracies — has become a curse. This sad situation should have not come as a surprise. The outcome was predictable, given what we know about human nature and the workings of government. More than two hundred years ago, John Adams warned of welfarism’s pernicious effects:

Like a cancer; it eats faster and faster every hour. The revenue creates pensioners, and the pensioners urge for more revenue. The people grow less steady, spirited and virtuous, the seekers more numerous and more corrupt, and every day increases the circles of their dependents and expectants, until virtue, integrity, public spirit, simplicity and frugality become the objects of ridicule and scorn, and vanity, luxury, foppery, selfishness, meanness, and downright venality swallow up the whole of society.

Adams’ words describe the disposition of the contemporary western welfare state almost to a T. One could only perhaps add “widespread amentia” to Adam’s list of afflictions.

If they were clear-thinking, the Europeans would protest against the criminal waste and recklessness of their governments and demand that they shape up. They would call for the resignation and prosecution of those politicians responsible for their bankruptcy. They would insist that the fiscal house be put in order. But they never do that. On the contrary, they march and demand even more spending. Instead of demonstrating against those who brought on their fiscal ruin, they protest those who try to do something about it.

In one respect, America is still very different from Europe. It is the only Western country where people march against the bankrupting policies of their government. We have seen this in numerous Tea Party rallies across the land. It is encouraging to see this reaction, especially since such thinking is completely alien to most people in the rest of the developed world.

But even in America, welfarism has exerted its devastating effects. Even though many in this country are angry about our fiscal plight, they are unwilling to support the kind of measures necessary to bring about remedy. Anyone who looks at the budget and long-term spending trends will quickly realize that it is entitlements that account for the bulk of the federal fiscal burden. The much-talked-about national debt — large though it is — represents only a small portion of the government’s overall obligations. To avoid the fiscal train wreck that lies ahead, drastic cuts will have to be made in entitlement programs. But this is precisely what the vast majority of the American people — including those who are upset about our national bankruptcy — refuse to accept.

We saw a striking demonstration of this last week when Carly Fiorina, a California Senate candidate, appeared on “Fox News Sunday.” One of the themes of Fiorina’s campaign has been reinstating financial sanity in Washington, D.C. — so much so that she recently even issued a budget plan intended to bolster her fiscal hawk credentials. But when asked by the host to name a single entitlement benefit she would cut or reduce, she refused to answer. When pressed on the point, she accused her interlocutor of “asking a typical political question.”

Some would say that Fiorina’s evasiveness is indicative of a lack of political will to make the hard choices. But this is not the case. Fiorina’s attitude is, in fact, reflective of a lack of popular will. Had she said that she would cut entitlements, her chances of getting elected would have effectively dropped to zero.

Nor is Fiorina’s quandary peculiar to left-leaning California. As far as this writer is aware, no Tea Party candidate for federal office has publicly advocated deep cuts in entitlement programs. In fact, according to research by James Ostrowski, not one Tea Party-favored senatorial candidate is calling for significant reductions in even the over-bloated federal agencies. To say, as Fiorina did, that she plans to cut waste will simply not do. For one thing, the savings from what is officially termed waste would be too small to make any real difference. But the larger point is that most federal spending is a waste in the first place, not to mention the fact that it is also unconstitutional.

What the concerned Americans need to realize is that we cannot have it both ways: We cannot gripe about the size of the federal cake while munching on it all the while. Until we resolve this contradiction in our hearts and minds, we cannot be fiscally cured.

HT: American Thinker

Lloyd Marcus

9/12/2010 – Lloyd Marcus -

Here are two paradigms which evil, divisive Democrats have shamefully promoted and exploited for years: one, white men are burning the midnight oil thinking of ways to keep blacks down; and two, all rich white people are selfish, evil, and deserving of punishment.

No Democrat president has sold the “you have too little because the rich have too much” message better than Barack Obama, which led to angry protesters picketing the homes of corporate executives.

Democrats are masters at creating a hated “bad guy” to further their agenda.

As a black man, I wish to share a few of my life experiences which crush the paradigm that all whites are committed to keeping blacks down.

When I was 15, I wanted to attend art college on weekends. I wrote a letter to my (white) senator. When I arrived home from school one day, my mom said our senator stopped by, saw the sign I was painting for our teen dance, and decided to give me a scholarship.

I wrote a letter to then-Baltimore mayor William Donald Schaeffer for a scholarship. Imagine this nervous 15-year-old black kid from the ghetto, dressed in my Sunday best and my artwork between two pieces of cardboard as a portfolio, sitting in the mayor’s huge office. My artwork was spread over his massive carved oak desk. Schaeffer was kind and easy to talk to. He became annoyed by interruptions and instructed his secretary to hold his calls. We talked for an hour or so. A few weeks later, I received a scholarship to the Maryland Institute College of Art.

When I was a young man in the U.S. Army stationed at Ft. Bragg, NC, my pregnant wife and I were seeking a loan. The clerk said we needed a co-signer. A (white) captain, overhearing the conversation, said, “I’ll co-sign for you!” I said, “But sir, you don’t even know me.” He replied, “You seem like a nice enough feller.”

After college, I went job hunting for a position as a graphic designer. Upon viewing my portfolio, (white) businessman John Halechak did not offer me a job. Instantly, he gave me office space, a room in a high-rent office building, to start my own business.

So there you have it: a few personal anecdotes that are also antidotes to the Democrat narrative that white America tries to keep us blacks down and in our place.

As for the Democrats’ relentless attacks and insistence that we hate the rich, had Mr. Halechak not been well-off, he would not have been in a position to help me. Still, Democrats want to, as Obama said, “spread the wealth around” — which really means redistribution of other peoples’ hard-earned money. Then we will all be equally just barely getting by.

U.S. unemployment has risen to a postwar historical high, and our economy is diving downward. The Obama administration could turn things around by simply creating a friendlier atmosphere towards business and not raising taxes. Economics 101 says that the higher you tax an activity, the less people will indulge in that activity. Reagan proved that lowering taxes generates more activity, which generates more revenue for the government.

Obama and company are locked in their paradigm that the rich are selfish SOBs deserving of punishment. Obama plans to end the Bush tax cuts, spinning that they benefit only the rich.

A tax cut across the board for all Americans would tremendously boost our economy. Unfortunately, the Democrats’ insane hatred, demonization, and jealousy of the rich compels them to sink the entire ship of America rather than save one rich person.

These two evil Democrat-promoted paradigms — white men oppose black success and the rich are SOBs — are deeply ingrained in the psyche of many Americans.

However, I learned years ago, while serving in the U.S. Army, that good people and jerks come in all colors.

As for hating the rich, the Bible says, “Thou shall not covet.” With the exception of a few Ted Kennedys and John Kerrys in this world, most of the rich worked hard to get to where they are. Rather than hating them, I want to learn from them.

Once, a dear friend was in danger of losing his home. I was not in a financial position to help. All of my sympathy and good intentions could not help him — he needed cash. Wealth is a very good thing.

HT: American Thinker

– The Congressional Budget Office says the 2010 federal deficit will be in excess of $1.3 trillion, as in $1,000,000,000,000+. (BTW, the next level we’ll be talking about out of Washington is quadrillion, which has fifteen 0′s.)

– Despite Vice President Joe Biden’s April boast that administration stimulus spending would spur the economy to add a half-million jobs a month by now, initial unemployment claims jumped a half-million last week, the worst since last November, as national unemployment remains at 9.5% and the economy sheds 131,000 more jobs.

– But the economy’s going great at the Democratic National Committee, which reports collecting $11.5 million from donors in July on top of the $53.8 million already taken in from various sources this year. The president just devoted three workdays across five states to rake in several more millions for his party.

– But before leaving for his ninth presidential vacation, 10 days at a secluded estate on Martha’s Vineyard, Obama devoted four minutes in the White House driveway to a special statement on the latest disappointing jobs numbers. (Full text, as usual, can be read on the jump, along with a brief reaction from the Republican National Committee chairman.)

No questions allowed because the president didn’t want to explain why despite the administration’s announced Recovery Summer Program, the jobs numbers have started going backward again after 19 months of promises and $787 billion in alleged stimulation spending. Because, faced with the uncertainty of the economy and the certainty of new taxes after Nov. 2, employers are holding back on hiring.

According to the president, he’s been “adamant” with Congress for months now about a new jobs bill to help small businesses. Obama says this really good bill is stalled in the Senate, where so much administration legislation has been crammed through so effectively by Majority Leader Harry Reid.

Reid’s been so good at it, in fact, that he’s now running for his political life in a reelection campaign back in Nevada where unemployment is 14.3% and Obama’s legislation is not so popular.

Reid’s up against a conservative Republican. So, that means Harry Reid must be a Democrat, just like Obama, and just like 59% of the Senate’s votes.

The very same party that has controlled both houses of Congress since the 2006 election and really controlled them both since the 2008 hopey-changey balloting.

So, facing the growing grim possibility of a GOP surge on Nov. 2, is this maybe the start of buddy-bickering within the Democratic huddle? Vulnerable people pointing the proverbial political finger of blame at someone else? That’s ridiculous, of course.

HT: Los Angeles Times

Nor is the problem confined to Milwaukee. As the sewage migrates southward toward Chicago, it impacts the shores of three Wisconsin counties and two in northern Illinois. The threat of E. coli results in the closure of beaches and other recreational activities, and the sights and smells do little for the tourist trade.

So, given the scope of this environmental and health hazard, occurring on a fairly regular basis, how do the Obama administration and the city and state Democratic machine choose to utilize Wisconsin’s allotment of borrowed federal funds?

On a “high-speed” rail link between Milwaukee and Madison, of course.

Madison is located roughly 80 miles due west of Milwaukee and is easily accessed via Interstate 94. Outside the city, the speed limit is 65 mph, and barring construction or an accident, the drive is easy. Bus service is also available between the two cities and the major communities in between. A rail link was abandoned decades ago for want of ridership.

Despite the fact that a majority of the public is against the project, Governor Jim Doyle (D) and the Obama administration insist on proceeding. Stating that the project would create “more than 5,500 construction and engineering jobs,” Doyle immediately went abroad and arranged for the purchase of the locomotives and cars in Spain. The Spanish company has committed to renovating an old plant in Milwaukee for some of the work, but the bulk of the work, and the profits, will go to Spain. Obviously, the jobs created would evaporate once the work is done, and the taxpayers would be left with ongoing operating and maintenance costs for a railroad that few will use. Like Amtrak, which runs regular service between Milwaukee and Chicago as well as to Minneapolis/St. Paul, every ride would have to be heavily subsidized.

The taxpayers of Wisconsin, among the most taxed in the country, have been vocal in their opposition. The response to this from Federal Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood is to say, “High-speed rail is coming to Wisconsin — there’s no stopping it.” Governor Doyle, whose administration and policies have been responsible for the loss of tens of thousands of Wisconsin jobs and the departure of many of the largest companies (as this is written, Milwaukee’s Harley-Davidson is considering moving its manufacturing facilities out-of-state), has decided not to run for reelection — for obvious reasons. Whether this project goes through or not, his legacy will be an expensive one.

What is happening in Wisconsin is demonstrative of a mentality that has infected government at both the national and state levels: a failure to set correct priorities and an inability to readjust those priorities in view of more serious and immediate needs. Refusing to secure the southern border, even in the face of increased drug trafficking and violence in Mexico; the inability of the administration to associate the Islamofascist movement with the threat of foreign and domestic terror, even as more incidents occur; and the insistence on passing health care and other legislation that is clearly opposed to the wishes of the majority are disastrous choices from the start. Refusal to modify or abandon them, even as their effects become obvious, is irrational at best and malevolent at worst.

In the private sector, there is a keen awareness of correct priorities and the need for the flexibility to alter them as circumstances change. It cannot be otherwise. Businesses exist to provide goods and services, and the final arbiter of their success or failure is the marketplace. No matter the product, they must be alert to changes in tastes, style, technology, society, or competition that would render their present offering vulnerable, and they must be prepared to modify, augment, or supplant it as needed. To refuse to do so begets failure, and in this day and age, the increased “speed of life” can bring that about quickly and with finality.

Within the past half-century, a number of factors have contributed to the growing isolation of government at every level from the pragmatic realities of business and the life of the average citizen. As campaign costs have risen, political office has increasingly become the province of individuals of great wealth, and money, whether inherited or acquired, tends to insulate its possessors from many of life’s realities — especially the economic ones. Once elected, an incumbent can forge links with lobbyists, PACs, wealthy ideologues, unions, and other sources of funds to greatly boost reelection chances. This has resulted in a larger population of multi-term politicians more beholden to their bankrollers than their constituents. Government has also become attractive to academics, who are frequently more used to the world of ideas and theories than practical realities. David Halberstam’s 1972 book, The Best and the Brightest, is an instructive discourse on how some of the leading academic minds of a generation helped enmesh the Kennedy and Johnson administrations in the mire of Vietnam and, once in, evolved a strategy of failure. Its lessons have not been learned by the current administration, and it is significant that fewer than 10% of the present advisory and administrative staff derive from the business community.

Many of the candidates who will be running in the fall in opposition to current policies at both the state and federal level have come from the private sector. In both substance and style, they resonate with an electorate disillusioned by and disgusted with ideologies, social engineering, impractical solutions, and, in one case at least, expensive and unnecessary railroad trains.

As for Milwaukee, there has been no plan to fix or change the sewer system, and the homeowners whose basements were inundated or have collapsed have been told by FEMA that, as of now, aid is possible only when the flood reaches the first floor. One thing is for sure: The next time the city experiences heavy rains, it will happen again, and billions of gallons of sewage will spew into Lake Michigan. There is an ironic footnote: This may be the first time that the eco-fixated Democrats should have put money down the sewer and failed to do so.

HT: American Thinker

In what can only be described as a partisan, pro-Obama puff piece, The New York Times has now proclaimed on its Economix Blog that tax increases are the best way to “stimulate” our economy and help America reach “fiscal sustainability”:

The single biggest step our government could take this year to address the structural deficit would be to let the tax cuts expire. And a credible commitment to long-term fiscal sustainability should reduce interest rates today, helping to stimulate the economy.

Adopting the leftist fiction that Americans keeping more of their money is socially irresponsible and somehow cutting taxes “cost” the government, the authors warn that the expiration of the Bush tax cuts are too costly. They want to shame you into compliance. You see it’s not your money, it’s their money! It will be your fault if the government doesn’t collect the additional $2.3 trillion of your income it’s entitled to receive. It will be your fault when the national debt grows ever larger by 2018:

What do matter are taxes and entitlements. Therefore, the coming battle over the Bush tax cuts is of real importance. According to the Congressional Budget Office, extending the Bush tax cuts would add $2.3 trillion to the total 2018 debt.

Feigning objectivity, the writers briefly flirt with a one sentence counter-argument questioning the wisdom of increasing taxes while unemployment is still at an all time high. However, the sense of “balance” quickly dissipates as Americans are again faulted for the audacity to save their money, and therefore failing to stimulate the economy:

Critics say that this amounts to increasing taxes at a time of high unemployment, and that instead the tax cuts should be extended as a stimulus measure. This overlooks the fact that tax cuts are an inefficient form of stimulus, because many people choose to save their additional income instead of spending it.

The pièce de résistance however, is at the end of the blog article. Here the authors completely leave behind any semblance of economic and common sense and logic, and head for the hills of fantasy land. In this fictional world massive tax increases will “immediately” encourage growth and increased employment:

If the goal is to encourage growth and employment immediately, it would be better to let the tax cuts expire and dedicate some of the increased revenue to real stimulus programs.

Apparently the multi-trillion dollars government “stimulus” programs already passed with little economic benefit are not “real” enough for The New York Times. There’s still more work to be done with the additional $2.3 trillion of our money they must confiscate in order to “help” us.

Back in the real world, Ronald Reagan’s across-the-board tax cuts in the 1980s stand as a testament to true and effective economic and fiscal policies. His relentless pursuit of economic reforms and lower taxes lead to the “largest peacetime economic boom in American history and nearly 35 million more jobs,” while federal revenues doubled, increasing from $517 billion in 1980 to over $1 trillion in 1990. President Reagan proved what all sensible economists and logical individuals already know, that cutting taxes inevitably leads to economic growth and increased prosperity, which in turn creates jobs and provides the government with more revenues.

Luckily, we don’t have to go that far back in history for a lesson on economics and taxes. One has to look no further than the tax-dogging behavior of former Senator John Kerry, owner of a $7 million yacht, to realize that higher taxes always negatively influence economic activity, motivate individuals to avoid paying those taxes, and ultimately lead to reduced state revenues.

If that’s not convincing enough, maybe The New York Times can look to communist China for a clue on how to stimulate an economy and increase government revenues. While American companies now face an average combined income tax rate (federal + state taxes) of approximately 39.3% corporations in China pay only a 25% tax rate as of January 2008. The communists realized the dangers of the economic crisis spreading across the world and quickly moved to lower taxes to help their businesses and people. Our own Congress however, has done nothing about tax rates, choosing instead to let current rates increase on their own come January 1, 2011. If Obama and the Democrats allow this to happen, we will witness the once unthinkable: the “free-market” United States will tax its businesses and corporations at 46.2%, almost double the rate of communist China at 25%; even before ObamaCare’s new Medicare levy of 3.8% kicks in 2013, raising the marginal rates to 50%.

If The New York Times can’t learn this simple lesson from the actions of a quintessential limousine liberal or by looking at communist China, then no evidence will suffice to wake them up to reality.

Originally posted at American Thinker Blog and Chris Banescu.com

While this is the reality, the political leaders are not leading. In their speeches they make claims and projections no one believes, others are blamed for the present state of affairs, they are everywhere perpetually campaigning and offering solutions that cannot be trusted to be reality based. They are, in the words of Daniel H Burnham of Chicago architectural fame, “making no little plans.” We only see massive, burdensome, prohibitively expensive and unpopular policies and programs thrust upon us. Now comes the piper who wants to be paid for all this stuff. Since there is no money, we borrow. There is insufficient tax revenue to pay the bills, so they tax more heavily, driving down the incentive to work and invest, a hideous cycle.

[...]

Webster’s defines poverty as,”the state of one who lacks the usual or socially acceptable amount of money”. It is an undeniable fact that almost everyone in Lake Bluff agrees that a municipal swimming pool that complies with standards and codes is part of the fabric of this family oriented community and an asset that has been available to residents for many years, is an important facility. The problem is, we are broke; we are collectively poor and over taxed as individuals, we have exhausted our resources and taken on unsustainable debt, there are commitments to staggering Medicare and Social Security entitlements and public employee benefit obligations, at every level; Village, City, Township, County, State and Federal.

[...]

No wonder a swimming pool generates debate and has the potential to polarize us. But the pool is purely symbolic; a microcosm of what truly ails our society. We want to make plans and buy things we cannot pay for, and our credit card is maxed out. We are frustrated and even angry. A tea party movement is created in response.

As this all this is going on, our politicians and those in political leadership positions show blinding indifference to our country’s fiscal condition and emotional psyche. They pile on massive new entitlements, ignore the unaffordable future obligations from the ones that already exist, are determined to micro manage our lives, slaughter Constitutional freedoms, incur trillions of dollars of new debt, tax us to the point of exasperation. At the same time, obvious needs are ignored. We desperately need private sector growth that will increase tax revenue without rate increases or new sources, create real and permanent jobs, stabilize the economy and markets, expand wealth, and restore our confidence.

Sure, there are other problems facing America, foremost is national security. However, our pathetic economic condition is, as Admiral Mike Mullen stated, a national security matter. Unless and until we solve our long term fiscal challenges, we are a far weaker nation and more vulnerable.

Let’s concentrate then on real and long term fixes for the economy. After that, we can build our pools, defend our country and get on with our lives, confident and more certain of our future.

HT: American Thinker

Barack Hussein Obama is not only the most radical, incompetent, and leftist president we’ve ever had, but he is also one of the most dangerous. His unilateral approach to drastically reduce America’s nuclear missiles arsenal and abandon key missile defense capabilities both in Europe and at home, are not just criminally reckless, but downright suicidal.

The latest attempt by Obama to destroy America’s nuclear defense and strike capabilities is detailed in the president’s New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New-START) with Russia, that he signed in April of 2010.

Mitt Romney concludes that “New-START gives Russia a massive nuclear weapon advantage over the United States.” The various provisions of this nuclear weapons “treaty” will not only undermine America’s nuclear capabilities, but also prevent America from properly developing its arsenal while giving Russia an overwhelming and unfair advantage. According to Mitt, the New-START agreement:

• impedes missile defense, our protection from nuclear-proliferating rogue states such as Iran and North Korea [or future unfriendly nuclear capable regimes]
• explicitly forbids the United States from converting intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) silos into missile defense sites
• permits Russia the right to walk away from the treaty if it believes that the United States has significantly increased its missile defense capability
• forces America to get Russia’s permission for any missile defense expansion, in order to preserve the treaty’s restrictions on Russia
• empowers a Bilateral Consultative Commission with broad latitude to amend the treaty with specific reference to missile defense [in essence giving Russia power over America's missile defense capabilities]
• lets Russia escape the limit on its number of strategic nuclear warheads. Loopholes and lapses – presumably carefully crafted by Moscow – provide a path to entirely avoid the advertised warhead-reduction targets
• forces the United States to drastically reduce its number of missile launchers while allowing Russia to maintain its current arsenal
• fails to apply the MIRV limits that were part of the prior START treaty, just as Russia is developing a new heavy-load, MIRV-capable ICBM
• forces America to reduce strategic weapons from approximately 2,200 to 1,550 but fails to mention that Russia will retain more than 10,000 nuclear warheads that are categorized as tactical because they are mounted on missiles that cannot reach the United States
• gives Russia a massive nuclear advantage over the United States, ignoring tactical nukes where Russia outnumbers us by as much as 10-to-1

What kind of president would do such a thing? Is Obama completely insane, or just suicidal?

Mitt concludes:

Whatever the reason for the treaty’s failings, it must not be ratified: The security of the United States is at stake. The only responsible course is for the Senate to demand and scrutinize the full diplomatic record underlying the treaty. Then it must insist that any linkage between the treaty and our missile defense system be eliminated. In a world where nuclear weapons are proliferating, America’s missile defense shield must not be compromised.

HT: Washington Post

Yesterday, Michelle Malkin issued a call to her blog readers to help create new NASA logos to “mock Team Obama’s Muslim-pandering makeover of the space program.” Some of the best logos submitted can be seen below.

The logo makeover contest was in response to the latest “Muslim friendly” NASA policies that Obama has foisted on America’s space exploration agency. Yes, this is no joke! Barack Hussein Obama has designated NASA’s new mission to “engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science.”

This information was revealed by NASA’s new Administrator Charles Bolden (appointed by Obama) in a recent interview with Al Jazeera. Bolden emphasized that strengthening ties with Muslim countries “was among the top tasks President Obama assigned him. He said better interaction with the Muslim world would ultimately advance space travel.”

Here are Bolden’s exact words:

“When I became the NASA administrator — or before I became the NASA administrator — he charged me with three things. One was he wanted me to help re-inspire children to want to get into science and math, he wanted me to expand our international relationships, and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science … and math and engineering,”

The response from Michelle Malkin’s readers was amazing! Here are some of the logos that were submitted:

From reader B. at The Snake on the Flag:

Joel Munn of Washington is Broke offered the Muslim Aeronautics and Space Administration:

There were also several several Burka themed suggestions.

Reader Sissy Willis idea:

From reader Fred Fry:

And also a sharia-compliant Space Shuttle from Sam:

For a full list of the re-designed NASA logos go to MichelleMalkin.com.

Active Drug and Human Smuggling Area - Arizona Warning Sign

6/19/2010 – Isaac Martin -

It was an edge-of-the-radar-screen news story that I happen to notice, surfing the Fox News web site. The story was about the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge, which is located west of Douglas, Arizona and its southern boundary is adjacent to the Mexican border.

According to the report, and refuge website, 3500 acres have been posted off limits to visitors, due to the presence of drug and human smuggling. Rather than dealing effectively to secure the border, Federal officials have ceded 3500 acres to drug cartels and smugglers. Granted, that acreage is only three percent of the 118,000 acre park and no doubt a small area which no one will really miss viewing.

This off-limits must also infer it’s OK for illegal aliens and criminals to tramp through a wildlife refuge, destroying the pristine environment with dead bodies, discarded clothes, empty food packages and bathroom tissue, because the government won’t enforce environmental laws, let alone border security.

However, if a U.S. citizen left trash behind, you can be sure government agents and prosecutors would work diligently to identify and charge that person or group with environment crimes. Prosecutors, I guess, aren’t afraid of U.S. citizens, but drug smugglers are seen as live-and-let live. Why?

U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service - Closure of Refuge Lands Adjacent to Border WARNING

Furthermore, this closure makes me wonder, how much more land will be placed off-limits to visitors? Ten thousand acres? A smuggling corridor up to Interstate 8? According to the refuge website, officials suggested that visitors plan their outdoor activities north of I-8. How much sovernity will the U.S. cede until it does something? Maybe they can negotiate an accommodation with drug cartels, although I often wonder how do you negotiate with murders.

Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge Closure Area

What ultimately is annoying is that as a U.S. Citizen, I am kept from going where I please on land that isn’t marked with red, white and blue Property of the U.S. Government shields or posted against trespassing. All of which illustrates the saying, when the government can’t control the criminal, they control the law-abiding.

I have personal experience regarding that, and it illustrates how long this problem has existed. In 1993, I, my wife and 3-year old daughter traveled down by Douglas, Arizona. One of the area attractions was the John Slaughter Ranch, 15 miles east of town, about a mile or two from the border. The ranch has been restored as a historical site.

After touring it, I asked the guide, if the dirt road led down to the border. I wanted to drive to it and do touristy things. Like step across and enter Mexico “illegally”. Or stand with one foot in the U.S. and one in Mexico. If there was border marker, take a photo standing next to it. Also, I would have stood there and pondered what it would be like to have lived in this area in Slaughter’s day .

Upon my query, the guide told me that the DEA said the area was off-limits because of drug smuggling and you couldn’t go without prior permission. I thought then, as I do now, that a bunch of narco criminals were defining where I could or could not travel.

As a practical matter, we were traveling armed, so we would not have been easily victimized. But with my daughter, I thought better of it and we didn’t travel to the border.

Today, that would be different. My daughter is a little bigger now and we would again exercise our 2A right. In our border jaunt, it would be the height of irony, if we were stopped by Federal law enforcement and asked what were we doing there. To which I would reply, we were just sight seeing. No doubt, we would be asked to show our “papers”. Isn’t that the law that the President thinks is wrong? Sorry, my mistake; it’s the Arizona law he opposes.

Ultimately, if Federal border officials viewed a vehicle crossing the Mexican border northbound, I wonder if they would stop it to check “papers”, although that could be construed as profiling. Or would that illegal entry be in an area negotiated off limits to U.S. Citizens? Does anyone in Homeland Security realize that when the enemy restricts your movement in your sovereign territory, they’re winning?

Things, I suspect, will only get uglier.

HT: American Thinker

Warning Signs in Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge Closed to US Citizens Bceause of Active Drug and Human Smuggling Area

Disappointment from President Obama’s cult-like following is growing, and it’s easy to see why. It was two years ago this month that Obama uttered his infamous statement on the importance of his election in relation to the environment. “The moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal,” was the phrase Obama used to describe his own nomination.

In a bit of irony even the most humorless should appreciate, Obama’s administration is now mired in the muck of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. The man who promised to roll back the rising tide is now swallowed up in the suffocating black crude that’s seeping across the Gulf coast. The man who was supposed to change the climate can’t do anything about it.

However, the problem isn’t just the leak, or Obama’s fix-all campaign rhetoric, but the expectations of the populace. The lesson is that government has its limits, even a seemingly all-powerful entity such as the White House. It is a lesson many are unwilling to learn, even as Washington sits by hopelessly as oil continues to spew throughout the Gulf.

Megan McArdle described this bizarre perception of Obama and government best when she pointed out then-candidate Obama’s habit of blaming of Bush for the state of the economy and trouble on the warfront. Sure, presidents have varying degrees of competency, but to presume that all problems are fixable from the bully pulpit is to deny reality.

Volumes could be written about why voters accept this meme — the idea that a magic man can fix disasters, ups and downs in the economy, or the usual travails of life. This nonsense of an omnipotent government hit its stride immediately after 9/11. A refusal to believe that a massive terrorist attack could take place without the government knowing about it resounded in a significant portion of the population. These expectations carried to Hurricane Katrina, where it was construed that the president didn’t “care enough.”

This belief played a central role in Obama’s election. “Yes, we can” isn’t so much a mantra of individualism but of, “Yes, the government can for you.” It has also raised expectations and doomed Obama’s presidency in the short term. His own results can’t match the expectations of his base, an electorate dying for any real economic improvement, and the promises of his own rhetoric.

The reaction to this new reality has been unsurprising, if not predictable. In a bit of cognitive dissonance, Spike Lee (who happens to be a conspiracist in his own right with respect to Hurricane Katrina) implored Obama to get angry, as if a few choice words on a teleprompter could suck millions of gallons of crude back beneath the earth’s crust. This led to Obama dropping a certain three-letter-word on a television interview during one of the more ridiculous presidential moments in recent memory. Most realize political rhetoric and results are two different matters, but to the true believers, and the regular Joes expecting the president to live up to his own promises, it’s important.

Obama’s history-making election may have made for a longer grace period and his soaring oratory and media image may have bought him time, but it has become apparent after a year and a half that Obama is underachieving by his own lofty and impossible standards. There was the unemployment numbers, promised never to cross 8-percent, which now has hovered near 10-percent for the better part of a year. Not to mention the special interest frenzy that preceded the passage of an unpopular health care bill and the supposedly needed stimulus package, which has done nothing but raise our debt.

Cap that with the Gulf spill, and it is no wonder the electorate is growing restless. Restless enough where some are taking the Obama base to task. “Stopping the waves is a job for Neptune, not a president. Obama cannot raise his trident and force the oil back into the hole. There are things he can do, but they’re a lot less impressive. Granted, Obama’s early campaign for president cultivated a myth of his godlike powers. And some still seem to buy into the magic narrative,” said Rasmussen Reports’ Froma Harrop. Granted, but it’s important to note Obama’s myth was of his own making. A myth that’s drowning slowly in the Gulf and taking his presidency down with it. Hopefully this is a lesson to future candidates on what they should promise, and a lesson to voters on what they should demand and expect.

HT: FrontPageMag