More of that “new tone” our liberals want…

To be asked by Ron Paul – from the Committee on Financial Services:

Domestic Monetary Policy and Technology Subcommittee Chairman Ron Paul announced today the Subcommittee will meet for a hearing to examine the impact of Federal Reserve policies on job creation and the unemployment rate. The hearing will be held on Wednesday, February 9th at 10 am in room 2128 Rayburn.

Subcommittee Chairman Paul said, “I’m very pleased to hold our first subcommittee hearing in the new Congress on a topic that could not be more critical, namely unemployment. Despite enormous amounts of monetary and credit expansion by the Federal Reserve in recent years, the nation’s unemployment picture remains bleak. While many focus on the impact of fiscal policies on employment, the effect of monetary policy often goes unexamined. In my view we are now experiencing the bust that inevitably results from the misallocation of capital and human resources in a period of artificially cheap credit. It is important to understand the Federal Reserve’s role in creating today’s unemployment crisis, while also highlighting that high unemployment and low economic growth can persist even in the face of tremendous monetary inflation.”

The Federal Reserve has taken unprecedented action to provide liquidity to financial markets and some U.S. corporations; however, unemployment remains above 9 percent. The hearing, entitled Can Monetary Policy Really Create Jobs?, will focus on the Fed’s recent actions, the likelihood those actions will reduce unemployment, and the critical role of the private sector in job creation…

Long time readers will recall that I’ve not often had kind things to say about Ron Paul – I disagree with him heartily in matters of foreign and defense policy, as well as in some areas of social policy where he takes far too libertarian a view. But in matters of monetary policy, Ron Paul and I see pretty near eye to eye. I can’t imagine anyone I’d rather have looking in to the actions of the Federal Reserve than Ron Paul. The Federal Reserve has been uniformly baleful to the American economy since it was first created in 1913 – it has been the instrument of our currency devaluation, our de-industrialization and our massive debt. The tough thing about the Fed, however, is that most Americans are only slightly aware of it – a good series of hearings about what it is up to can go a long way towards educating the people about the Fed, and thus setting it up to be dissolved.

Don’t expect immediate revolution – this is the opening shot. This is where we just start the process of getting rid of the Fed and eventually getting ourselves back to a sound money economy. This effort will be fought tooth and nail by all those who stand to lose – the gigantic banks, the bureaucracy and every grafting politician out there who looks at the Treasury as a means of buying votes for re-election. They’re already a bit worried but if it starts to look like their fiat money cash cow is going to be pole-axed, they’ll rise in fury. Be ready for it – with your best defense being a presumption of “BS” on any story which asserts that without the Fed things will completely fall apart (we had no Federal Reserve from 1776 until 1913 – during which time we rose from agrarian backwater to global powerhouse…a century on in to our Federal Reserve and we’re being out-competed by the Chinese, for crying out loud).

Onwards to revolution, my fellow Americans – the beast is cornered and we will have it down.

From the AP:

Bursts of heavy gunfire rained into Cairo’s Tahrir Square before dawn Thursday, killing at least three anti-government demonstrators among crowds still trying to hold the site after an assault by supporters of President Hosni Mubarak, according to a protest organizer.

Sustained bursts of automatic weapons fire and powerful single shots rattled into the square starting at around 4 a.m., and was continuing more than an hour later.

Protest organizer Mustafa el-Naggar said he saw the bodies of three dead protesters being carried toward an ambulance. He said the gunfire came from at least three locations off in the distance and that the Egyptian military, which has ringed the square with tank squads for days to try to keep some order, did not intervene…

Which tells me that there is a lot of force in Egypt which, while perhaps not wanting to keep Mubarak, doesn’t want to lose power and position. Got to remember that the way a Mubarak maintains himself in power is only partially through brutality – the other half the the equation is bribery of select parts of society. Those bribed parts don’t want to lose their place at the trough. The army is standing aside while thugs are killing and robbing – and some strong indications that the thugs are police officers; this could be a ploy to intimidate the crowds and thus allow a reassertion of Ruling Class control.

To be sure, a complete return to “normal” is probably out of the question – new forces are rising and they’ll want their piece of the pie (seen lots of “man on the street” quotes to the effect of “I’ve got a college degree and yet I only earn a pittance”; meaning that the problem isn’t Mubarak’s dictatorship, but the lack of material advancement, at least for some of the people out in the streets). Adjustments and accommodations will have to be made and Mubarak is almost certain to be gone some time soon (I doubt he’ll be allowed to hang around until the next election; but we’ll see). In the end, however, those who have appear to be doing quite a lot to ensure they continue having.

The sorta good news about this is that it might end up freezing out the Moslem Brotherhood. There might rise a coalition of people who are willing to slowly loosen the chains while keeping a lid on the Islamists. On the other hand, the MB seems pretty popular at least in some quarters and they might demand a share of power in return for getting off the streets…and even a small share of power is enough for a tightly organized, committed group to eventually take over the whole thing. Bottom line, this still doesn’t look to be coming out as a good result for the world.

And his name wasn’t Barack Obama – from Commentary:

…It’s worth comparing what is happening in Egypt with what happened in the Philippines during the Reagan presidency.

In his book An American Life, Reagan writes about how Ferdinand Marco had stolen an election and that an uprising of Filipinos on behalf of Corazon Aquino, the legitimate winner, was inevitable.

On February 23, Reagan was at Camp David and told that Marcos and a loyal general, Fabian Ver, had amassed a force of tanks and troops to attack army units of two military leaders who had resigned from the Marcos government and given their support to Aquino. Ver’s tanks were turned back by hundreds of thousands of civilians — “but the next time,” Reagan wrote, “the result might be huge casualties.”

Reagan drafted an appeal to Marcos not to use force and attended a meeting in the Situation Room on February 23, 1986. “We agreed that it was inevitable that Marcos would have to give up power,” Reagan wrote. “He no longer had the popular support to remain in office. … Everyone agreed that we had to do everything possible to avoid bloodshed in Manila; we didn’t want to see it come down to a civil war. I also wanted to be sure we did not treat Marcos as shabbily as our country had treated another former ally, the shah of Iran. At the same time, I knew it was important to start off with a good relationship with the new government of the Philippines.”

On February 24th Reagan noted that Marcos would have to be told to step down, some negotiations went on about what would happen and on the 25th, Marcos and family presented themselves at the then-US airbase in the Philippines and out the dictator went. The situations are not, of course, exact – but here we have Reagan acting with courage and conviction, not wanting to harm a man who had been a loyal ally yet understanding that a new day was dawning. Obama has been floundering around trying to figure out if he should stick with Mubarak or go with revolution.

There is an indecisiveness in American policy these days; no hard center – nothing which you can identify as an “Obama Doctrine”. With Reagan it was “not one more square inch falls to communism”; with Bush the Younger it was “freedom is God’s gift to mankind”. What is it for Obama? Given this, we’re already starting to see us getting the short end of the stick in Egypt – the regional tyrants are not pleased with us while the revolutionaries are increasing the anti-American rhetoric. We stand to lose friends on both sides of the equation.

Getting ready for the long battle – from The Daily Caller:

TheDC Exclusive – The Obama administration snubbed top GOP oversight official Rep. Darrell Issa on his first major document deadline as new chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, sending a short letter promising to comply in response to a major information request that was due Saturday at noon.

But Issa is hitting back Tuesday with a demand key documents be sent in two days…

We’ll see how this plays out, but Obama’s Chicago-style Administration doesn’t really want a lot of scrutiny.

Nevada’s new governor calls for a review of all 183 State boards and agencies to determine if they are worthy of tax payer funds. 183 – and that is in a libertarian-conservative State.

Governor Cuomo declares New York bankrupt. Liberalism in action.

Democrats cave in on an earmark ban; the revolution continues.

Things are looking good for the GOP in 2012.

Senate GOP looks to force a vote on ObamaCare repeal. With 15 Democrat Senators vulnerable in 2012, this might actually work. Even though it has been correctly ruled as unconstitutional, we should still press repeal…repealing ObamaCare is, along with budget cuts, the way to conservative victory in 2012.

In 1983 a poor girl came up pregnant and, at her wit’s end, turned to Catholic Social Services. At that place, she didn’t get advice to have an abortion. The other day, she went back to CSS and expressed her gratitude for what she did receive – Christian charity.

Much has been said over the past week that the prospects in Egypt and the larger Moslem world are pretty bleak. Anyone who takes the time to consider things realizes that whatever the average man or woman in Cairo might hope for out of the revolt, what they are likely to get will fall far short of desires. At best, we might get regimes which are only moderately Islamist in character; at worst, we get a series of Iranian-style regimes. There has been an interesting debate over at NRO’s The Corner to the effect that the only way to get to a liberal Islam is to go through some sort of Islamist Islam – and there is much to be said for that, though there is also a rather grating error in the line of thinking.

Taking their cue from a bit by Reuel Gerecht, the conception is that we have to go through Martin Luther before we can get to Thomas Jefferson. That, in fact, enlightenment can only come once the people have travailed through religious obscuritanism. After that, once that has failed, the people will suddenly start reading Voltaire, I guess. All of that is a load of nonsense.

First of all, it presupposes that until the Enlightenment – until we get to Jefferson – no one has a clue of a properly governed society of free men. The Enlightenment, though, wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. During that time, what happened was a group of shallow, half-educated and self absorbed people starting attacking what they didn’t understand – Christianity and the past. As things weren’t perfect, all that existed up to the moment of judgment was condemned out of hand and a whole, new future was envisioned where people who were properly up to the job would organize everything for everyone. In the long run, this got us the French Revolution with its Terror…and then the successors to the French in Lenin’s Russia, Mussolini’s Italy, Hitler’s Germany and Mao’s China. And, indeed, the Islamists who think they are advancing Islam, but actually advancing a socio-cultural bit of nonsense which is only possible for people who don’t know about the past. Islamism has cooked up a story of a glorious Caliphate which can be restored once the right people are in charge and able to organize everything for everyone. This is no more or less stupid than the pathetic imaginings of a Karl Marx.

From the 11th to the 14th century the Christian west was very well governed. This is the time of St. Francis; of St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Bernard, Dante, Albertus Magnus, Boccaccio, St. Louis IX, Abelard, Petrarch, the Gothic flowering, universities for higher education, the invention of the compass, eye glasses, the blast furnace, windmills…hardly the Dark Ages of mankind. We didn’t need an Enlightenment to allow justice to be established – and, indeed, in a very real way the establishment of the United States (a federal system where government is strictly limited in nature) is a means of recapturing what was strongly developing until the disasters of Black Death and what amounted to a civil war in Christendom when the Reformation took place.

What does Islam need in order to have a just social order? It needs to desire it. Will the people on the streets of Cairo desire this so strongly that they’ll get it? That remains to be seen. But no one should fear these events – they are working themselves out. They may prove a cure or a poison for Moslem society. Our job is not to wring our hands in worry; our job is not to try and plaster on to current events a false template of what happened in our own past; our job is simply to do what is right – and at this moment that means giving our blessing to anyone who will fight for justice and liberty. Cut our ties with the tyrants, completely and stand ready to assist anyone who is actually fighting for justice, and to smite anyone who would seek to create and export injustice.

Such has really been the actual tasks of men from the beginning of time. To do what is right, as far as our abilities allow. We won’t get it right in all respects. We will make terrible errors. But if our desire is to help the good and defy the bad, then we won’t go altogether wrong, nor instigate complete disaster. Of course, it would be helpful to us if we’d strip away a lot of the nonsense we’ve been fed upon for a couple centuries now about how the world developed. The truth does set you free, and thus the truth is obscured as much as possible – because a select part of our population doesn’t want the rest of us to be free.

But, stand firm for what is right; condemn what is wrong – in the end, that is all anyone can do. And if we do that, then no matter what comes now and in the future, we will be able to meet it with a clear eye and a clean conscience.

Not a good bit of news – from the Vancouver Sun:

Al-Qaida is on the verge of producing radioactive weapons after sourcing nuclear material and recruiting rogue scientists to build “dirty” bombs, according to leaked diplomatic documents.

A leading atomic regulator has privately warned that the world stands on the brink of a “nuclear 9/11″…

We can only hope that our military and law enforcement people are on the job here – with the understanding that we have to get it right all the time, al-Qaeda only has to get it right once. Another reminder of the fact that we live in a dangerous world and that our fight with the Islamists is a war, not a law enforcement issue. Keep that in mind, liberals, the next time you decide to wax eloquent on the horrors of waterboarding.

Is this now, finally, going to be enough to get his anti-human organization de-funded?

A Planned Parenthood manager in New Jersey coaches a man and a woman posing as sex traffickers how to secure secret abortions, STD testing, and contraception for their female underage sex slaves, and make their whole operation “look as legit as possible” in an undercover video released this morning.

Clinic manager Amy Woodruff, LPN, of Planned Parenthood Central New Jersey’s Perth Amboy center, warns the pimp and his prostitute to have their trafficked underage girls lie about their age to avoid mandatory reporting laws, promising, “even if they lie, just say, ‘Oh he’s the same age as me, 15,’…it’s just that mainly 14 and under we have to, doesn’t matter if their partner’s the same age, younger, whatever, 14 and under we have to report.” She says, “For the most part, we want as little information as possible.”…

Here is a link to the whole story and the video. Its pretty terrible – but, once again, if your product is death, then you’re not going to be a person or organization of high moral standards. You can’t be honest, merciful and just if what you do is either prevent pregnancy or butcher unborn children for a living. Its like trying to be a moral whore, or an honest con artist; the trick can’t be done.

At all events, it is time for PP to lose all taxpayer funding. The practice of abortion is legal in the United States, so we can’t get rid of it completely – but, certainly, no decent nation should be directly participation in such crimes.

Even when its 40 to 1 in your favor:

Bishnu Shrestha, a brave Gurkha soldier in Indian Army, defeated 40 train robbers while returning home after a voluntary retirement. The Indian army, is going to awarded Bishnu with Sourya Chakra, Bravery Award and Sarvottam Jeevan Raksha medals during the Indian Republic Day celebration on January 26.

While in the train, Maurya Express from Ranchi to Gorakhpur on September 2, 2010, 35 year-old Bishnu saved a girl about to be raped by train robbers, in front of her helpless parents. After looting the train, when the robbers started stripping the 18 year old girl in front of him, he couldn’t contain his calmness. He took out his khukari and attacked the group of 40 robbers, alone. In the fight, he killed three of dacoits and injured eight others. Remaining looters ran for their lives…

A brave man who does the right thing – the way the world should be. A khukari, by the way, is that wicked looking knife that Gurkha’s have always carried.