From NRO’s The Corner, taking note of Rep. King’s hearings on the radicalization of Islam in America:

…King quickly made his case as the packed committee room looked on. “A number of cases since 9/11 have involved terrorists who converted to Islam or were radicalized to Islamism in American prisons, then subsequently attempted to launch terror strikes here in the U.S. upon their release from custody,” he said. “Dozens of ex-cons who became radicalized Muslims inside U.S. prisons have gone to Yemen to join an al-Qaeda group run by a fellow American, Anwar al-Awlaki, whose terrorists have attacked the U.S. homeland several times since 2008, and generally acknowledged to be al-Qaeda’s most dangerous affiliate.”

King’s pursuit, however, was not warmly embraced by Democrats on the committee. Rep. Bennie Thompson (D., Miss.), the ranking member, and Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D., Texas), among others, expressed concerns, asserting that the hearing was too narrow in its focus and should have broadly considered a wide array of extremist groups.

Jackson Lee, for her part, urged King to also investigate “Christian militants” and the “Aryan brotherhood.”…

This is both infuriating and depressing. Infuriating that liberal efforts at political correctness leave us vulnerable, depressing because it betrays a complete disconnect from reality. There is no terrorist threat from the “Aryan brotherhood”. That group is just a run-of-the-mill organized crime gang – it does not threaten the United States in a general sense as Islamists do. The only reason to look in to Aryan Brotherhood is to see if they are being paid by the Islamists to facilitate Islamist recruitment and terrorism within the United States. But, we can’t just go after Moslems, right? Have to have someone other than a Moslem in the mix or we’re all Islamophobes…this would be akin to giving the American Nazi Party the same scrutiny we gave the Communist Party during the Cold War – which would have been a stupid waste of resources.

But stupidly wasting resources, for our liberals, is worth it as long as we are adhering to the liberal world view. People can die, but we daren’t start acting in a rational manner…because to do so would show liberalism up to be the idiocy that it is.

Thank goodness for Rep. King – he’s doing the work which needs to be done and all of us who care about America must sustain him. You can rely on it that come next year he will be heavily attacked and the race card will be played from the bottom of the deck against him.

Pass a budget – from Reuters:

Libya’s government approved a $31.4 billion budget for the rest of 2011, the official news agency said on Wednesday, a move apparently aimed at showing it was functioning as normal despite air strikes and sanctions…

The natural reaction to this is to surmise that if we started bombing runs on Harry Reid, we might get action on a budget. Perhaps you have to be very, very stern with a government in order to get it to do it’s job? I’m open to other ideas, but I can’t see anything working better than this…

From The Hill:

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) saw her net worth rise 62 percent last year, cementing her status as one of the wealthiest members of Congress.

Pelosi was worth at least $35.2 million in the 2010 calendar year, according to a financial disclosure report released Wednesday. She reported a minimum of $43.4 million in assets and about $8.2 milion in liabilities.

For 2009, Pelosi reported a minimum net worth of $21.7 million…

So, you see, Obamunism does work – you can make a fabulous amount of money. All you have to be is (a) rich to begin with and (b) incredibly juiced-in with the Ruling Class…

Small wonder that our liberals want more money printing and borrowing – they are making out like bandits, aren’t they? Of course, it would be nice if they would put on a mask and shout “stick ’em up” at us, rather than pretend they are doing it out of altruism. I can take being mugged, but I don’t like being mugged by the sanctimonious. I’d much rather my hard earned money go to support a crack habit than go to make Nancy Pelosi even richer – this means, you know, that her children and grand-children will have the financial muscle to annoy the nation for a century or more after Nancy is gone.

And, so, my solution: let’s have a real tax on the rich – a wealth tax. We should hit everyone with more than $20 million with a 10% annual tax on their net wealth. Nancy wouldn’t mind, would she? I mean, after all, she does claim that the millionaires and billionaires have to pay their fair share…now it is time to get her to pony up.

You might have been reading and seeing the stories out of Greece – riots and demonstrations and bail out proposals and motions of no-confidence in the government. A huge mess as the entire European Union tries to prevent a default – a default which almost certainly cannot be prevented. In contrast to this, there is what the people of Iceland did when the financial crisis hit – from the Globe and Mail:

Iceland’s method of coping with the financial crisis had a brutal charm about it. In essence, the country hoisted its middle finger to the owners of bank bonds, and a few other people it owed money to, and walked away.

Iceland’s method of coping with the financial crisis had a brutal charm about it. In essence, the country hoisted its middle finger to the owners of bank bonds, and a few other people it owed money to, and walked away…

…It worked. For evidence, note that Iceland made a triumphant return to the international bond markets late last week, and that its tiny economy is growing at a fair clip, both remarkable achievements when you consider its punishing economic and banking collapse in late 2008…

It is true that the people of Iceland were complicit in the problem – like just about everyone in the western world, the people of Iceland figured they could get a free ride. That they could borrow and spend endlessly and never have to pay the piper. As punishment for this bit of foolishness, they have paid the price of a gigantic, asset-destroying financial collapse. The difference is that in Iceland – unlike everywhere else – the people didn’t add to the idiocy by figuring they had to bail out the banks which were even more responsible for the crash than the people were.

The responsibility of a bank is to wisely manage money. At bottom, that is all there is – take in money and carefully manage it so that, primarily, no money is lost and, secondarily, that the value of the money grows over time. There are lots of ways to do this and while no financial transaction is without risk, there are things which are wise risks and things which are akin to giving a case of whiskey and car keys to a pack of teen aged boys. The banks went hard and heavy in to whiskey distribution…and then wanted the taxpayers to bail them out.

Having more wisdom and courage than the rest of us, the people of Iceland did hoist that middle finger and they walked away…and they paid for it, but now that it’s over it is, indeed, over. Iceland still lives. The people still work and build wealth. And banks will still lend them money – now with a bit of wisdom attached. The rest of us have lacked this wisdom and courage and so we’re still stuck – in a kind of financial suspended animation, just hanging over the abyss of economic collapse, unable to climb back out while being unwilling to fall all the way down. But as we do this the problems just fester and grow…making whatever does finally happen worse than it would have been earlier.

When you’re broke, you’re broke. When you’ve borrowed more money than you can possibly repay, you can’t repay it. It will be lousy for you the borrower, but shed no tears for the lender – the lender is a bank and the bank is supposed to be staffed with hard nosed financial experts who would never be so idiotic as to loan more money than someone can repay. As the banks have not been filled with such people, they’re going to have to take a bath with the rest of us.

The United States is still some years away from being in Iceland’s position a few years ago, or Greece’s position right now. But plenty of other nations are right there – most notably Japan, Italy, Spain and Portugal (and probably a good number of other nations which simply haven’t made the headlines). The key for these nations is to just default – have done with it; you can’t repay the full debt, so don’t even bother trying. The bankers will just have to take their lumps and hopefully the survivors will have more sense. Yes, this means global recession – yes it means that trillions in paper assets will likely be wiped out. It will be lousy for a couple years…but once it’s over, it’s over. We’ll know where we stand, and we can all start to rebuild wealth.

HAT TIP: Mish’s

Got this in the e mail today:

I’ve set aside time for four supporters like you to join me for dinner.

Most campaigns fill their dinner guest lists primarily with Washington lobbyists and special interests.

We didn’t get here doing that, and we’re not going to start now. We’re running a different kind of campaign. We don’t take money from Washington lobbyists or special-interest PACs — we never have, and we never will (Ed. Note: that’s good – I was worried the $994,000 he got from people at Goldman Sachs, the $695,000 from JP Morgan and the $514,000 from Morgan Stanley were “special interests”…glad to know they are just regular folks, like me…wonder if they have to pay $5 for dinner with the Prez?).

We rely on everyday Americans giving whatever they can afford — and I want to spend time with a few of you.

So if you make a donation today, you’ll be automatically entered for a chance to be one of the four supporters to sit down with me for dinner. Please donate $5 or more today…

…Hope to see you soon,

Barack

$5 for dinner with the President? I don’t know, guys; what do you think? I mean, he is the President of the United States, but $5 is a bit of money, ya know? Think he’d be ok with $3, instead?

Interesting bit of news:

The World Energy Council has determined that about 30 miles southwest of Jerusalem, in the Shfela Basin, there are oil shale deposits with the potential to yield 250 billion barrels of oil. This represents the world’s third-largest quantity of oil shale behind the US and China…

Nothing would make me laugh more than to think that we could stop importing oil from Saudi Arabia and start importing it from Israel. Life is always full of interesting twists and turns and I doubt that any of us foresaw this particular development…and what it will mean not just for Israeli and US economics and security, but how these things blow a hole right through gloom-and-doom “peak oil”, we’re-running-out-of-everything stories…

From the National Federation of Independent Business:

The Index of Small Business Optimism fell 0.3 points in May to 90.9. This month marks the third monthly decline in a row. The proximate cause is the fact that 1 in 4 owners still report weak sales as their top business problem. Consumer spending is weak, especially for “services,” a sector dominated by small businesses. the index makes clear that optimism is moving in the wrong direction: a recession-level reading for an economy fighting its way through a recovery. Also, inflation is a growing concern now with 1 in 10 citing this as their most serious business problem meaning cost side pressures coming in the “back door,” not rising food prices at home.

Heck of a job there, Barry – got anything else for us? Oh, yeah – more stimulus and money printing. That’ll fix it!

HAT TIP: Mish’s

From the Washington Times:

Stepping up a simmering constitutional conflict, House Speaker John A. Boehner warned President Obama on Tuesday that unless he gets authorization from Congress for his military deployment in Libya, he will be in violation of the War Powers Resolution.

In a letter sent Tuesday afternoon, Mr. Boehner, the top Republican in the constitutional chain of succession, said Mr. Obama must provide a clear justification by Friday for committing troops to Libya…

We’ll see if we can, for once, hold a Democrat accountable under law – time and time again when push comes to shove Democrats are able to bluster their way out, but we’re on very solid ground here: Obama has to terminate the war in Libya, or obtain Congressional approval. Failure to do so would be an impeachable offense..if we have the courage to press the matter.

From the Wall Street Journal:

A wave of violent unrest in urban areas of China over the past three weeks is testing the Communist Party’s efforts to maintain control over an increasingly complex and fractious society, forcing it to repeatedly deploy its massive security forces to contain public anger over economic and political grievances…

With inflation getting quite out of control – and don’t believe official numbers; they are bad enough, but don’t even come close to reality – and China’s property bubble in the process of collapsing, things are getting dicey, to say the least, in China. A corrupt, brutal oligarchy has thus far been able to convince the people of China to let them rule…but the deal is that politics is off limits to the masses as long as they continually get better off. That deal is breaking down – and has been for some time now.

The stories that China is some sort of rising super power which will shortly displace the United States are utter nonsense. To be sure, we’re in a bad way right now, but our fundamental strengths far outweigh China, even on our worst day. Most importantly, our government – much as we may be upset with it at the moment – does reflect the will of the people. Obama is President because we elected him; Boehner is Speaker because we voted Republican…there is no one in China outside the ruling clique who had anything to do with selecting China’s leaders. There is a world of difference between a legitimate leader, no matter how much disliked, and someone who was chosen by and answerable to no one.

Chinese dissent, this time around, started in the countryside – which is why it hasn’t been in the news much. Foreigners don’t tend to go in to the large Chinese hinterland. When not discouraged by official action, there is the fact that there is not much for a foreigner to do there – unless you have a hankering to study China in depth, there is no cause for you to get outside Beijing, Shanghai and a few other large, metropolitan areas. But trouble has been brewing there for a long time – spurred on by the way China’s corrupt leaders have been screwing China’s people out of their ancestral lands (something always of great sensitivity in Chinese culture; land is being taken for showpiece projects and even for things as absurd as golf courses…and with little real compensation for the dispossessed). But now it is spreading to the cities – where food prices are fast rising, housing has been ever more expensive and the people watch the well connected piling up vast amounts of wealth while they see little or no direct improvement. This is just the sort of mix which sparks revolutions.

What will come of it remains to be seen – the Chinese security forces have a well-deserved reputation for being able to stamp out dissent. But things may be different now – the troops, of course, are drawn from the very people most angry with the state of affairs. It isn’t some complete stranger who is having his land taken away or seeing his paycheck being eaten up by inflation…it is mom and dad. There could come a situation where the rank and file go easy on the protestors…and that would take the lid right off. In favor of the Chinese government is the Chinese willingness to forgo the personal in favor of societal harmony…there really is a strong disposition to endure in silence rather than rock the boat (and thus endless movements towards liberty in China have been choked off time and time again).

HAT TIP: Mish’s

Bad news from Syria from France 24:

Syrian armed forces continued a “scorched earth” campaign near the country’s borders with Turkey and Iraq, witnesses said Tuesday, as the US and Europe stepped up condemnation of the Syrian government’s deadly crackdown on protests…

There is no good outcome here – either the Iran-backed Assad regime will prevail, or some variety of Moslem Brotherhood government will emerge…and be in alliance with Iran. No matter how you slice it, the people of Syria will suffer and terrorists will continue to be backed by Damascus. Given that the terrorists will gain more support from the coming Moslem Brotherhood government in Egypt, we’ve getting the right mix for a resumption of the Arab/Israeli “hot war”.