Posse Incitatus

God save the Queen

Though I yield to none in my patriotism and love of America's republican form of government, as a conservative I have a deep respect for ancient traditions.  They should not be cast off lightly.

Thus I highly approve of yesterday's incandescent wedding ceremony between Prince William (now the Duke of Cambridge) and his lovely bride Katherine Elizabeth.

Last night Sithkitten and I watched the taped broadcast and the highlight reels.  It truly was a sight to see, and the only sour notes came from TLC's obnoxious and ignorant commentators, whose lack of understanding was matched only by their vulgar critiques of symbolism they clearly did not understand.

America's constitutional system was designed with profound foresight by the Founding Fathers to provide such a separation of powers as to made a constitutional monarch unnecessary.  However, parliamentary systems seem to function best with them rather than without.

Hereditary monarchs act as a necessary check upon a government that combines the executive and legislative and one that exercises de facto (and often de jure) control over the judiciary as well.  The ability to dissolve the government is used seldom, but it is an important check to prevent an unpopular government from making irreversible changes to the political order.

In my previous post, I noted that World War II was easily preventable and one way in which it could have been stopped was leaving the German monarchy intact.  Winston Churchill remarked that whatever the sins of the Kaiser and Crown Prince, a prudent policy would have been to require both to abdicate in favor of the Kaiser's grandson, who would then rule under a regency council until he was old enough.  The monarch would have provied a powerful symbol and rallying point against the rise of National Socialism.  Indeed, it is hard to say how Hitler could ever have achieved power or attempted his transformation in the face of royal opposition.

Alas, Woodrow Wilson insisted that the entire monarchy be uprooted, and the republic that replaced it was alien, disliked and distrusted.  For a time the middle and upper classes rallied around Hindenburg, but he was already old when he took office and his health and abilities declined quickly.  After him, there was no one else.

A royal family - with its respect for tradition and it place in the nation's history - would have given the otherwise bankrupt and embittered middle class a place to turn.

One cannot look at the hope and joy shown in London and around the world and not see in it a sense of shared purpose and common heritage.  No, it isn't about the dress, or the uniforms, but about the splendor, class and majesty - about the glories of ages past and common myths that unite a people.

Hereditary monarchs are enemies of change by nature, and the genius of the American system of government is that it makes change incremental and slow.  With its simple majority rule and unified executive, parliamentary systems can rapidly overthrow the social order.  A natural check to this is a monarchy.

King Juan Carlos of Spain helped stop a coup in 1981, and Spain is better off for it.

FINAL THOUGHT:  British military dress uniforms are soooo much better looking than ours.  You'd think the world's greatest military power could afford to dress its troops better than bus drivers.

The back end of the horse

The Belmont Club has a characteristically excellent post on the strategic concepts underlying Barack Obama’s consistently inconsistent foreign policy.  Take a second and read the whole thing.

Richard Fernandez does an excellent job of demonstrating how the president’s “growth” hasn’t cause him to become more effective – instead it has resulted in an escalation of failure as he simply amps up his commitment to an erratic grand strategy based on whatever he feels at American interests are at a given moment.

One element that Fernandez leaves out and that I believe is ultimately critical to understanding the perils of the “Obama Doctrine” is that it is virtually guaranteed to produce a catastrophic failure at some point because of its very unpredictability.

For it to be effective, diplomacy relies above all else on a certain level of consistency.  By transmitting a nation’s core interests to other countries, the risk of miscalculation in a crisis is greatly reduced.  Many of the great calamities of the past century have been based upon key players misunderstanding the motives and “tipping point” of other nations.  Both world wars and the Korean conflict were ultimately the result of botched diplomacy – a series of misunderstandings and suspicions fueled by uncertainty. 

In the case of World War I, all of the Great Powers believed their rivals would back down in the face of sufficient threats.

Winston Churchill has referred to the Second World War as the most preventable and unnecessary conflict in history, and even a cursory examination of the record shows this to be the case.  It was not one failure of the West’s will (at Munich) that made the war inevitable, but rather a series of them.

The Korean conflict was similarly a classic case of garbled messaging – when the US outlined its defensive perimeter in the Pacific – it’s “sphere of influence” in older terms – South Korea was inadvertently omitted.  This was seen in Pyongyang and Moscow as an invitation to unify the peninsula under a Communist regime.

The Obama Administration is not only repeatedly issuing vague and ill-understood statements, it is embracing them as a cornerstone of foreign policy.  What are our core interests?  At what point will the president determine that we can give no more ground?  No one knows where the line is that cannot be crossed. 

The adventure in Libya has made this situation even worse.  Here the US backed up its assertion that “Gaddafi must go” with military power, but did so in a half-hearted and dilatory way.  Now adversary powers must wonder if – or when – the US does reach the line that cannot be crossed, it will use all of its force or just put up token resistance.

“Leading from the rear” is essentially a reactionary policy, ceding the initiative to other powers.  The inevitable result is a US with no strategic focus and its dwindling resources spread far and wide in “time-limited kinetic operations.”

While I have focused on adversaries, this policy of vagueness also impacts our allies as well.  Can they be certain we will honor our treaties or pledges of assistance?  If we do, will it be in a pro-forma-minimalist-letter-of-the-law sort of way, or wholeheartedly?

Walter Russell Meade summarizes the perils of Obama’s foreign policy succinctly:

Here is the paradox we face:  The President is a consensus-seeker whose decision making style rewards polarization and a conciliator who loses friends without winning over enemies.

Indeed.  Obama’s incentive structure has the result of making our foes less worried about us and our friends more distant.

At its core, the issue comes down to a simple personal example:  What kind of person do you want to deal with?

Do you want one who is steady, reliable and consistent – maybe not the smartest tool in the shed, but utterly trustworthy, or do you want someone who is brilliant but mercurial, untrustworthy and oddly detached.

We thought we were getting a shrewd, calculating president - a welcome change from the supposedly inconsistent gunslinger.  Instead we have an indecisive follower trying to convince the world that he's just too smart for all of this.

 

A New Dynamic

Many state governments have been brought to their knees by the demands of public employee unions.  Untenable pension and health care benefits, and huge unfunded liabilities, have been a rude wakeup call, a cold slap in the face, to the unions and elected officials who feel taxpayers breathing down their necks.

It is no surprise that Republican governors such as Scott Walker in Wisconsin and John Kasich in Ohio have put the hammer down.  Republicans, after all, tend to acknowledge reality and eschew idealism much more than Democrats.

What is a pleasant surprise, however, is that Democrat lawmakers in Massachusetts just voted to eliminate municipal employees' collective bargaining for health care benefits, and Democrat Gov. Andrew Cuomo in New York has drastically cut spending and promised to cap property taxes, rather than simply raise income tax rates as so many Democrats have done in the past.  He is a staunch advocate for pension reform.  Can Jerry Brown be far behind?

The Wall Street Journal's Kimberley Strassel discusses the Massachusetts epiphany in today's paper. (Unfortunately, a subscription is necessary to read the whole column on the WSJ web page, but possibly it's available elsewhere on the Web.)

The union bosses are indignant, believing they've shelled out a ton of money and don't have much to show for it.  But what recourse do they really have?  They're certainly not going to start supporting Republicans.  About the best they can do is persuade their beloved Democrats to go easy on them.

The unions are more likely to ask Democrats to raise taxes (income, sales, gasoline, whatever) to keep the gravy train rolling.  Because they know they cannot ask for lawmakers to cut spending to other key Dem constituencies just to fatten the union calf.

The Democrat big government coalition, after all, is made up of myriad special interests -- each lining up for its piece of the pie.  Education, environmentalists, human services, labor relations, the arts, "green" energy, and so on.  If the state employees are piggish and refuse to pay part of their health care and pension costs, if they insist on large annual increases in wages and/or benefits, if they persist in being bullheaded... Well, look what happens: They get kicked to the side.

That is the one silver lining about big government Democrats: Even THEY are beginning to realize that their ridiculous statist fantasies are nothing but a pipe dream, a spending orgy broken up by that stern, old taskmaster, Mr. Economic Reality, and his cohort Fiscal Responsibility.

State governments, of course, are required by their constitutions to have a balanced budget each year.  Uncle Sam is not.  State governments cannot print money or play games with the money supply through the Federal Reserve.  So if the lawmakers want to keep caving in to organized labor, they've got the taxpayers to answer to.

On the federal level, the government can keep running appalling annual deficits, keep those printing press cranking out the Benjamins, and manipulate the currency.  Most taxpayers, except for a few leftist elites whose god is big government, realize that tax increases to reduce our national debt 1) wouldn't bring in nearly enough revenue to do the job;  2) probably would slow down job growth and put the kabosh on our weak "recovery"; and 3) might just bring in more revenues that are used for, what else, more spending.

Unfortunately, the U.S. Senate and House are populated with some of the most dense Democrats on the planet, including Scary Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and the marxist Congressional Black Caucus, with its motley crew of kooks including Sheila Jackson Lee, and Michigan's biggest embarrassment, John Conyers Jr.  It is doubtful many, if any, of these hacks have the intelligence, grasp of economics, or common sense to recognize what a fiscal train wreck is coming.

If we keep going on our present course, I doubt that actual default will happen.  After all, Uncle Sam can just keep printing more money into infinity.  But if the value of that money declines (too many dollars chasing too few goods and services, as the Econ profs used to say, although in this case it would be too many dollars trying to pay down too few loans), rampant inflation would result.

And that's just part of the equation.  Countries like China and others who buy U.S. treasury notes would realize that A) The United States is getting weaker and weaker economically and fiscally, and might soon be incapable of paying back its loans on time; and B) Even if the U.S. DOES keep paying back its loans on time, it will be in devalued dollars.  Interest rates must rise to compensate for the lost value of the dollar.

I know this stuff, not because I took a few Econ courses way back in college, but because I lived through the hideous Jimmy Carter economy of the late 1970s.  As bad as things are now, they could easily get much worse.

Walter Williams recently penned a column predicting President Obama is a shoo-in for reelection.  Let's hope the esteemed Prof. Williams is wrong.

But if he's correct, then the best we can hope for is the GOP to take over the Senate and reaffirm its grip on the House.  Gridlock, endless squabbling, congressional hearings droning on into the night, and an unhealthy economy limping along are not much to look forward to.

But these conditions are far superior to the catastrophe that awaits if Democrats were to retain the Senate, AND take over the House, while Obama gets reelected.  Enough damage was done from 2007-10.  We're on the critical list, and cannot afford to sustain any more blows.

Sickness in the Middle East

Just in the past 10 years, the amount of brutality and vicious violence in the Middle East has been sickening and appalling.  The vast majority of it has been committed by Muslim extremists, who are equal opportunity killers.  Jews, Christians, other Muslims, you name it.  Anyone and everyone who doesn't subscribe to the Islamofascist, seventh century warped interpretation of the Koran is in danger of getting his head chopped off, or having his brains blown out while enjoying a restaurant meal.

In early March, Palestinian militants broke into a home and knifed to death five members of an Israeli family as they slept in a West Bank settlement. Not surprisingly, this hideous incident did not generate a great deal of outrage or publicity in the United States.  Rest assured, if a Jew had murdered Palestinians in cold blood, the American press would have exploded with outrage, and the coverage would have lasted weeks. 

Today, we get word that eight U.S. troops and an American contractor were murdered in cold blood by an Afghan army officer.

There are also vicious thugs of the secular sort, like the Syrian troops who opened fire on their own people in recent days, slaughtering and maiming hundreds. Warning: The linked video contains some disturbing, graphic footage of innocents, including children, being shot down.  Don't watch it if the sight of blood makes you sueamish.

The recent developments follow years and years of terrorist attacks, brutal crackdowns, beheadings, corpses being burned and hung from a bridge beam (Iraq), and bitter enmity between most Arabs and Jews. 

Somehow, leftists in this country continuously take the side of the Palestinians in their seemingly endless strife with Israel.  This despite the overwhelming evidence that acts of terrorism against innocent citizens almost always are committed by Palestinians against Jews. Yet still, the Jews actually allow Arabs to serve in their parliament, to worship in mosques in Israel, and to work and live in Jewish society.

And who could forget the Palestinians cheering wildly and passing out candy in celebration while the Twin Towers burned? This is sick stuff.

There is also a disturbing tendency among Arabs to believe in the most outlandish conspiracy theories (9/11 was an inside job, or was carried out by the great big Zionist conspiracy).

It's time someone called a spade a spade: The Arab/Muslim culture is highly dysfunctional.  Rather than continuously point fingers at Israel, the United States, "infidels," the West or whatever other bogeyman they choose to demonize, they need to look in the mirror.

The Middle Eastern revolutions that have taken place this spring are encouraging, because they indicate a high level of dissatisfcation with the autocratic, backward ways of so many rulers.  We don't know how these uprisings will play out (politics, economic and cultural factors and conditions can vary greatly from one country to another).

Drastic change, unfortunately, often comes with much bloodshed and suffering.  The American revolution, the French revolution, Iraq, the Romanians ousting Nicolae Ceausescu -- all of these involved extensive upheaval and bloodshed, not to mention the torture and mistreatment of prisoners and much suffering by civilians who often were short of food and water. 

The Middle East is going through its pangs of evolution and overdue change.  Unfortunately, it appears the attitudes of the people, and tolerance of pluralism and self-determination among the cultures will take a lot longer than just putting new people in charge and changing the types of government. Let us hope I am proven wrong, and enlightenment is visited upon these troubled peoples sooner than later.

CONDOLENCES TO OUR SOUTHERN NEIGHBORS — My thoughts and prayers go out to the people of the American South, who have been hammered by days of violent tornadoes and severe thunderstorms. The deaths, injuries and catastrophic destruction are stunning and saddening. Just today I heard that Birmhingham and Tuscalossa, Ala., were smashed by a monster tornado, reported to be a mile wide. Here's hoping Mother Nature eases up in the coming days.

WHO GIVES A RIP — It has long bothered me that the American press pays so much attention to the British Royal Family.  I am bracing myself for massive overkill during the next couple of days regarding the British Royal wedding involving one of the late Princess Diana's sons (don't even know his name!) and his lovely fiance (don't know her name, either -- that's how much I've tuned it out). WHY?

 

 

Donald Chump: Fodder, or Perhaps a Convenient Battering Ram

As a lover of sports, I cannot help but use a couple of sports analogies to describe the candidacy of one Donald Trump, TV celebrity, real estate wheeler-dealer, and Gotham City gadfly.  I'll get to those shortly.

Let's face it: Trump does not have a great chance to be elected president if he decides to toss his hat into the ring.  He has too much baggage, and the persona of a carnival barker.  He especially will get bounced early if he maintains his obsession with the issue of President Obama's birth certificate, which is a minuscule concern compared to the grave state of our nation: the unemployment rate, bloated federal budget, worsening inflation, and very possibly a coming economic meltdown.

From the perspective of Americans who dislike Obama and his policies, as well as the Republican Party, Donald Trump is performing a valuable service by pummeling Obama with blunt straight-talk.  His no-holds-barred, confrontational approach to Obama explains why Trump is doing surprisingly well in the polls.

Now for the sports analogies.  The first is based on football, the second, basketball.

Let's start with the battering ram.  Football teams that have a mediocre to excellent offensive line, AND a huge, powerful running back who punishes those who tackle him, sometimes employ a strategy of giving this player the ball over and over again to get the defense back on its heels.  If it takes three or four guys to bring him down, and you just keep hammering away, soon the defense will be out of breath and struggling to avoid letting the running back break away for a touchdown.  Even if they know exactly what play you're going to run and how they should defend it, they will still struggle to stop your forward progress.

Then, when the defense is panting and gasping for air, and showing increasing signs of poor tackling and/or getting blown off the line of scrimmage by your offensive line... THAT is the time to start picking them apart with your passing game.  It will be like cutting through hot butter with a dull knife.

Trump is the battering ram.  We don't know how long he'll keep at this, or whether it's just a game because he loves the limelight and has a massive ego, but it is refreshing to see someone call out Obama and refuse to pussy-foot around like the  so-called "reporters" of the mainstream media.  By the time the presidential race gets going in earnest in early 2012, Obama will have sustained a lot of heavy blows.  Hey, DONALD: YOU GO, GUY!

Now, on to the basketball analogy...

Many teams have a few big bodies who are not very gifted offensively, but they can clog up the lane and provide some physical defense when you need to throw obstacles in the way of your opponent's top scorers.  The object is to make the opponent EARN every basket.

In college basketball, you're tossed out of the game after being called for five fouls.  In the NBA, it's six fouls.  If a team wants to wear out an opponent's big men in the "low post," (close to the basket), it can throw out a big body or two to harass and wear out the scorer(s) with physical defense, including blatant hacking and bumping. 

If the ref wants to keep calling fouls on these large body defenders, so be it.  The guy getting fouled may be an excellent free throw shooter, or an average or poor shooter.  But his body is getting beat up, and his productivity is bound to decline as fatigue and aches and pains take their toll.  The defenders getting called for the frequent fouls are essentially fodder to wear down the opponent's potent weapons.  They won't be missed after they foul out.

Unsportsmanlike? Perhaps.  But legal? Absolutely.

Ditto for the marathon presidential campaigns.  Politics is like warfare: You are allowed to fight dirty.  Miss Manners is nowhere to be seen.

Trump needs to keep hammering away.  He could overplay his hand, and there would be a backlash against conservatives and Republicans.  But it is doubtful he would lose control so completely.  And after the pathetic performance of our emasculated and wimpy fourth estate, it would be pretty darned difficult to overplay your hand against Obama, whose miserable record represents a big fat target.  BIG as in the Milkyway galaxy.

So batter that defense, Don.  And hack O'Bummer under the boards.  Our nation is counting on you.

 

 

The Way Everyone Expresses Themselves

TWEET on Twitter.  Give frequent updates in bite-sized portions.  That, along with regular Facebook updates, seems to be the future of news in America.

More and more traditional newspapers and magazines are cutting back on their frequency of publication, the size of their paper issues, and the resources with which they report the news.  They may rely much more on Associated Press or Reuters copy than locally generated stories, and use syndicated columnists and features rather than pay local reporters to gather and prepare the news.

But aside from saving money on payroll, newsprint and other expenses, it seems many of the old-school newspapers and magazines have come to the realization that immediacy and frequent "refreshes" seem to hold greater value in consumers' minds than in-depth reporting and analysis, including the type of details you won't get on Facebook or through 140-character missives. 

Let's face it: Even the best quality newspaper (in its "dead tree" version) contains a lot of stale news in this era of 24/7 tweets, Facebook posts, and web feeds such as Really Simple Syndication (RSS). Just because I like to sit down at breakfast with a "hard copy" newspaper and flip through the pages, doesn't mean teens or twenty-somethings do.  And who am I to tell them my way is better?  If I were in their shoes, I'd probably be doing what they're doing.

I understand that technology changes things, and new trends develop.  Heck, the World Wide Web has been around for at least 15 years, but it's only been a few years since Facebook and Twitter came on the scene.  Things have changed dramatically in the way news organizations and public relations departments get the word out, and the way people learn about news, events and developments. This is still evolving, and I'm quite sure debates about how best to employ today's new communication tools are playing out in newsrooms and public relations agencies across the globe.

Several questions come to mind.  Are today's young people too busy to read conventional news articles printed on paper because those articles, columns and editorials are too lengthy and time-consuming? Are they lazy and don't have the attention span? 

Do they just feel more comfortable and find greater convenience with electronic news available over mobile smart phones?  Are reading web pages on a laptop, or e-books on Kindle preferable to holding a possibly cumbersome newspaper or large book in one's hands?

Several years ago, when more and more 24/7 cable news stations started popping up, a concern developed about whether the stigma of inaccuracies was weakening.  Did the 24/7 news cycle, a boatload of cable news competitors and grinding, intense competition make it more acceptable to report something inaccurate, then casually correct the mistake 5 or 15 minutes later with another in a succession of non-stop updates? "Oh, by the way, we mistakenly reported at 9:15 p.m. that such and such.... In fact, such-and-such is what really happened.  But this is a fluent situation, and so-and-so is standing by to bring us live updates..."

Well, with Twitter, it seems like the temptation to spout off "reporting" without thinking it through or vetting it is even greater, and there is certainly no room for context or explanations in 140-character blurbs.

Yes, many who use Twitter are celebrities, athletes, politicians, and other well-known people who know they have "followers."  But plenty of news organizations and public relations shops are using it, too.

How will it degrade the accuracy and professionalism of news reporting?  What will be the impact on the marketplace of ideas, and public debate?

Stay tuned, as this crazy communications car careens crazily.

 

 

No More Mr. Nice Guy

That was the name of a 1973 song by the great Alice Cooper.  But I'm not here to talk about rock-n-roll.

Here's what's on my mind: It has been obvious for several years that conservatives have been reluctant to fight fire with fire.  Llberals and leftists tend to be more in-your-face with their beliefs than conservatives.  The libs often are smug, pompous, condescending, and prone to childish rage and whining when they don't get their way. 

What they cannot achieve through legislation, they try to do through regulations and/or the courts.  What they cannot accomplish legally and legitimately through the ballot box, well, there's always shady outfits like ACORN, the ACLU New Black Panthers, and various union thugs to, shall we say, "finesse" the results.

Now all of this isn't to say that all conservatives and Republicans are upstanding ladies and gentlemen, deferential and well-mannered.  No, the conservative side has its share of egotists, blowhards, and rude people who don't mince words when they mix it up with Democrats.

But overall, on balance, Repubicans and conservatives try not to wallow in the gutter as much as the Dems do.  Off the top of my head, I can name a slew of Democrats who have made outrageous, asinine and inflammatory statements regarding Republicans, GOP legislation, or the GOP platform: Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Alan Grayson, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Shirley Lee Jackson, Dick Durbin, the late Ted Kennedy and Robert Murtha, et al.

And as I've noted before, during the Bush administration, anti-Bush bumper stickers were a dime a dozen.  Those self-righteous, indignant liberals HATED "Shrub," AND THEY WANTED THE WHOLE WORLD TO KNOW IT!

I am pretty sure there are at least as many people these days who are aghast, appalled, incredulous, and utterly disgusted with the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.  But we don't think it necessary to shove our feelings in other people's faces.  That's in large part because we have a lot more going on in our lives, and don't allow ourselves to be ruled by politics.  But that's a blog for another day.

Let's ponder the type of candidate the GOP needs to unseat the Celebrity-in-Chief.

Is it a no-nonsense, unvarnished populist? Perhaps.  Or is it a charistmatic, photogenic guy with whom celebrities and late night talk show hosts can enjoy yukking it up? Hardly.  Most conservatives realize there is too much at stake to waste time toadying to the likes of Letterman and Leno.

I return to my analogy about different types of people being eminently suited for certain types of occupations and endeavors — but completely out of place in other roles.  There are a lot of musicians whose music I love, but who hold political views way out in left field.  The thought of them forumulating legislation and enacting policy is downright scary.  And then there are accountants and lawyers who are sharp as a tack and can be invaluable financially and legally, but who would be miserable failures on stage trying to entertain.

The same goes for conservatives, policy, and trying to win over the celebrity/MTV/Hollywood/musician/pop culture crowd.  Fuhgettabouditt!  Ain't gonna happen.  Stick to policy, and stay in your lane.

Which brings me to this column on the American Thinker web page.  The author, Steve McCann, rightfully accuses Republicans of bending over backwards to be Miss Manners, playing by the "Marquis of Queensbury rules" while Democrats revert to a street brawl.  No time for civility, indeed.

The talking heads on cable TV have spent a lot of time in recent weeks discussing possible Republican nominees to take on The One.  There seems to be a general feeling that despite Obama's obvious failings, our nation's sick economy and bleak future prospects, and our damaged prestige worldwide, the Republicans might not have one candidate capable of winning back the White House.

I won't get into the drawbacks and weaknesses of the huge lineup (Romney, Huckabee, Palin, Bachmann, Daniels, Gingrich, Pawlenty, Barbour, and maybe even Trump).  But I would like to comment on a couple of gentlemen who state they are not interested in running for president:  New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan.  These two men have something in common: They are not afraid to be "in your face" with the hard, cold facts.  Charisma and diplomacy be damned.  Those qualities don't amount to anything anyway with today's compromised media owned lock-stock-and-barrel by the Obama cult of personality.

Christie is more "in-your-face" than Ryan, but he seems to have been more emphatic that he does not want to run for president and doesn't even think he's ready.

Ryan, on the other hand, is all business.  He doesn't go out of his way to be confrontational, but he insists on driving home the facts, and he does a darned good job of it.  He is unfazed by the media's loaded questions and the Democrats' gross and unhinged distortions. 

If it takes an emotionless robot to drive home the point and call out Obama on his multiple failings, hypocrisy and absurd delusions of grandeur, so be it.  The One needs to be exposed on national TV, and his arrogant "above it all" cool demanor needs to come unraveled like a cheap sweater.  (It wouldn't be that hard to do, believe me.)

And if the mainstream media piles on Ryan for being "mean-spirited" or "vicious" or a demagogue, well, they're just reaffirming their place on millions of Americans' shit-list.  Got ratings?

Bring on the street brawl.  The fate of our nation is at stake.  And in 2012, I don't give a rat's ass if it gets down-n-dirty.  Paradoxically, it may prove to be the catharsis we need.

STUPID SEASON — It may be Holy Week, but it's also Stupid Season.  Koran-burning Florida crackpot preacher Terry Jones is in Dearborn, Mich. (suburban Detroit), which has the nation's largest concentration of Arabs.  He plans a demonstration outside of a local mosque on Friday.  This story reports that a jury trial is scheduled for Friday to determine whether Jones will be allowed to proceed with his protest.  The cost of extra police protection is an issue, as are the traffic tie-ups and general disruption.  I'm no legal beagle, but this is the first time I've heard of a jury trial to determine whether a protest will be allowed.  I thought jury trials were generally for criminal defendants in cases involving misdemeanors or felonies.

STRANGE BEDFELLOWS — Google the lyrics of Peter Gabriel's "Games Without Frontiers" (1980). It sums up the strange goings on in the Middle East.  Suffice it to say, Pan-Arabism is one of the most preposterous pipe dreams ever invented.  It's about like saying "Pan-Balkanism."  This commentary in
American Thinker explains some of the recent duplicitous developments.  Lovely.  It's like hearing about crack dealers in a gunfight in the ghetto, and both end up dead.

Nothing to Worry About

The strange thing is, Obama has not gone completely Left, like Dennis Kucinich or Bernie Sanders would do.  Matter of fact, those hard-core lefties, as well as the likes of Ralph Nader,  Ted Rall and CODE PINK are enraged at The One for:  A) Sending more troops to Afghanistan;  B) Not closing the Guantanamo Bay prison camp;  C) Dragging his feet on getting us out of Iraq;  D) Extending several key parts of the Patriot Act, including warrantless wiretaps; and E) Trying 9/11 suspects in military tribunals rather than civilian criminal courts.

Could it be that Barry realizes he has to “throw the dog a bone,” i.e., agree to these policies, in order to retain his plush position in the White House?  After all, he absolutely LOVES the trappings of power.  He would rather condemn FDR and praise Reagan than give up his hobnobbing with Beyonce, Stevie Wonder, and Paul McCartney.  That’s the type of unprincipled narcissist he is.  Better to savor Kobe beef and the adulation of MTV while compromising progressive “principles” than to be a stalwart leftist and one-term president who’s sent back to Chicago.

Which brings me to my main point (delayed by digression and theorizing):  I thought Barack Obama would be losing sleep over persistently high unemployment, rising inflation, higher gas prices, a tsunami of home foreclosures, and hellacious unrest in the Middle East.

Wouldn’t he be worried about the tens of millions of people who are unemployed or underemployed, in danger of losing their homes, without any pension or savings to fall back on, and raging with a bitterness and frustration about how things have gone to the shitter in such a short period of time?

No.  And the reason is this: About 47 percent of Americans pay no taxes (up from 38 percent in 2007), and many of them are heavily reliant on sugar daddy Uncle Sam to provide sustenance.

Rush Limbaugh has speculated, and I concur, that Obama is relying on tens of millions of welfare state parasites to vote for his re-election because they KNOW Uncle Sam will take care of them if they never succeed in finding a job, and/or lose their home to foreclosure.  Obama is also relying on a large number of prospective voters being apathetic and not bothering to vote. 

And then there are the left-wing bigots who would vote for a leftist even if it meant they'd be tarred and feathered for certain — just to ensure the diabolic, demonic, personification-of-evil Repuglithugs wouldn't get elected.

Sad to say, but there is a HUGE chunk of the American population that is ignorant of history, totally unaware that our great republic is a precious exception to the longstanding reign of tyrants, despots, kings and dictators throughout time.  They are clueless about economics and fiscal realities, and which policies promote economic health.  Their number one concern is themselves, their comfort, and their pocketbook.  It's bread and circuses on steroids.  These are Barry's people. 

There are also rigid leftists who are 100 percent certain that their way is the right way.  Conservativism is to be ridiculted, despised, mocked, and cast out as if it were a leper.  These are also Barry's people.

The unionists, on whose teet the Democrat machine suckles, also will support Barry 'til they're blue in the face.  It's the only game in town.  These are definitely Barry's people.

And then there are the legions of compromised TV, newspaper and magazine reporters and editors who just naturally lean left.  They will just naturally gravitate toward Barry, if not because they believe in his policies and ideology, then because they fear ostracism from their colleagues if they abandon The One.

Oh, and I almost forgot Wall Street.  Heck, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, J.P. Morgan, et al practically make up Obama's entire cabinet.  There's a heck of a TARP to protect against upchucking from excessive gorging.

A year or so ago, I felt supremely confident that Barack Obama would be such a horrendous president (so bad, he makes Jimmy Carter look good) that Americans would certainly repudiate him in 2012.  Now I'm not so sure.

It is a disconcerting possibility, but Obama just might be our president through 2016.  Heaven help us.

 

 

Bullheaded Unionists

It's too bad our schools do such a lousy job of teaching history, because if they did teach it well, today's young people would be far more aware of the outrageous nature of the militant unions ensconsed contemptuously on their high horses.  Perhaps it's all by design, on which I will elaborate shortly.

First, a refresher course (not that readers of this blog need it, but it never hurts to affirm our beliefs with a restating of the substantive background).

There was a time in this country when workers toiled for long hours in often dangerous, dirty and unhealthy conditions — for dirt wages and no benefits.  Child labor was allowed, and too many workers died because of the neglect of management.

So the formation of unions, in conjunction with passage of important federal legislation, helped protect workers from such abuse and exploitation.  And for a while there, when manufacturing jobs were more plentiful, and foreign competition a non-factor, there was a reasonable balance between the unions' demands and their employers' ability to meet those demands. 

But the good times would not last.  Management of the Big Three auto companies and other industries made many mistakes with arrogance, sloppy and lazy planning, and basically just giving in to whatever the unions wanted, just to keep the gravy train rolling.

Fast forward a few decades, and factor in formidable competition from Asian companies, the increased automation and robotization of manufacturing, and rapidly escalating health care costs compounded by a growing number of aging and unhealthy retired auto workers.  It's the perfect storm for a major reality check.

Similarly, in the public sector, the paradigm has shifted over the past couple of decades.  Taxpayers who are tapped out have said "ENOUGH!" to ever increasing property taxes to pay gold-plated pension and health care benefits to public employees such as teachers and garden variety paper pushing bureaucrats. They have asked, rightfully, why public employee union members think they should be exempt from the major sacrifices millions of other people have endured. 

What is it with this self-righteous sense of indignation and outrage that loudmouth union demostrators have?  Are they self-centered? Greedy? Full of a sense of entitlement?  Perhaps each of those descriptions applies, to some extent.

But utter ignorance of history, and a total lack of appreciation and gratitude for how blessed they are compared to workers 70 or 80 years ago — for where we we've been and where we are today — play a large part in their rage.   Understanding and appreciating history help people keep the present day in perspective.  And perspective has a powerful ability to temper anger and frustration.  But perspective is nowhere to be found if one is devoid of history, as are so many unionists.

Hopelessly partisan sentiments also blind the unionists from reality.  Unions support Democrats.  And Democrats often are demagogues.  Demagogues who ignore demographics, which have huge implications for the unsustainable entitlements of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

Demographics play a major role in ensuring that the old paradigms of generous union benefits sustained by a huge baby boom consumer market has reached its end.

It is well worth mentioning that even liberal labor stalwarts President Franklin Roosevelt and AFL-CIO president George Meany opposed collective bargaining for public sector workers.  They understood that government has a monopoly on certain services, does not make a profit, has no competitors, and when public workers strike, they strike against taxpayers.

The American economy, and indeed,the world economy, evolve and mutate.  The old rules and paradigms cannot persist into perpetuity.

But setting aside the merits of the argument as well as the fiscal and economic realities, one thing that appalls me is the impolite and obnoxious tone that so many unionist militants exhibit.  Profanity, obscene pickets, and occasionally violence and vandalism speak to an infantile and reckless rage that I firmly believe are fostered and encouraged by a profound sense of entitlement.

This goes back to my first paragraph: If teachers, whose unions support and are supported by Democrats, deliberately fail to teach history, many of their students (and indeed, the teachers themselves), will have no qualms about raising holy hell to avoid paying 20 percent of their health care premiums.

Some of those students will become public sector employees who will eventually be out in front of some state capitol railing against a governor for trying to do what's necessary to save the state from bankruptcy.  And many of them, when confronted with rational thought and reasoned argument, will be so full of rage and frustration that anyone would dare challenge their supposedly superior moral high ground, they will lash out with juvenile obscenities and cliched bunkum "Hitler," "Nazi," "fascist" and all the rest of the Left's tired repertroire.

These are the same folks who thought it was oh, so cool to wear Che Guevara T-shirts in college, totally obtuse about Guevara's true nature: a thuggish, brutal bigot who tortured and murdered gays, Jehovah's witnesses and others who didn't subscribe to his sick Marxist swill.

So maybe it's all by design.  The teachers keep dumbing 'em down, knowing they'll have an ample supply of useful idiots to do their bidding in front of the TV cameras, and to keep pumping money into the corrupt Democrat machine that is persistently destroying this country with its lunatic fiscal and social policies.  And the useless hacks inside the Beltway are loving every minute of it, knowing full well the union dough will keep rolling in.

If egos were orgasms, Chuck Schumer would have died of a heart attack long ago.

 

 

 

 

 

The truth about the budget deal...or why conservatives act like little girls

I've been busy moving the family to a new ranch so I'm a little late to the rodeo.  

There's been a lot of sturm and drang about the budget deal, much of it surprisingly negative - I say "surprisingly" because I normally thought of people like Mark Steyn and organizations like National Review as having some sort of wisdom and/or perspective.  Instead, they are acting like frustrated tweens who have been denied tickets to the Hannah Montana concert.

It is true that the $38 billion budget deal is not perfect.  It does not cut all that deeply, and does not zero out each and every liberal boondoggle.  However, it is a first step.

As Ed Morrissey noted at Hot Air, the rumors that the the continuing resolution only cut a few hundred million are greatly exaggerated.

Government budgeting is complicated, and I am a firm proponent that the GOP should stop naming number amounts and start going after specific programs.  The numbers move all over the place, and it is easy to argue about what they mean and what the cuts will do.

Programs, on the other hand, either have a track record of success or are totally useless.  Republicans can and should take a page out of the much-quoted Alinsky handbook and "isolate and personalize" underperforming or redundant programs.

When you say you are cutting $100 billion, it is easy for Democrats to start screaming that you are starving Grandma.  However, eliminating a New Deal-era program that has accomplished nothing is a much easier sell.  Now the Dems are forced to defend wasteful spending with no results.

What is more, many of these agencies are redundant.  So when the Dems say "They want to make food less safe," or whatever, the response is that "No, there are other agencies that already do that.  We're cutting waste - just like the President said we should."

I am also tired of conservatives expecting to reverse 60 years of liberals in one freaking bill.  Seriously?

The trick is to use the "death by a thousand cuts" method.  Zero out the redundant agencies, impound unused funds, impose hiring freezes and slowly starve the beast - just as it was slowly grown in the first place.

No matter what, do not try for a showdown leading to a government shut down.  It is pointless and counterproductive.  Instead, concentrate on repeated small-scale cuts and keep the Democrats on the strategic defensive.

Force them to explain why these redundant programs need to be kept, and why your sensible reforms to Medicaid and Social Security won't work.  

The task of educating the voters will take years, and it must be placed upon a foundation of trust.  Independent voters are still very leery about giving Republicans power in Washington again.  By taking a measured approach and avoiding Gingrich-like tantrums, they can win this argument and demonstrate that the Democrats simply aren't serious.

Finally, I will say that this budget deal was a big win for the GOP, and it has nothing to do with numbers and everything to do with momentum and credibility.  The momentum is on our side.  We must not led Dem spin convince us that we have lost it.  Even if the bill only cut one dollar, it is still a cut, which is the opposite of what the president proposed.

Moreover, the Dems has to reverse themselves, going from slamming the hateful, mean-spirited draconian cuts to praising their historic achievement.  Save those sound bites for later and point out that the Dems simply can't be trusted on budget matters.

I hate to say this to the guys at National Review and particularly Mark Steyn, but grow up a little.  Short of a Pinochet-like dictator, the budget mess is not going to fixed in two years.  That is simply the way our system works.  Pining for some ubermench to come in and fix it all overnight, or expecting the GOP to dismantle the entire massive bloated welfare state in 18 months is ludicrous.  Experienced commentators should know better.