Thanksgiving - We Gather Together - We Celebrate In Song

We have so much - let's give thanks for what we have as a result of others having sacrificed everything so we can carry on the spirit of freedom. It's our job now if the spirit is willing. The song "We Gather Together" is perfect for this occasion.

Read the history of this song - it's history tells us who we are and how others before us fought to ensure our religious freedom that is the bed rock of America.


Thursday Song Lyric: We Gather Together[
David Kopel, November 27, 2008 at 2:55am

http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2008_11_23-2008_11_29.shtml#1227772551]

The great Dutch hymn "We Gather Together" celebrates Dutch victory in a battle of the war of independence from Spain. The hymn was adopted by Americans because it resonated so much with their own circumstances. It's a very relevant song this year, too, as the war between freedom and tyranny continues.

Here's my VC post on the song, including the full lyrics, from 2005. And here's a good version of the song, from YouTube.

YouTube has plenty of other versions too, if you want to hear pure organ music, or a church performance in Spanish.

Trackbacks (2005 Article)"*We all do extoll Thee, Thou leader in battle":*

A wonderful article by Melanie Kirkpatrick in today's Opinion Journal details the history of the Thanksgiving hymn "We Gather Together." Originally written in Dutch for an already-familiar melody , the hymn was a celebration of the victory of the Dutch (who were Calvinists) at the 1597 cavalry Battle of Turnhout, in their decades-long war for national independence against Catholic Spain. Turnhout was the first time the Dutch had defeated the Spanish in an open-field battle.

John Lothrop Motley in his 1860 masterpiece History of the United Netherlands, 1597-98 explained the significance of Turnhout: The true and abiding interest of the battle is derived from is moral effect, from its influence on the people of the Netherlands. And this could scarcely be exaggerated.

The nation was electrified, transformed in an instant. Who now should henceforth dare to say that one Spanish fighting-man was equal to five or ten Hollanders? At last the days of Jemmingen and Mooker-heath needed no longer to be remembered by every patriot with a shudder of shame. Here at least in the open field a Spanish army, after in vain refusing a combat and endeavouring to escape, had literally bitten the dust before one fourth of its own number. And this effect was a permanent one.

Thenceforth for foreign powers to talk of mediation between the republic and the ancient master, to suggest schemes of reconciliation and of a return to obedience, was to offer gratuitous and trivial insult, and we shall very soon have occasion to mark the simple eloquence with which the thirty-eight Spanish standards of Turnhout, hung up in the old hall of the Hague, were made to reply to the pompous rhetoric of an interfering ambassador.Because the Dutch won the war, they were able to build in the 17th century the first nation in the modern world which practiced religious tolerance.

The religious freedom which we enjoy today in the United States was won for us, in part, by the brave cavalrymen of Prince Maurice's army who risked (and, in some cases, lost) their lives against the larger Spanish force.

Like Passover, Thanksgiving is a time to reflect on the debts of thanks we owe to previous generations which fought (in various ways, including literally) for freedom, and, especially, to God for leading them in their fight. Thanksgiving in 2005 is also an especially appropriate time to reflect on our own contemporary obligations to ensure that the sacred light of religious freedom is never extinguished, as our nation is now engaged in a world-wide war against an enemy determined to destroy that freedom.

"We gather together to ask the Lord's blessing,
He chastens and hastens His will to make known;
The wicked oppressing now cease from distressing,
Sing praises to His name - He forgets not His own.//
Beside us to guide us, our God with us joining,
Ordaining, maintaining His kingdom divine,
So from the beginning the fight we were winning;
Thou, Lord, wast at our side, all glory be Thine.//We all do extol Thee,
Thou Leader in battle,And pray that Thou still our defender wilt be.
Let Thy congregation escape tribulation!
Thy name be ever praised! O Lord, make us free!" /

Have A Great Thanksgiving : God Bless Our Country

No matter what happens in America, we still have a great county, a God blessed country for which we all should be eternally thankful.

Enjoy the fruits of your labors tomorrow and always. See you on Monday - I'm heading up north to be with family. No better place to be on such an occasion.

Keep the faith

Criminals Want Gun Control Now : A Video

Gun control would help the criminals to succeed at their chosen trade - now there is too much stress and fear that they might get shot while the rob or rape someone.

This makes a lot sense given the new thinking in this country - everyone is a victim, even the criminal.

Hurry and send a note to Obama asking to speed up his plans to confiscate all weapons from the American citizens - it will surely help the criminal and, at the same time, help Obama's plan to control every aspect of the American way of life.

Space-based Missile Defense Needed Now : EMP Attack A Reality

An EMP attack, Electromagnetic Pulse, would destroy America as we know it for at least a decade or more, and as this author points out, for the rest of the free world as well. Many countries would never recover.

Will the new president take this threat seriously? Maybe - but most likely he will rely on dialogue to thwart our enemies.

Keep the faith.

What a Single Nuclear Warhead Could Do
Why the U.S. needs a space-based missile defense against an EMP attack.
By BRIAN T. KENNEDY http://online.wsj.com/search/search_center.html?KEYWORDS=BRIAN+T.+KENNEDY&ARTICLESEARCHQUERY_PARSER=bylineAND

As severe as the global financial crisis now is, it does not pose an existential threat to the U.S. Through fits and starts we will sort out the best way to revive the country's economic engine. Mistakes can be tolerated, however painful. The same may not be true with matters of national security.

Although President George W. Bush has accomplished more in the way of missile defense than his predecessors -- including Ronald Reagan -- he will leave office with only a rudimentary system designed to stop a handful of North Korean missiles launched at our West Coast. Barack Obama will become commander in chief of a country essentially undefended against Russian, Chinese, Iranian or ship-launched terrorist missiles. This is not acceptable.

The attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, have proven how vulnerable we are. On that day, Islamic terrorists flew planes into our buildings. It is not unreasonable to believe that if they obtain nuclear weapons, they might use them to destroy us. And yet too many policy makers have rejected three basic facts about our position in the world today:

First, as the defender of the Free World, the U.S. will be the target of destruction or, more likely, strategic marginalization by Russia, China and the radical Islamic world.

Second, this marginalization and threat of destruction is possible because the U.S. is not so powerful that it can dictate military and political affairs to the world whenever it wants. The U.S. has the nuclear capability to vanquish any foe, but is not likely to use it except as a last resort.

Third, America will remain in a condition of strategic vulnerability as long as it fails to build defenses against the most powerful political and military weapons arrayed against us: ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads. Such missiles can be used to destroy our country, blackmail or paralyze us. Any consideration of how best to provide for the common defense must begin by acknowledging these facts.

Consider Iran. For the past decade, Iran -- with the assistance of Russia, China and North Korea -- has been developing missile technology. Iranian Defense Minister Ali Shamkhani announced in 2004 their ability to mass produce the Shahab-3 missile capable of carrying a lethal payload to Israel or -- if launched from a ship -- to an American city. The current controversy over Iran's nuclear production is really about whether it is capable of producing nuclear warheads. This possibility is made more urgent by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's statement in 2005: "Is it possible for us to witness a world without America and Zionism?

But you had best know that this slogan and this goal are attainable, and surely can be achieved."Mr. Ahmadinejad takes seriously, even if the average Iranian does not, radical Islam's goal of converting, subjugating or destroying the infidel peoples -- first and foremost the citizens of the U.S. and Israel. Even after 9/11, we appear not to take that threat seriously. We should.

Think about this scenario: An ordinary-looking freighter ship heading toward New York or Los Angeles launches a missile from its hull or from a canister lowered into the sea. It hits a densely populated area. A million people are incinerated. The ship is then sunk. No one claims responsibility. There is no firm evidence as to who sponsored the attack, and thus no one against whom to launch a counterstrike.

But as terrible as that scenario sounds, there is one that is worse. Let us say the freighter ship launches a nuclear-armed Shahab-3 missile off the coast of the U.S. and the missile explodes 300 miles over Chicago. The nuclear detonation in space creates an electromagnetic pulse (EMP).Gamma rays from the explosion, through the Compton Effect, generate three classes of disruptive electromagnetic pulses, which permanently destroy consumer electronics, the electronics in some automobiles and, most importantly, the hundreds of large transformers that distribute power throughout the U.S.

All of our lights, refrigerators, water-pumping stations, TVs and radios stop running. We have no communication and no ability to provide food and water to 300 million Americans.This is what is referred to as an EMP attack, and such an attack would effectively throw America back technologically into the early 19th century. It would require the Iranians to be able to produce a warhead as sophisticated as we expect the Russians or the Chinese to possess. But that is certainly attainable. Common sense would suggest that, absent food and water, the number of people who could die of deprivation and as a result of social breakdown might run well into the millions.

Let us be clear. A successful EMP attack on the U.S. would have a dramatic effect on the country, to say the least. Even one that only affected part of the country would cripple the economy for years. Dropping nuclear weapons on or retaliating against whoever caused the attack would not help. And an EMP attack is not far-fetched.

Twice in the last eight years, in the Caspian Sea, the Iranians have tested their ability to launch ballistic missiles in a way to set off an EMP. The congressionally mandated EMP Commission, with some of America's finest scientists, has released its findings and issued two separate reports, the most recent in April, describing the devastating effects of such an attack on the U.S.

The only solution to this problem is a robust, multilayered missile-defense system. The most effective layer in this system is in space, using space-based interceptors that destroy an enemy warhead in its ascent phase when it is easily identifiable, slower, and has not yet deployed decoys. We know it can work from tests conducted in the early 1990s. We have the technology. What we lack is the political will to make it a reality.

An EMP attack is not one from which America could recover as we did after Pearl Harbor. Such an attack might mean the end of the United States and most likely the Free World. It is of the highest priority to have a president and policy makers not merely acknowledge the problem, but also make comprehensive missile defense a reality as soon as possible.

*Mr. Kennedy is president of the Claremont Institute and a member of the Independent Working Group on Missile Defense.*Please add your comments to the Opinion Journal forum http://forums.wsj.com/viewtopic.php?t=4600.

America Is Last Best Hope for Freedom : Europe Waves Goodbye

One has to stop and reflect on just what happened last November 4th when the Europeans have this dim outlook on the results. I mean, Europe has always held a special place in the hearts of the liberal Democrats. Remember several liberal Supreme Court judges wanting to study the European mind to help make decisions that effect America. The 'worldly view'. Barack Obama?

And don't forget Jimmy Carter and Ted Kennedy's efforts on the behalf of any tyrant that has total control of it's population through fear. The liberal mind is convinced fear and intimidation work. Along with misinformation and outright lies, the results of the election proves it works.

This article from London is an eyeopener as it lays out the 'European mind' on Obama. I'm sure this isn't what the Obama masses had in mind when they decided to drink the cool aide.

Keep the faith - the battle goes on!

*The night we waved goodbye to America... our last best hope on Earth *
Last updated at 5:57 PM on 10th November 2008

London Daily Mail

Anyone would think we had just elected a hip, skinny and youthful replacement for God, with a plan to modernise Heaven and Hell – or that at the very least John Lennon had come back from the dead.

The swooning frenzy over the choice of Barack Obama as President of the United States must be one of the most absurd waves of self-deception and swirling fantasy ever to sweep through an advanced civilisation. At least Mandela-worship – its nearest equivalent – is focused on a man who actually did something.

I really don’t see how the Obama devotees can ever in future mock the Moonies, the Scientologists or people who claim to have been abducted in flying saucers. This is a cult like the one which grew up around Princess Diana, bereft of reason and hostile to facts.

The night America changed: Barack and Michelle Obama in Chicago

It already has all the signs of such a thing. The newspapers which recorded Obama’s victory have become valuable relics. You may buy Obama picture books and Obama calendars and if there isn’t yet a children’s picture version of his story, there soon will be.

Proper books, recording his sordid associates, his cowardly voting record, his astonishingly militant commitment to unrestricted abortion and his blundering trip to Africa, are little-read and hard to find. If you can believe that this undistinguished and conventionally Left-wing machine politician is a sort of secular saviour, then you can believe anything.. He plainly doesn’t believe it himself.

His cliche-stuffed, PC clunker of an acceptance speech suffered badly from nerves. It was what you would expect from someone who knew he’d promised too much and that from now on the easy bit was over.

He needn’t worry too much. From now on, the rough boys and girls of America’s Democratic Party apparatus, many recycled from Bill Clinton’s stained and crumpled entourage, will crowd round him, to collect the rich spoils of his victory and also tell him what to do, which is what he is used to.

Just look at his sermon by the shores of Lake Michigan. He really did talk about a ‘new dawn’, and a ‘timeless creed’ (which was ‘yes, we can’). He proclaimed that ‘change has come’. He revealed that, despite having edited the Harvard Law Review, he doesn’t know what ‘enormity’ means. He reached depths of oratorical drivel never even plumbed by our own Mr Blair, burbling about putting our hands on the arc of history (or was it the ark of history?) and bending it once more toward the hope of a better day (Don’t try this at home).

I am not making this up. No wonder that awful old hack Jesse Jackson sobbed as he watched. How he must wish he, too, could get away with this sort of stuff. And it was interesting how the President-elect failed to lift his admiring audience by repeated – but rather hesitant – invocations of the brainless slogan he was forced by his minders to adopt against his will – ‘Yes, we can’. They were supposed to thunder ‘Yes, we can!’ back at him, but they just wouldn’t join in. No wonder. Yes we can what exactly? Go home and keep a close eye on the tax rate, is my advice.

He’d have been better off bursting into ‘I’d like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony’ which contains roughly the same message and might have attracted some valuable commercial sponsorship. Perhaps, being a Chicago crowd, they knew some of the things that 52.5 per cent of America prefers not to know. They know Obama is the obedient servant of one of the most squalid and unshakeable political machines in America. They know that one of his alarmingly close associates, a state-subsidised slum landlord called Tony Rezko, has been convicted on fraud and corruption charges.

They also know the US is just as segregated as it was before Martin Luther King – in schools, streets, neighbourhoods, holidays, even in its TV-watching habits and its choice of fast-food joint. The difference is that it is now done by unspoken agreement rather than by law.

If Mr Obama’s election had threatened any of that, his feel-good white supporters would have scuttled off and voted for John McCain, or practically anyone. But it doesn’t. Mr Obama, thanks mainly to the now-departed grandmother he alternately praised as a saint and denounced as a racial bigot, has the huge advantages of an expensive private education. He did not have to grow up in the badlands of useless schools, shattered families and gangs which are the lot of so many young black men of his generation.

If the nonsensical claims made for this election were true, then every positive discrimination programme aimed at helping black people into jobs they otherwise wouldn’t get should be abandoned forthwith. Nothing of the kind will happen. On the contrary, there will probably be more of them. And if those who voted for Obama were all proving their anti-racist nobility, that presumably means that those many millions who didn’t vote for him were proving themselves to be hopeless bigots. This is obviously untrue.

Yes we can what?: Barack Obama ran on the ticket of change

I was in Washington DC the night of the election. America’s beautiful capital has a sad secret. It is perhaps the most racially divided city in the world, with 15th Street – which runs due north from the White House – the unofficial frontier between black and white. But, like so much of America, it also now has a new division, and one which is in many ways much more important.

I had attended an election-night party in a smart and liberal white area, but was staying the night less than a mile away on the edge of a suburb where Spanish is spoken as much as English, plus a smattering of tongues from such places as Ethiopia, Somalia and Afghanistan. As I walked, I crossed another of Washington’s secret frontiers. There had been a few white people blowing car horns and shouting, as the result became clear.

But among the Mexicans, Salvadorans and the other Third World nationalities, there was something like ecstasy. They grasped the real significance of this moment. They knew it meant that America had finally switched sides in a global cultural war. Forget the Cold War, or even the Iraq War. The United States, having for the most part a deeply conservative people, had until now just about stood out against many of the mistakes which have ruined so much of the rest of the world.

Suspicious of welfare addiction, feeble justice and high taxes, totally committed to preserving its own national sovereignty, unabashedly Christian in a world part secular and part Muslim, suspicious of the Great Global Warming panic, it was unique. These strengths had been fading for some time, mainly due to poorly controlled mass immigration and to the march of political correctness. They had also been weakened by the failure of America’s conservative party – the Republicans – to fight on the cultural and moral fronts.

They preferred to posture on the world stage. Scared of confronting Left-wing teachers and sexual revolutionaries at home, they could order soldiers to be brave on their behalf in far-off deserts. And now the US, like Britain before it, has begun the long slow descent into the Third World.

How sad. Where now is our last best hope on Earth?

What To Do Now : The GOP Must Decide - #7

Now this article is nostly on the mark as far as I'm concerned. The Grand Old Party has abandoned it's basic principles for access to power - that is the liberal agenda of more money in hand means more power to stay in power, principles be damned.

He leaves out some stuff that is important in any campaign and that is the media influence on the general pubic. As a rule, the general public is very short sighted in that they have never seen the big picture. They are concerned with their personal life and anyone that promises them an easier ride they will jump on the passing wagon. They have a very low horizon.

And another thing, where does the hate come from for George Bush? Compared to Bill Clinton he is a saint. But yet most people find fault. Why is that? There is no bases in fact - hmmmm - do ya think the press has anything to do with how people think? And is the press liberal? Does the press hate anything and everything that is even remotely conservative? da!

You decide!

How the GOP Got Here
Understanding and recriminating.
An NRO Symposium

National Review Online asked some regulars to address: “What happened to the Republican party Tuesday? Who’s to blame?”

John J. Pitney Jr.

John McCain made mistakes. But even if he had run a brilliant campaign, the result probably would not have been much different. With a worsening economy, a protracted war, and an unpopular incumbent at the end of an eight-year tenure, it would have been extremely difficult for any Republican to win.

Political scientist Alan Abramowitz has an election-forecasting model that takes such conditions into account. Several months ago, before the start of the fall campaign, his model predicted that Obama would win the two-party popular vote with 54 percent to McCain's 46 percent.

But Republicans are hardly blameless. Fourteen years ago, they took control of Congress on the strength of their ideas. Over time, though, they put the retention of power ahead of the advancement of principle.

They squeezed campaign contributions from interest groups while they neglected the grassroots donors who believed in conservative ideals.

They abandoned belief money in order to get access money, and they ended up with neither.

If they want to reconnect with their supporters, they should spend less time at the Capitol Hill Club and more time at Sam’s Club.

— John J. Pitney Jr. is Roy P. Crocker Professor of American Politics at Claremont McKenna College.

What Happened to The GOP : Pundits Weigh In - #6

Here is another view of what happened last November 4th - Mark has some good points but, in my view, still doesn't get what the real problem is - you decide.

How the GOP Got Here
Understanding and recriminating.
An NRO Symposium

Well that wasn't good news for the Right, last night! National Review Online asked some regulars to address: “What happened to the Republican party Tuesday? Who’s to blame?”

Mark Steyn

I congratulate Senator Obama on a remarkable and decisive victory. It was in many ways the final battle in a war the Republican Party didn’t even bother fighting — the “long march through the institutions.”

While the Senator certainly enjoyed the patronage of the Chicago machine, he is not primarily a political figure: Whether “educators” like William Ayers or therapeutic pop-culture types like Oprah, his closest associations are beyond the world of electoral politics.

He emerged rather from all the cultural turf the GOP largely abandoned during its 30-year winning streak at the ballot box, and his victory demonstrates the folly of assuming that folks will continue to pull the lever for guys with an R after their name every other November even as all the other institutions in society become de facto liberal one-party states.

Bill Bennett asked me on the air the other day why voters were so hot for this hope’n’change mush, and I suggested that it’s the dominant vernacular of the age. Go into almost any American grade-school and stroll the corridors: you’ll find the walls lined with Sharpie-bright supersized touchy-feely abstractions: “RESPECT,” “DREAM,” “TOGETHER,” “DIVERSITY.”

By contrast, Mister Maverick talked of “reaching across the aisle” and ending “earmarks,” which may sound heroic in Washington but ring shriveled and reductive to anyone who’s not obsessed with legislative process. This dead language embodied the narrow sliver of turf on which he was fighting, while Obama was bestriding the broader cultural space.

Republicans need to start their own long march back through all the institutions they ceded. Otherwise, the default mode of this society will be liberal, and what’s left of the Republican party will be reduced (as in other parts of the west) to begging the electorate for the occasional opportunity to prove it can run the liberal state just as well as liberals can.


— Mark Steyn contributes to National Review, among other publications. He is the author of America Alone.

Banking Terror Continues : Leftist Bruce Marks' Marxism

Just when you were starting to think we were out of the woods on this financial mess, we find the terror from the left is still with us. Bruce Marks and his NACA organization, Neighborhood Assistance Crop. of America, is on the move to stop all foreclosures on those that can't pay anything on their bad loans that were forced on the industry by Marks and Obama's friends in ACORN.

Sen. Dodd and Barney Frank will now see to it that the taxpayers will pay for everything, including the next 100 million in wages and bonuses to members of the select banking committee members in congress. Just like Franklin Raines and Jim Johnston were rewarded for their great ability to control Fannie and Freddy in favor of their personal bank accounts for the last 6 years.

One has to wonder just how blind are the American people to vote the same crooks right back into the same crime scene that they so coolly worked to their personal advantage.

Keep the faith - lots of people are watching these criminals now.

The Bank Terrorist
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Posted Wednesday, November 19, 2008

For years, a self-described "bank terrorist" blackmailed banks into making bad home loans in our inner cities. Now those loans are defaulting by the millions, and he's blaming banks.

Bruce Marks, founder of the leftist Neighborhood Assistance Corp. of America, makes a good living shaking down banks for loans to deadbeat borrowers that he thinks are entitled to homes.

http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=311990700249053

Activist Bruce Marks, speaking in February at a housing conference, has a history of terrorizing banks until they make questionable home loans. Last month, he and about 100 urban protesters stormed Fannie Mae's headquarters, demanding it stop foreclosures on subprime houses — the same homes his group pressured Fannie to fund. As usual, the bullying tactics worked: Fannie Mae is now reviewing every foreclosure, while increasing the number of mortgages it restructures by lowering interest rates and extending loan terms to make payments more affordable.

The government-backed firm guarantees some 30% of the nation's outstanding mortgages. Marks founded Boston-based NACA last decade to fulfill his warped sense of the American dream. He thinks owning a home is a right, not a goal. And he thinks every American should have a house — even those who can't pay for one. Marks, who proudly calls himself a bank terrorist, has extorted billions of dollars from Citigroup and other large banks to subsidize uncreditworthy borrowers in the inner city, where he accused the banks of "redlining."

In 2004, for example, he threatened to blow up a merger deal between Bank of America and Fleet Bank by complaining to regulators that the banks weren't making enough loans to minorities under the Community Reinvestment Act. The banks, in turn, paid him off with $6 billion in mortgage commitments.The nonprofit NACA uses such ransom money to fund its own mortgages to high-risk borrowers without requiring down payments or good credit.

Marks considers such underwriting requirements "patronizing and racist."He boasts that 99% of the mortgage applications taken through NACA are approved, giving new meaning to the term "easy lending." Listen to NACA's pitch:"Come to NACA, and regardless of how bad your credit is, regardless of how little you have saved, we will work with you for as long as it takes, until you are prepared for a mortgage better than what the wealthiest, most connected borrowers get."

These are the standards NACA and ACORN and other bank terrorists foisted on the banking industry, using as their cudgel the Community Reinvestment Act, which mandates (under threat of severe penalty) that banks make inner-city loans to people who can't afford them.

Now these groups have the nerve to demonize the banks for the inevitable foreclosures. How many of NACA's borrowers default on NACA's own loans? We don't know. Marks won't disclose his internal data. But by the end of the last decade, 8% of the mortgages NACA had arranged through Fleet Bank were delinquent, compared with the national average of 1.9%

Congress' banking committee chiefs, Sen. Chris Dodd and Rep. Barney Frank, are also demanding banks stop foreclosures. And guess who they've invited to testify about that? That's right: Marks, who has proposed stopping all resets on subprime adjustable mortgages and allowing late payments for up to 90 days.

Marks insists that regulators "force" lenders to restructure their loans to prevent foreclosures from going forward."For noncooperative lenders," he says, "the regulators can and must impose 'cease and desist' orders." For future underwriting practices, Marks urges lenders to adopt the NACA model."NACA has done lending the right way," he says. "No down payment. No closing costs. No fees. No perfect credit. At a below-market fixed rate."And no repayment or profit.

Call it Marksism.

Bankruptcy Explained As Best for Automakers

Here is a very good article on how and why the US automakers must go through bankruptcy to survive this economic down turn from the Heritage Foundation.

This is well worth the time to bring yourself up to speed on the 'ins and outs' of the problem that now exists in the big three automakers. You certainly won't get anything like this from the main stream media and certainly not from our government.


http://www.heritage.org/Research/Economy/lm33.cfm

Liberals and RINOs Guarantee Automakers Demise

This is just one more article on how the government will guarantee the destruction of the big three automakers in this country. Just what it will take for the politicians to wake up to the fact that 'central planning' doesn't work, proof from the old Soviets, and let these companies find there own levels in the open market, will take a complete crash of the industry. In which case, we will all be the recipients of this government disaster in the form of an economy sinking further into the dark hole of recession.

As for a fix to this next disaster, the politicians will just say, 'well back to the drawing board' as they find new ways to destroy the American dream of self determination. The politicians will be totally unaffected.

Did you ever wonder who do these people think they work for, or do they think once elected they are royalty, above having to take responsibility?

As Jenkins points out, Obama and the liberal Democrats, will need to find cover when this doesn't work - oh yeah, again, they have the best one of all, ' bad management and the Republicans' - no mention, of course, what hand the UAW has had in this mess. After all they are mostly good Democrats.

Keep the faith - the next battle is about to begin.


Obama's Car Puzzle ·
By HOLMAN W. JENKINS, JR.

You have in GM's Volt a perfect car of the Age of Obama -- or at least the Honeymoon of Obama, before the reality principle kicks in.

Even as GM teeters toward bankruptcy and wheedles for billions in public aid, its forthcoming plug-in hybrid continues to absorb a big chunk of the company's product development budget. This is a car that, by GM's own admission, won't make money. It's a car that can't possibly provide a buyer with value commensurate with the resources and labor needed to build it. It's a car that will be unsalable without multiple handouts from government.[Business World]AP

The first subsidy has already been written into law, with a $7,500 tax handout for every buyer. Another subsidy is in the works, in the form of a mileage rating of 100 mpg -- allowing GM to make and sell that many more low-mileage SUVs under the cockamamie "fleet average" mileage rules.

Even so, the Volt will still lose money for GM, which expects to price the car at up to $40,000. We're talking about a headache of a car that will have to be recharged for six hours to give 40 miles of gasoline-free driving. What if you park on the street or in a public garage? Tough luck. The Volt also will have a small gas engine onboard to recharge the battery for trips of more than 40 miles. Don't believe press blather that it will get 50 mpg in this mode. Submarines and locomotives have operated on the same principle for a century.

If it were so efficient in cars, they'd clog the roads by now. (That GM allows the 50 mpg myth to persist in the press, and even abets it, only testifies to the company's desperation.) Hardly mentioned is the fact that gasoline goes bad after a few months. If the Volt is used as intended, for daily trips of 40 miles or less, the car's tank will have to be drained periodically and the gas disposed of.

The media have been terrible in explaining how the homegrown car companies landed in their present fix, when other U.S. manufacturers (Boeing, GE, Caterpillar) manage to survive and thrive in global competition. Critics beat up Detroit for building SUVs and pickups (which earn profits) and scrimping on fuel-sippers (which don't).

They call for management's head (fine -- but irrelevant). These pre-mortems miss the point. Critics might more justifiably flay the Big Three for failing long ago to seek a showdown with the UAW to break its labor monopoly.

In truth, though, politicians have repeatedly intervened to prevent the crisis that would finally settle matters.The Carter administration rushed in with loan guarantees to keep Chrysler out of bankruptcy. The Reagan administration imposed quotas on Japanese imports to prop up GM.

Both parties colluded in the fuel-economy loophole that allowed the passenger "truck" boom that kept Detroit's head above water during the '90s.

Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi now want to bail out Detroit once more, while mandating that the Big Three build "green" cars. If consumers really wanted green cars, no mandate would be necessary. Washington here is just marching Detroit deeper into an unsustainable business model, requiring ever more interventions in the future.

The Detroit Three will not bounce back until they're free to buy labor in a competitive marketplace as their rivals do. In the meantime, private money, even in bankruptcy, almost certainly will not be available to refloat GM and colleagues. Nationalization, with or without a Chapter 11 filing, is probably inevitable -- but still won't make them competitive.

History seldom affords such perfect analogies: In 1968, the Penn Central merger (a proxy for GM-Chrysler) was touted as a fix for a sagging rail business. In two years, the company was in bankruptcy. When a judge couldn't find new lenders, Washington absorbed them into government-owned Conrail, but the death spiral continued. Finally, Congress passed the deregulatory Staggers Act, which overnight gave the rail industry back its future. Conrail was triumphantly reprivatized in 1987.

We're about to replay this ordeal with the auto industry. Let's at least give ourselves a chance to be successful on the first try.The simplest step forward would be to get rid of the "two fleet rule," devised by Congress's fuel-mileage managers to keep Detroit making small econoboxes in high-cost UAW factories. Dumping the rule would force the UAW to compete directly inside each company for jobs against cheaper workers abroad.

Even better would be to dump CAFE altogether. If Congress really thinks consumers must be encouraged to use less gas, replace it with an intellectually honest gas tax. Mr. Obama promised to transcend the old stalemates -- let him begin with the 30-year-old fraud that our fuel-economy rules represent.

He ran a brilliant campaign, but his programmatic prescriptions amounted to handwaving designed to capture the presidency rather than tell voters what really to expect. This may have been a virtue in campaigning but it becomes a handicap in governing.

The public now has no idea what to expect -- except miracles, reconciling all opposites, turning all hard choices into gauzy win-wins. Thanks to Detroit, his honeymoon is about to end before it begins.

Liberals Must Now Face Worst Fear : Reality

Ralph Peters has another great article on Obama's new agenda for America - 'it's better to be last than not at all'. Or 'You must sacrifice everything to prove I'm wrong'.

Why would anyone believe it is possible to change a persons mind, through love and honest dialogue, that has it's foundations, built on centuries of indoctrination, killing ones opponent is the only way to advance your own standing in the neighborhood.

I guess you will have to ask the president elect and his rabid followers - maybe after the sobbing and fainting has subsided, just maybe some common sense will enter the fray. If not we all will suffer the results. Oh, yeah, if all does fail - the song in the back of the liberal play book will have to be used and it always works, 'that damn George Bush'.

Keep the faith.


THE TALKING TRAP: AFGHAN FOLLIES
By RALPH PETERS/November 13, 2008/ --

NEGOTIATIONS are the heroin of the chattering classes, blinding them to every reality except the next fix they can inject into our foreign policy.

The pushers - our delighted enemies - pile up strategic profits.

Certainly, there are situations in which negotiations make sense, such as structuring trade terms or defining alliance contributions. But the notion that, if only we can sit down with our enemies, we'll inevitably persuade them to love us is a deadly self-delusion.

There's a looming danger that President-elect Obama's naive and profoundly anti-military cadres will misinterpret Gen. David Petraeus' tactic of opening communications with Taliban elements and seek to make talks the /centerpiece/ of the new administration's Afghan policy. If so, we might as well pack up and leave now. No American soldier should die just so diplomats can rack up frequent-flyer miles.

Negotiations during a conflict only work to our advantage when we're in a position of strength that threatens the enemy's existence or when bloodied opponents have wearied of the fight. Both conditions applied in Iraq.They /don't/ apply in Afghanistan.

In Iraq, al Qaeda had worn out its welcome. The Sunni Arabs /wanted/ our help. In Afghanistan, Taliban-style Islamist fanaticism has a deep constituency. While most Afghans don't want the Taliban back, a fierce minority does. And, unlike Iraq's Sunni Arabs, the Taliban think they can win.

The equation is simple: We kill them, or we lose. Fighting fanatics is a zero-sum game. And let's stop saying, "We can't kill our way out of this problem." Faced with faith-drunk killers, there's no other way out. History doesn't reveal a single exception.

It's fine to deal with any disenchanted Taliban supporters who approach us - foes we can peel away are always welcome - but begging the hardcore Taliban for talks will only stiffen their convictions. They interpret any readiness to talk as a sign that we're losing.

Our military and political leaders are in danger of investing too much in a model that may not transfer from Iraq to Afghanistan. Iraq's Sunni Arabs weren't religious madmen (with a few exceptions). They were bitter about their loss of power, but weren't anxious to blow themselves to bits for Allah.

The Taliban and al Qaeda mean what they profess, and they profess that it's better to die fighting infidels than to give them an inch. Tribesmen may have various reasons for their local support of the Taliban, but the primary rallying mechanism is a sturdy combination of faith and ethnicity.

Washington doesn't want to hear it. Nobody in DC really believes that other human beings are willing to die for their faith. Religious passion is as foreign to Washington as integrity in the budget process. As this column noted after 9/11, we're fighting enemies who regard death as a promotion. Washington /still/ wants to excuse suicide bombing as a sociological phenomenon.

If Taliban elements agree to talk, most will view the talks as a chance to weaken our resolve - and to buy time. This is the con for which we /always/ fall. The Iranians, Saddam Hussein, the Palestinians, the North Koreans, the North Vietnamese, the Chinese and the Russians all have played "Paralyze the Gringos" with endless talks.

We always wake up alone, with the sheets stained and torn.

If we /can/ cut deals with wavering tribes, great. If we /can /talk (and bribe) some Taliban fighters into laying down their arms, terrific. But I'm going on record to declare that we won't win a duel of words with the Taliban leadership.

Why does Washington put so much faith in endless chatter? For multiple reasons:*

First, few government officials have any sense of the world's brutal reality. They live in a lovely bubble (lined with mirrors).*

Second, most legislators and many high-level federal officials are lawyers. Lawyers get rich by talking. Every success they've had in life has come from some form of bargaining. They can't believe it won't work on suicide bombers.*

Third, Washington has the highest proportion of surviving welfare institutions in the nation. They're called think tanks. They, too, profit from chatter - briefings, panels, seminars, white papers - not deeds.*

Fourth, we're experiencing the long-term effects of ending the draft. It's been great for our military, but disastrous for our country. Our rising generation of leaders lives in a comfy theoretical world in which the military's a distasteful legacy of less-enlightened times.*

Fifth, our leaders are afraid. Whenever they /do/ glimpse the world's horrid realities, they're terrified. So they lie to themselves, pretending that a good heart-to-heart talk will solve any problem (if these guys could talk to the AIDS virus, they'd be in heaven).

And when another round of negotiations fails? The junkie's instant amnesia kicks in. We're already looking forward to another fix.

Ralph Peters' latest book is "Looking for Trouble: Adventures in a Broken World."

More Pundits Speak On GOP : What Now? #5

Everyone has their personal take on what happen that saw the liberals take power in all branches of our government this election cycle.

You decide what is our next move - I think we have to get back to the basics of the conservative agenda - be who we are, not what we think we should be.

Keep the faith -

How the GOP Got Here
Understanding and recriminating.
An NRO Symposium

Well that wasn't good news for the Right, last night! National Review Online asked some regulars to address: “What happened to the Republican party Tuesday? Who’s to blame?”

Greg Mueller

Tuesday night’s defeat was no surprise. For Republicans, the politics is not that difficult to understand. Republicans win elections when they govern and run campaigns as advocates of limited government, strong national defense and speaking out on cultural issues.

We lose elections when we cut deals in the name of pragmatism or try to out liberal the liberals. The Republican brand is deeply damaged. The GOP is no longer trusted by the American people to serve as the party of fiscal discipline. It has lost a willingness to debate cultural issues such as life, gay marriage and cloning — winning issues in past elections for Republicans.

The immigration issue, big government Republicanism, the financial crisis which led to a 700 billion dollar bail out and failure to emphasize Obama's extremism on cultural issues proved to be turning points against Republicans this cycle.

Exit polling conducted by the conservative American Issues Project in key battleground states shows that voters in those states entrust Barack Obama and Democrats on taxes, spending, and the handling of the financial crisis. The only issue voters in key states said they trusted McCain and Republicans more on was the war on terror.

Data also shows that the country remains conservative, but lacks a populist conservative party, a brand the GOP has shed in the last two cycles. Unless the Republican Party returns to the across the board conservative agenda that wins elections, it will remain a minority party. At this point the best and only hope for the GOP to gain back traction is a far left wing Obama Administration and Congress imposing various forms of failed socialist policies. To the wilderness we go.

— Greg Mueller is a Republican strategist and president of CRC Public Relations based in Alexandria, Va.

US Auto Makers Better Off Going Bankrupt

The author has a point here in that the auto makers are not looking inward to solve their problems - as we all know as mature adults, and I use that term loosely, anything for nothing will either rust away or fall apart before he end of the day. Anything that is hard fought for will remain at the end of the day.

The auto makers, the big three in this country, must resist the easy solution to their problems. Easy money will not solve their problems - government control of the market, and that is what will happen here as they dictate what the auto makers must build, what the government believes the public wants, read this as centralized planning, will in the end waste the billions given and the auto makers will go under anyway. The market was not allowd to do it's job and let these companies and unions go under, reorganize and come back stronger than ever. But no, the new socialist government knows what's best for everone. Billions wasted again.

The author here fails to mention what part the unions play in all this - their part is equally important as they are responsible for $2600 per car more than their competition. What should the unions do to help solve this problem? Apparently, according to the new president, nothing. hmmmm - go figure.

Keep the faith -

Pulling Plug On GM Would Help Both Auto Industry And Michigan
By JOHN TAMNY
Posted Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Ludwig Von Mises once wrote that the entrepreneur who fails to use his capital to the "best possible satisfaction of consumers" is "relegated to a place in which his ineptitude no longer hurts people's well-being."

The latest losses at General Motors reveal yet again that it is the living embodiment of managerial ineptitude, and to ensure that it no longer fails its customers while harming the well-being of Americans more broadly, it's essential to let the firm die.

Many will of course blanch at the presumed loss of jobs that would result from GM's death, but judging by the high level of unemployment in Michigan, it would be more realistic to say that GM's continued existence under weak management has served as a capital repellant such that capital and jobs will continue to flee the state if GM is saved with the money of others.

Worse, business history, from ships to farming to mining, shows that sectors reliant on government help are invariably weakened as opposed to strengthened. The above is the case because businesses rarely fail due to a lack of money. Instead, poorly run businesses find it hard to raise money in the capital markets. Government money allows the architects of bad decisions to continue making mistakes that cause a company to be capital-deficient to begin with.

This distinction is important, considering the efforts of GM's present management to secure more funds on top of the low-interest loans that Congress recently approved. Were GM a well-managed company, it would have no need to run to the federal government. But because its management has proved time and again that it lacks ability, capital is correctly searching for better opportunities.

Some argue that the release of rescue funds should be contingent on a change of management. That sounds good at first, but then if GM had better management, it would decidedly not need the federal funds it presently seeks.

Last Friday, President-elect Barack Obama described U.S. carmakers as "the backbone of American manufacturing." While his claim is charitably dubious, assuming that he's right, he merely strengthens the argument suggesting GM should be allowed to go bankrupt. That is so because, paradoxical as it sounds, GM's bankruptcy would be a boost for Michigan's economy and the U.S. auto sector generally.

Far from vanishing, many of GM's assets would be quickly purchased by competent foreign automakers eager to expand their capacity in what is the world's largest auto market. Happily, the list of well-run car companies, from Toyota to Nissan to Porsche, is long. How this helps Michigan, the auto sector and smaller firms reliant on the latter's health is pretty clear. With capable auto executives finally overseeing GM's poorly deployed assets, the value and utility of each would rise, thus perpetuating the existence of jobs in the sector, all the while ensuring that other businesses that exist due to GM will enjoy more stable commercial relationships with competent management.

So while the cries of certain Armageddon would be ear splitting in the event of a GM failure, the U.S. auto sector would actually emerge much healthier thanks to a change in ownership that would be the certain result of GM going under. Obama also noted that "we are facing the greatest economic challenge of our lifetime, and we're going to have to act swiftly to resolve it." While some would find Obama's strident tone overdone, if he's in fact correct, his stance speaks to the importance of the government standing aside with regard to GM's troubles rather than giving the firm more capital to destroy.

That is the case because economies only struggle when capital is lacking. Otherwise, they grow, with capital funding new and existing ideas that create wealth and new jobs. So in a sense there's a moral aspect to letting GM implode. Indeed, with companies not in the auto sector presently shedding workers due to a lack of funds, how could Obama or the outgoing administration take even more precious capital from the private sector in order to keep alive a firm notorious for its prodigious misuse of the money offered it?

The better answer for a capital-starved economy would be for the federal government to once again get out of the way, and in doing so, allow funds flow to the very best ideas to ensure as quick a recovery as possible. Importantly, if investment proves nonexistent for GM absent government largess, it's a certainty that foreign carmakers will step in amid the firm's bankruptcy in such a way that job losses will be much less of a problem than is often assumed.

If there's a defense of GM at this point, it has to do with dollar policy in this country that has made long-term planning very difficult. GM did relatively well when the dollar was strong due to lower gasoline prices that made its large vehicles very popular. But as GM presently seeks to create new, smaller models for a world allegedly running out of oil, a stronger dollar has driven down gasoline prices, which means its inventory might yet again not match future economic realities.

The complication there is that GM's management has regularly advocated a weaker dollar, so the problem remains one of management clueless when it comes to understanding what makes the firm prosper.

In the end, the state of Michigan and the U.S. automobile sector are struggling not due to bad luck, but precisely because they cling to a company that investors no longer value. And with GM shares near all-time lows, those with capital are stating loudly that so long as GM remains as is, the funds necessary for job creation will continue to flee.

So rather than waste precious capital in the naive hope of propping up that which investors don't value, it's essential to let GM fail. Only then will a necessary change of ownership occur; the latter change the only solution when it comes to properly utilizing assets whose misuse is presently destroying a formerly great company, not to mention the economic health of the state in which it is headquartered./

Tamny is editor of RealClearMarkets , a senior economist with H.C. Wainwright Economics, and a senior economic adviser to Toreador Research and Trading./

EPA Moves To Help Obama Crush the Economy

This is from the Heritage Foundation - this is not surprising as they will do what ever it take to bring America to it's knees. This is just the first step.


President-elect Obama’s advisers have indicated that his administration will impose startling and unprecedented regulations on the economy.

The Obama administration would act quickly to implement the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed controls on carbon dioxide, which amount to a massive new energy tax. Why do they want to move so quickly? They say their rules are in response to the dangers posed by global warming.

But the truth is that these rules would hurt Americans by driving up gas prices, food prices, transportation costs, and the price of manufactured goods. This greatly outweighs the negligible benefits the regulations might provide the environment.

This intrusive regulation will cost the American economy nearly $7 trillion dollars in lost GDP in just 20 years, and result in massive job losses. Heritage’s respected Center for Data Analysis estimates non-farm employment losses will exceed 800,000 in some years, and manufacturing jobs will plummet. Some industries would lose over half of their jobs. (Some liberals claim that environmental legislation such as this could add “green” jobs, but these new jobs would be offset by larger losses elsewhere.)

Government permits would be needed to expand small businesses and build homes, hospitals and schools. To add insult to injury, foreign competitors will not have to abide by these regulations, leaving American businesses at a disadvantage.
In times of economic uncertainty, the last thing American workers, consumers, and families need is more tedious regulation and costly obstacles engineered to limit and tax American economic growth.

That’s why we need your help. Visit http://www.stopepa.com/ today to tell the bureaucrats at the EPA what you think about these disastrous regulations.

A Liberal Democrat Campaign Rife with Fraud Deemed Okay : Obama Won

Winning isn't the most important thing in a campaign, it is the only thing. Cheating or lying isn't bad if it helps to win. The general public will over look misinformation if they think there is some advantage in it for them. The main stream media as well will not investigate allegations of cheating or fraud if they also see an advantage in it to extend there influence over their readership. The media prides themselves on being able to tell a lie so well and so often it becomes the truth.

When Obama was elected on November 4th, news rooms around the country cheered.

If this sounds like the Obama campaign to you, you must be one of the 55 million that didn't vote for the 'special one'. The Obama campaign knew before the run for the presidency started that they would be able to do anything they wanted to do to win, no matter how corrupt or illegal or underhanded. They knew that the press would ignore even the worst of the infractions. For most of us on the outside looking in on this fiasco of corruption, it was going to be just one more slam-dunk for the liberal socialists. A fore-gone conclusion.

But the sun did come up after the election and all hell didn't break loose around the world, although the Arab world loved the thought that a friend would soon be in the White House. What will take place after January 20th will be something else altogether.

I guess when Nancy Pelosi stood before the House and proclaimed that the Republicans were the party of corruption, she was covering for the liberal Democrats sitting right in front of her. Who knew?

Keep the faith, new weapons to fight the battle are coming on line every day.


Cheat.gov
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Posted Tuesday, November 11, 2008 4:20 PM PT

*Fraud:* Many millions in dubious campaign donations to Barack Obama are going unaudited. Meanwhile, Minnesota's Senate race is ripe for the stealing.

When elections lack integrity, the people no longer rule.

Read More: *Election 2008 http://www.ibdeditorials.com/FeaturedCategories.aspx?sid=1823&cid=1803

We may have found something on which the two most powerful black men in the U.S. government (as of next year) — President-elect Obama and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas — agree. Thomas differs with the rest of the high court on the issue of public disclosure of campaign contributions. Noting that the Federalist Papers "are only the most famous example of the outpouring of anonymous political writing that occurred during the ratification of the Constitution," Thomas contends that "it is only an innovation of modern times that has permitted the regulation of anonymous speech."

In the age of modern communications, it takes a lot of money for speech to reach enough voters to have the kind of effect the Federalist Papers had two centuries ago. So in Thomas' view, the 2002 McCain-Feingold law, with its spending limits on broadcast ads, "directly targets and constricts core political speech, the 'primary object of First Amendment protection.' "How could Obama disagree?

He took hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of "speech" from anonymous sources and used it to saturate the airwaves. Someone once again drove an armored car right through a campaign finance law loophole. Ironically, it was the author of the campaign law, Sen. John McCain, who was run over.

Having reneged on his pledge to accept public financing, Obama will likely escape an audit by the Federal Election Commission — which the heavily outspent loser, McCain, must undergo because he took public funding. So much for those filthy-rich Republicans taking advantage of a system supposedly skewed in their favor.

What all this means is we might never get to the bottom of who the thousands of fictitious donors were with names such as "Test Person" and "Doodad Pro." We might never know if the next president of the United States intentionally took money that exceeded the limits allowed under law, or money from foreign powers.

We might never know if the more than $800,000 in falsely reported funds the Obama campaign paid an offshoot of the left-wing organization ACORN was a coordinated national scam, although the FBI is reportedly investigating the group.

ACORN filed more than 43,000 new voter registration forms in Minnesota, where the razor-thin margin of victory for Republican Sen. Norm Coleman over former "Saturday Night Live" comedian Al Franken evaporated from more than 700 votes to just 221 nearly overnight thanks to "typos" discovered over a week before a scheduled recount.

Fox News reports that much of Franken's mysterious new votes come from one heavily Democratic small town.

That seat could give Democrats an effectively filibuster-proof Senate majority. But if the cloud of voter fraud hangs over both the Senate and the White House — with Obama's untraceable millions in question — the soon-to-be president might want to change the name of his new Web site from "change.gov" to "cheat.gov."

How We Got Here : What Now for The GOP? #4

More pundits join the chorus to find out what happened on November 4th - everyone has their ideas as to what to do now or who is to blame.

Only time will tell if we, as conservatives, have the back bone and perseverance to stand up for what we believe, no matter what is said about us from both sides of the isle. Conservatism has always worked for America, and most people are conservative, so take heart, we can do this. Republicans that want to play both sides of the issues, or even side with socialists, will have to do without conservative support.

Keep the faith -

How the GOP Got Here -Understanding and recriminating. An NRO Symposium
Well that wasn't good news for the Right, last night! National Review Online asked some regulars to address: “What happened to the Republican party Tuesday? Who’s to blame?”

Jonah Goldberg

When asked if he’d run for office again, Ed Koch, the former mayor of New York City, responded: “No! The people of New York threw me out of office, and now they must be punished.” The American voters threw out the Republican party, and they were largely right to. At least in the sense that the GOP deserves to be punished. The problem is that the Democrats do not deserve to win. More on that at NRO later — and by later, I mean the next 2 to 8 years.

I think McCain did better than pretty much any other Republican candidate could have. But I think the McCain campaign didn't do as well as they could have. I think McCain could have won. They blew an amazing number of opportunities. They mishandled Sarah Palin horribly. They were obsessed with unfair media coverage while doing very little to take advantage of it or even do anything serious about it. They inherited an enormous number of problems not of their own making, but they made even more problems for themselves than they needed to.

There will be much more said about this, but in short I think John McCain biggest problem was that the GOP had lost any sense of intellectual or ideological definition and John McCain didn't bother to offer any definition of his own until helped by Joe the Plumber. And by then it was too little too late.

— Jonah Goldberg is the author of Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning.

What IS Obama's Civil Defense Corp? Population Control?

I have posted on this issue in the past and find it significant that it appears again so soon. It does make one pause in that the Democrats, in our recent past history, have shown their preference for foreign leaders that had absolute power. Witness Jimmy Carter and Ted Kennedy found the old Soviet Union to there liking. Jimmy has a special place in his heart for Hugo Chavez and other middle eastern tyrants.

Will Obama decide that he needs to have absolute power to govern this country? What is the purpose of a strong civil defense corp that is responsible only to him? I, for one, hope this is not the case, but his rhetoric in the campaign and his history of befriending and associating with extreme socialists makes me wonder just what his motives are. Also I believe a majority of voters in this country do not know who Obama is, and worse, they don't seem to care.

If Obama strays from his constitutional obligations as president, will those same voters take a different view of this 'special' person that they cried over and fainted for during and after his election? I don't know -

My first reaction would be they will find an excuse for his actions. And as I have stated in the past, even when it becomes clear he is moving in the wrong direction, and we find our selves in mental and or physical chains, will a majority of the people that find him beyond reproach now, will they still believe he is 'the one'? I strongly believe they will. But that's just me taking the worst possible view. In the end, you will have to decide for your self what is right and what is wrong for our country.

But let's keep a close eye on what he does by never letting our guard down - keeping the faith all the while the battle rages.


Georgia congressman warns of Obama dictatorship
By BEN EVANS – WASHINGTON (AP) —

A Republican congressman from Georgia said Monday he fears that President-elect Obama will establish a Gestapo-like security force to impose a Marxist or fascist dictatorship."It may sound a bit crazy and off base, but the thing is, he's the one who proposed this national security force,"

Rep. Paul Broun said of Obama in an interview Monday with The Associated Press. "I'm just trying to bring attention to the fact that we may — may not, I hope not — but we may have a problem with that type of philosophy of radical socialism or Marxism." Broun cited a July speech by Obama that has circulated on the Internet in which the then-Democratic presidential candidate called for a civilian force to take some of the national security burden off the military.

"That's exactly what Hitler did in Nazi Germany and it's exactly what the Soviet Union did," Broun said. "When he's proposing to have a national security force that's answering to him, that is as strong as the U.S. military, he's showing me signs of being Marxist."

Obama's comments about a national security force came during a speech in Colorado about building a new civil service corps. Among other things, he called for expanding the nation's foreign service and doubling the size of the Peace Corps "to renew our diplomacy.""We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we've set," Obama said in July. "We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded."

Broun said he also believes Obama likely will move to ban gun ownership if he does build a national police force.Obama has said he respects the Second Amendment right to bear arms and favors "common sense" gun laws. Gun rights advocates interpret that as meaning he'll at least enact curbs on ownership of assault weapons and concealed weapons.

As an Illinois state lawmaker, Obama supported a ban on semiautomatic weapons and tighter restrictions on firearms generally."We can't be lulled into complacency," Broun said. "You have to remember that Adolf Hitler was elected in a democratic Germany. I'm not comparing him to Adolf Hitler. What I'm saying is there is the potential."

Obama's transition office did not respond immediately to Broun's remarks.Hosted by Google

Tolerance Obama Style : Tolerate Only Those That Agree With You

Truly Obama has brought us all together - some on one side of the street and some on the other side. Nothing has changed nor will it. If he approves only half of what he promised during the campaign, I guarantee things will get much, much worse for everyone.

Tolerance fails T-shirt test
by John Kass - Chicago Tribune
November 14, 2008

As the media keeps gushing on about how America has finally adopted tolerance as the great virtue, and that we're all united now, let's consider the Brave Catherine Vogt Experiment.

Catherine Vogt, 14, is an Illinois 8th grader, the daughter of a liberal mom and a conservative dad. She wanted to conduct an experiment in political tolerance and diversity of opinion at her school in the liberal suburb of Oak Park.

She noticed that fellow students at Gwendolyn Brooks Middle School overwhelmingly supported Barack Obama for president. His campaign kept preaching "inclusion," and she decided to see how included she could be. So just before the election, Catherine consulted with her history teacher, then bravely wore a unique T-shirt to school and recorded the comments of teachers and students in her journal. The T-shirt bore the simple yet quite subversive words drawn with a red marker: McCain Girl

"I was just really curious how they'd react to something that different, because a lot of people at my school wore Obama shirts and they are big Obama supporters," Catherine told us. "I just really wanted to see what their reaction would be."

Immediately, Catherine learned she was stupid for wearing a shirt with Republican John McCain's name. Not merely stupid. Very stupid."People were upset. But they started saying things, calling me very stupid, telling me my shirt was stupid and I shouldn't be wearing it," Catherine said.Then it got worse."One person told me to go die. It was a lot of dying. A lot of comments about how I should be killed," Catherine said, of the tolerance in Oak Park.

But students weren't the only ones surprised that she wore a shirt supporting McCain."In one class, I had one teacher say she will not judge me for my choice, but that she was surprised that I supported McCain," Catherine said.

If Catherine was shocked by such passive-aggressive threats from instructors, just wait until she goes to college."Later, that teacher found out about the experiment and said she was embarrassed because she knew I was writing down what she said," Catherine said. One student suggested that she be put up on a cross for her political beliefs."He said, 'You should be crucifixed.' It was kind of funny because, I was like, don't you mean 'crucified?' " Catherine said.

Other entries in her notebook involved suggestions by classmates that she be "burned with her shirt on" for "being a filthy-rich Republican."Some said that because she supported McCain, by extension she supported a plan by deranged skinheads to kill Obama before the election. And I thought such politicized logic was confined to American newsrooms. Yet Catherine refused to argue with her peers. She didn't want to jeopardize her experiment."I couldn't show people really what it was for. I really kind of wanted to laugh because they had no idea what I was doing," she said. Only a few times did anyone say anything remotely positive about her McCain shirt. One girl pulled her aside in a corner, out of earshot of other students, and whispered, "I really like your shirt."

That's when you know America is truly supportive of diversity of opinion, when children must whisper for fear of being ostracized, heckled and crucifixed.The next day, in part 2 of The Brave Catherine Vogt Experiment, she wore another T-shirt, this one with "Obama Girl" written in blue.

And an amazing thing happened. Catherine wasn't very stupid anymore. She grew brains."People liked my shirt. They said things like my brain had come back, and I had put the right shirt on today," Catherine said.

Some students accused her of playing both sides."A lot of people liked it. But some people told me I was a flip-flopper," she said. "They said, 'You can't make up your mind. You can't wear a McCain shirt one day and an Obama shirt the next day.' "But she sure did, and she turned her journal into a report for her history teacher, earning Catherine extra credit.

We asked the teacher, Norma Cassin-Pountney, whether it was ironic that Catherine would be subject to such intolerance from pro-Obama supporters in a community that prides itself on its liberal outlook.

"That's what we discussed," Cassin-Pountney said about the debate in the classroom when the experiment was revealed. "I said, here you are, promoting this person [Obama] that believes we are all equal and included, and look what you've done? The students were kind of like, 'Oh, yeah.' I think they got it."

Catherine never told us which candidate she would have voted for if she weren't an 8th grader. But she said she learned what it was like to be in the minority."Just being on the outside, how it felt, it was not fun at all," she said.

Don't ever feel as if you must conform, Catherine. Being on the outside isn't so bad. Trust me.jskass@tribune.com

New Life for The M-14 : Sniper-lite Squad Marksmen

This is long over due - we need the flexibility and new tactics to advance in the war on terror.

This is keeping the faith.

*New Lease on Life for the Beloved M-14*

November 13, 2008

Tactical Life by Eric R. Poole

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have demonstrated how critically important snipers are to a fight marked by urban canyons and high-mountain caves. Problem is, those highly-trained sharpshooters are in short supply, and the need for accurate, long-range fire has outpaced the services' ability to field one-shot killers.So both the Army and Marine Corps began a program to seed infantry squads with so-called "designated marksmen" -- call them "snipers-lite."

The growing need to equip these new marksmen with accurized rifles prompted the Army to reconsider the role of the venerable M-14 rifle for the war on terror. Back in Desert Storm, armorers from the 10th Special Forces group took M-14s equipped with a match barrels and fitted a gas piston on them for optimal performance, re-designating it the M-25. They replaced the stock with a McMillan M1A fiberglass one, developed a scope mount and added a Bausch & Lomb 10x40mm fixed-power optic or a Leupold Mark 4.

The revamped M-14 provides the Army squad designated marksman with on-command direct fire support for his squad, a fire team or his platoon. The heavier-caliber sharpshooters provide cover when machine guns displace, counter-sniper fire in urban areas, and they help in overtaking valuable real estate.

Infrared targeting lasers such as the AN/PEQ-2 and PAQ-4C make the DM's job more like 24-hour shift work. Now that suppressors for the M-14-series of rifles are available, the night-vision capabilities coupled with sound mitigation makes the Soldier's ability to own the night even more secure.

Taking the M-14 modifications a step further, Crane Division of the Naval Surface Warfare Center teamed up with Sage International to create an M-14/M1A package that is dubbed the "Enhanced Battle Rifle."Using the M-14 barrel, receiver and trigger groups, the EBR chassis adds a retractable stock, a cheek piece that's adjustable for height and a floated Picatinny quad-rail fore-end made of high-strength aluminum. The EBR also adds a pistol grip for additional control and ergonomic sling points.

But the new rifle is heavier than the M-16 or M-4 which weighs nearly seven pounds, with each 30-round magazine adding another pound. The basic M-14, however, weighs nearly 10 pounds with an addition of almost two pounds for every 20 rounds of 7.62 the EBR fires.

A soldier's wisdom varies from one to another but many don't care about the weight. The confidence in the effective range and terminal ballistics of the M-14's 7.62mm round brings the argument back to the Vietnam-era rifle.The EBR feels a little heavy at the fore end, but this helps the rifle address criticism that it is uncontrollable when firing on full-auto. The additional weight -- and the fact that the stock is in line and parallel with the barrel -- helps reduce muzzle climb.

The EBR chassis comes with a Picatinny rail that replaces the stripper-clip guide, helping Soldiers mount high-powered scopes that can extend the rifle's range. Unique to the EBR is an extended rail just forward of the receiver. For the followers of the Jeff Cooper doctrine on scout rifles, red dot optics work well in making this rifle an effective close quarter battle scout rifle. Regardless of scope height, the shooter can obtain proper cheek weld by adjusting the EBR's stock.

As the Army and Marines Corps continue to develop a semi-auto designated marksman rifle, many within the tactical community feel that the resurrection of the M-14 is just a stopgap. But praise from troops using the M-14's variants and moves made by the Navy suggest otherwise.

In 2004, the Navy signed a contract to upgrade nearly 3,000 of their M-14s with the Sage EBR chassis.What will remain, in any case, is the designated marksman. The smallest infantry unit includes a team leader, two riflemen and a gunner. One of these riflemen will be expected to fill the role of the designated marksman, using optics to distinguish combatants from non-combatants and minimizing collateral risk with precision fire in urban areas.

The book on small unit tactics has evolved to defeat a new kind of enemy, and the old standby Springfield Armory M-14 has evolved right along with it.

More from Tactical-Life.com

Rules To Live by For Men (maybe)

Rules for men -

Avoid arguments with the females about lifting the toilet seat by using the sink.

You only need two tools in life - WD40 and duct tape. If it doesn't move and should, use the WD40! If it shouldn't move and does, use the duct tape!

If you can't fix it with a hammer, you've got an electrical problem.

And finally a daily thought:

some people are like slinkies, not really good for anything .....but they bring a smile to your face when pushed down the stairs!

Barack Obama IS President : White Guilt IS Dead!!

Tom Adkins makes some great points here - white people, the vote that actually turned the table for Obama, voted for the black guy, while 96% of the black population voted for the black guy. hmmmm - so now are the black people the racists and the white people are finally free from being racist? You decide.

In reality, we have to deal in reality after all, we are conservatives and that is where we come from, so a blanket statement that all blacks are racist because they voted for a black guy or all whites aren't racist because they also voted for a black guy is just fantasy, and that's were liberals come from.

In any event, it will be harder for the black separatist to function as they did before the ascension of Barack to the presidency. I believe most white people never did believe or have any guilt concerning slavery, but the media and liberals in general used this as a lever to forge the division between the races. Class envy and racial hatred has always been a standard tactic of the liberal establishment. They use it and then blame others to cover their tracks. This has been the liberal agenda for decades.

I guess I really don't believe a Barack presidency will level the playing field, so to speak, for the races coming together anymore now then in the past - I don't believe, as well, that the tensions were ever that bad to begin with. It was the media and liberals that fanned the flames to keep this problem center stage.

The problem now will be for Barack to deliver everything that the black population has been promised by it's leaders, what ever that might be. If he can't or won't give them what they think they have coming, Barack will be between a rock and a hard spot. hmmm again - maybe this will a tuning point for the black population to find just who they are. Time will tell.

Keep the faith -

By Tom Adkins

Look at my fellow conservatives! There they go, glumly shuffling along, depressed by the election aftermath. Not me. I’m virtually euphoric. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not thrilled with America ’s flirtation with neo socialism. But there’s a massive silver lining in those magical clouds that lofted Barak Obama to the Presidency. For today, without a shred of intellectually legitimate opposition, I can loudly proclaim to America :

The Era of White Guilt is over.

This seemingly impossible event occurred because the vast majority of white Americans didn’t give a fluff about skin color, and enthusiastically pulled the voting lever for a black man. Not just any black man. A very liberal black man who spent his early career race-hustling banks, praying in a racist church for 20 years, and actively worked with America-hating domestic terrorists. Wow! Some resume! Yet they made Barak Obama their leader. Therefore, as of Nov 4th, 2008, white guilt is dead.

For over a century, the millstone of white guilt hung around our necks, retribution for slave-owning predecessors. In the 60s, American liberals began yanking that millstone while sticking a fork in the eye of black Americans, exacerbating the racial divide to extort a socialist solution.

But if a black man can become President, exactly what significant barrier is left? The election of Barak Obama absolutely destroys the entire validation of liberal white guilt. The dragon is hereby slain.

So today, I’m feeling a little “uppity,” if you will. From this day forward, my tolerance level for having my skin color hustled is now exactly ZERO. And it’s time to clean house. No more Reverend Wright’s “God Damn America ,” Al Sharpton’s Church of Perpetual Victimization , or Jesse Jackson’s rainbow racism. Cornell West? You’re a fraud. Go home. All those “black studies” programs that taught kids to hate whitey? You must now thank Whitey. And I want that on the final.

Congressional Black Caucus? Irrelevant. Maxine Waters? Shut up. ACORN? Outlawed. Black Panthers? Go home and pet your kitty. Black separatists? Find another nation that offers better dreams. Go ahead. I’m waiting.

Gangsta rappers? Start praising America . Begin with the Pledge of Allegiance. And please…no more ebonics. Speak English, and who knows where you might end up? Oh, yeah…pull up your pants. Your underwear is showing. You look stupid.

To those Eurosnots who forged entire careers hating America ? I’m still waiting for the first black French President.

And let me offer an equal opportunity whupping. I’ve always despised lazy white people. Now, I can talk smack about lazy black people. You’re poor because you quit school, did drugs, had three kids with three different fathers, and refuse to work. So when you plop your Colt 45-swilling, Oprah watchin’ butt on the couch and complain “Da Man is keepin’ me down,” allow me to inform you: Da Man is now black. You have no excuses.

No more quotas. No more handouts. No more stealing my money because someone’s great-great-great-great grandparents suffered actual pain and misery at the hands of people I have no relation to, and personally revile.

It’s time to toss that massive, obsolete race-hustle machine upon the heap of the other stupid 60s ideas. Drag it over there, by wife swapping, next to dope-smoking. Plenty of room right between free love and cop-killing. Careful…don’t trip on streaking. There ya go, don’t be gentle. Just dump it. Wash your hands. There filthy.

In fact, Obama’s ascension created a gargantuan irony. How can you sell class envy and American unfairness when you and your black wife went to Ivy League schools, got high-paying jobs, became millionaires, bought a mansion, and got elected President? How unfair is that??? Now, Like a delicious O'Henry tale, Obama’s spread-the-wealth campaign rendered itself moot by it's own victory! America is officially a meritocracy. Obama’s election has validated American conservatism!

So, listen carefully…Wham!!!
That’s the sound of my foot kicking the door shut on the era of white guilt. The rites have been muttered, the carcass lowered, dirt shoveled, and tombstone erected. White guilt is dead and buried.

However, despite my glee, there’s apparently one small, rabid bastion of American racism remaining. Black Americans voted 96% for Barak Obama. Hmmm. In a color-blind world, shouldn’t that be 50-50? Tonight, every black person should ask forgiveness for their apparent racism and prejudice towards white people. Maybe it’s time to start spreading the guilt around.

Republican's On The Move : Rebuilding The Conservative Base #3

More on how the Republicans see the election and what to do next. There are several more authors that weigh in on this topic from this same article.

How the GOP Got Here
Understanding and recriminating.
An NRO Symposium

Well that wasn't good news for the Right, last night! National Review Online asked some regulars to address: “What happened to the Republican party Tuesday? Who’s to blame?”

Michael G. Franc

Two things jumped out at me in reviewing last night’s results: First, in the House, the Democrats’ surge reached far and wide. It claimed victims from both the Republican Right as well as the Middle. Reliable and effective conservatives such as Reps. Marilyn Musgrave, Tom Feeney, and Thelma Drake lost. That most endangered form of Republican, the moderate, suffered another round of devastating losses, with most of the attrition coming from a rash of voluntary and (some) involuntary retirements.

I count at least 14 more seats that have shifted from a moderate Republican to a reliably liberal Democrat. And, as was the case in the last two election cycles, once these seats flip to Democratic control they tend to transition seamlessly into safe (and liberal) Democrat seats for the foreseeable future.

With these changes, returning House Republicans will be more uniformly conservative. To the extent congressional Republicans plan to rediscover their inner conservative selves, this enhanced ideological uniformity will serve them well. The caucus of House conservatives, the Republican Study Committee, stands to gain clout within the House Republican circles.

Republicans in the Senate, meanwhile, will be tempted to write off Tuesday’s losses as the consequence of a perfect political storm that aided Democrats and, in any event, was not as bad as might have been expected. If they ever want to regain the majority, that would be a mistake.

The more prudent course of action would be to go back to basics, re-learn the core principles of conservatism, and apply them to the enormous policy challenges that lie ahead.
And that brings me to the second observation.

The exit polls, to the extent they can be believed, remind us once again that America remains a decisively right-of-center nation. Liberal remains a dirty word. In fact, many more Americans continue to self-identify as conservative (34 percent) than as liberal (only 22 percent). Knowing this, successful Democratic candidates across the country used conservative rhetoric and themes to score points against their Republican opponents and win the hearts of voters.

The Democrats’ repeated refrain on behalf of middle class tax relief was but one of several such examples. Little wonder then that 20 percent of conservatives (and 60 percent of moderates) actually voted for Senator Obama.

Undoubtedly, Republican strategists will invest considerable time in the months ahead deciphering exactly why this is the case.

Conservative strategists, in turn, will ponder why it has become so easy for liberal candidates to don the rhetoric and values of modern conservatism on the campaign trail and then shed it upon assuming office with no discernable consequence.

— Michael G. Franc is vice president of government relations for the Heritage Foundation.

Auto Makers Are Back for MORE Bailout Money To Save the Unions

This is beyond the realm of even fantasy - this is absolutely absurd - what we are doing is making sure the unions don't see the end of their strangle hold on the automakers. Management is just a responsible for the problems they have but the unions refuse to make major changes in their organization to save their own necks.

Sink or swim - fish or cut bait - what ever works but no more hand outs. Stop this nonsense.

Its imperative that we do not allow this to happen - I agree with the author and I have stated this in the past, let the US automakers find a level where they can compete. If they can't do this then let them go under. Let the market take care of itself.

I drive a Ford 150 and I love it - it's a great truck, but I would rather see Ford go under, reorganize, and come back a totally revitalized company. Probably much smaller then it is now, but non the less, better able to compete in our world wide market of today.

Keep the faith.

Yet Another GM Bailout*
Daily Article*
by Briggs Armstrong
Posted on 11/10/2008

General Motors has once again approached the federal government with its hand out. It should not be forgotten that in September of 2008, Congress gave the "big three" automakers a loan totaling $25 billion. Now they are back. This time they say that with a mere $50 billion they can turn things around and become profitable in the future.

The management of GM and Ford as well as the UAW have been meeting with Nancy Pelosi to arrange a deal. GM claims that if the government does not give them the money they demand it will spell doom for the company and thus the entire US economy.

Let's consider the impact of GM /ceasing/ to exist — highly unlikely even if they declare bankruptcy. Hypothetically, GM would close its doors and all 266,000 workers would be unemployed, never to find work again, or so GM would have the public believe. GM maintains that it is really in the best interest of the country and economy to continue to support their failing business model. After all, in what kind of a world would the government allow a company that employs 266,000 workers to fail?

Descending into an abstract economics lesson about shifting resources to marginally more productive activities may be ineffective; therefore, I will approach this issue from a more philosophical angle.

The basis of GM's claim is essentially that they are too big or too important to fail due to their massive labor force. But how massive is their labor force relative to other American companies? It may be surprising that the following companies employ a /larger/ number of workers than GM: Target, AT&T, GE, IBM, McDonalds, Citigroup, Kroger, Sears, and Wal-Mart.

It is also worth noting that Home Depot, United Technologies, and Verizon all employ nearly as many workers as GM.The question must be posed: Should the government bail out all 12 of these companies and, if so, at what cost? I doubt that if Wal-Mart, with their 2.1 /million/ employees, went to the government or the American people and demanded a bailout that they would receive much sympathy, let alone money.

But if we are going to base worthiness of bailout on number of employees alone, then Wal-Mart is almost 7 times more worthy than GM.(I have largely neglected Ford, whose executives are also demanding a bailout. I believe that it is enough to simply state that Abercrombie & Fitch employs almost 7,000 /more/ workers than does Ford. Would the failure of Abercrombie & Fitch's threaten the economy? I think not.)It is unethical to force taxpayers to pay billions of dollars in order to bail out a company with a failing business model.

After all, they cannot even claim, as banks did, that it is an industry-wide problem. Because if it were industry-wide, Toyota, Hyundai, Honda, Volkswagen, etc. would all be joining their American counterparts on Capitol Hill with their collective hands out.

http://www.mises.org/store/Wild-Wheel-The-P419.aspx

For years GM and Ford have produced a product that consumers do not value as much as the product provided by their competitors. Rather than changing their products or business model, they instead spent small fortunes on lobbyists. If the government does bail out GM, rest assured that this will not be the last time. But even if the government gives GM a check every week, there will come a time when no amount of government money will be enough to save them.

What is the best solution? In a word, /bankruptcy/. By filing for bankruptcy protection, GM can escape the death grip the UAW has on the business. Bankruptcy would allow for restructuring on an unprecedented scale. There is a good chance that a highly competitive company could rise from the ashes of what we today call GM. Even if GM itself was unable to survive bankruptcy, the resources freed from its grasp could be hugely beneficial to other automotive companies that make products that American consumers value more. As taxpayers, we have a /right/ to object to this misuse of our money.

[VIEW THIS ARTICLE ONLINE] Briggs Armstrong is a student at Auburn University majoring in accounting and minoring in finance.