You can only beat your head against the liberal brick wall for so long – from The Hill:

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) announced Tuesday that he would pull out of the talks with two other Republican and three Democratic colleagues.

Coburn said the talks have collapsed over the tough issue of entitlement reform.

“We can’t bridge the gulf of where we need to go on mandatory spending,” Corburn said Tuesday afternoon. “I don’t see that there’s going to be any fruition in continuing them at this time.”…

Good thing, too – these groupings of Democrats and Republicans almost invariably produce a liberal outcome. Better to just state our case while they state theirs, and let the people decide. The people are on our side, anyways, so we should enjoy this fight.

The bottom line for the budget is that it must be cut – and to cut the budget without entitlement reform is pointless. Entitlements are what is bankrupting our nation; we need to find a way to ensure benefits at a lower long-term cost. If we don’t, then we’re fiscally doomed.

I’ll never, ever buy another GM product, again (and I’ve got two of them in the driveway right now) – from PJ Tatler:

…In late 2010, General Motors agreed to sponsor a propaganda film celebrating the 90th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The CCP made film titled (translated to English) “The Birth of a Party” or “The Great Achievement of Founding the Party” is set to premiere all over the Communist nation on June 15 reported China AutoWeb last September. The auto website adds:

“According to an announcement posted on Shanghai GM’s official web site yesterday, whose title reads “joining hands with China Film Group, Cadillac whole-heartedly supports the making of the Birth of a Party…”

Tens of millions of people have been murdered by China’s communist regime. To this very day the Chinese government is horribly repressive – and corrupt, in to the bargain. Doing business in China, at all, is wrong…celebrating the spawning of the Chinese Communist Party is simply depraved.

Cut GM off – demand every cent of taxpayer money back right this instant – and I hope it forces GM in to immediate bankruptcy and liquidation. GM has dishonored itself and insulted not just the United States of America, but every American who has ever fought for freedom.

Just absolutely disgusting.

From Gallup:

Underemployment, a measure that combines the percentage of unemployed with the percentage working part time but wanting full-time work, was at 19.1% in mid-May — down from 19.3% at the end of April. Underemployment remains as high as it was in mid-May 2010.

While Gallup’s not seasonally adjusted U.S. unemployment rate suggests little improvement (0.2 percentage points) compared with the same time in 2010, the government’s unadjusted results show a year-over-year decline of 0.8 points.

Interestingly, Gallup’s monthly measures tracked closely to those the government reported in early 2010 but the two trends have diverged since January 2011…

Which, to me, is another indicator that someone is putting a rosy glow on the government numbers. Today’s reports that housing starts and capacity utilization “unexpectedly” declined (likely, in my view, due to rising energy costs coupled with supply train problems coming out of Japan) demonstrates that things are not going at all well with the economy. We’re also coming to the end of “QE2” – the Fed’s money-printing program which has allowed stocks and commodities to rise so high. Supposedly, QE2 ends in June…and, then what?

Some say we’ll slip right back in to recession, others say the Fed will figure out a different way to print money…anything to keep the asset bubble from bursting. That is what I think will happen – no one at the Fed (or in the Obama Administration), wants a resumption of the recession at this point (it’ll be ok if it starts in November, 2012, or even October as long as it isn’t noticeable in the election polling component of Obamunism! GDP estimates). The bad news is that you can only keep an asset bubble pumped up for so long – eventually, things must be priced to their real value (take a look at your home value for evidence of this). We can delay the crash, we can’t stop it.

Get out of debt and save as much money as you can – and hold on to your hat.

HAT TIP: Mish’s

So, Stephen Hawking says that heaven is a fairy tale for ‘fraidy-cats and there is no need for God to have started the grand pageant we call the Universe. This has caused some griping comment and that is a bit astounding – while this argument has not been settled in the sense of everyone coming to an agreement, it is an argument which we’ve pretty much gone over from start to finish.

To me, the denial of a belief in God – either as a mere First Cause or as a personal God who takes a hand in His creation – is an arrogant presumption of impossible knowledge. You can’t know that God doesn’t exist – you can’t know that something isn’t there unless you can go where it is and ascertain its non-existence. As God is not “in” our Universe in the sense of being bound by it there is no place to look to make the determination of non-existence…you’d have to go outside the Universe, you see?

Smart people like Hawking – and he is clearly a brilliant man – routinely fall in to this error. It is a failure to think things all the way through – a failure not of intellect, but of imagination. As the Universe does exist, it must have come in to existence at some point – whatever power caused this start to existence is God; and anything capable of setting the Universe in motion is fully capable of taking a personal interest in it, and ordering its life towards a desired goal. This is just common sense – and it takes years of narrow-minded concentration to ignore such a thing. Hawking seems to have finally achieved this (earlier works by Hawking left a place for God; I guess that is out the window, now).

The really sad part about this is that Hawking seems to be wanting to show courage – suffering greatly from disease and probably not too long for this world, there is a desire to appear indifferent to it all. Hawking’s mistake lies in fact that he wants a full and complete explanation – no mystery out there unresolved. And so his vision has narrowed – “if I must die, then so bet it: but that will be the end of it all, because there is nothing but this universe, which started itself, and there will be nothing of me once my heart stops beating”. This has the quality of being a complete view, but it leaves out the most important thing – and the one thing which Hawking cannot know: if there really is nothing but the universe we can see and measure?

If Hawking – and those like him – could just step outside of themselves for a moment and acknowledge that there is one Fact they’ll never get to the bottom of, they’d be able to understand everything else. Not for nothing does Christianity urge humility upon us. Bend the knee to that one thing, and the rest becomes remarkably understandable…even if all the particular details are not fully known. I hope for the day when Hawking is walking, again…in full command not just of a revived body of this world, but in the glorified body of the life of the world to come. Freed finally from all perils and able to fully use the reason God gave him…what an astounding thing that will be. If he’s there…if he’s there; but he has to ask to go…and he can’t ask until he broadens his mind to include his own inadequacy.

From the DC Caller:

Of the 204 new Obamacare waivers President Barack Obama’s administration approved in April, 38 are for fancy eateries, hip nightclubs and decadent hotels in House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s Northern California district.

That’s in addition to the 27 new waivers for health care or drug companies and the 31 new union waivers Obama’s Department of Health and Human Services approved.

Pelosi’s district secured almost 20 percent of the latest issuance of waivers nationwide…

For you liberals out there, is this doesn’t finally convince you that (a) Nancy Pelosi is hopelessly corrupt and (b) that ObamaCare is nothing more than a vehicle for increased Ruling Class power and wealth, then nothing will. This is all it was ever about – working out new ways to add special privileges and penalties to the system so that people like Nancy Pelosi can enhance their power and wealth by controlling who gets what.

Wake up, already…go ahead and be liberal. Demand massive social spending – do all the things that liberals do…but for goodness sake realize that your leaders, from Obama on down, are corrupt.

Had a real busy Monday and I’m just wiped out – there area a lot of interesting things to write about, but I’m too dog tired to write at the moment. I’ll try to have something good up for you a little later.

Meanwhile, you can still discuss just how badly Obama sucks as President or whatever else comes to mind.

All I can say is that the more I hear from him, the more I like him – and the more irritating become things like Hewitt urging the GOP to freeze candidates like Cain out of the GOP primary debates.

Cain has the take no prisoners attitude of Donald Trump without all the baggage. He has the intellectual acumen of someone like Gingrich without the over-theorizing which leads to freakishly weird things like slamming the Ryan plan. He is an outsider who understands how the political game is played. He is a practical, experienced man at a time when career politicians are in bad repute. He’s got the great, personal narrative which shows he knows how regular Americans have to live and struggle. In some respects, he is ideal…

So, why hold back? For me, it is an unwillingness to commit to anyone this early. But what about the rest of you? Are their objections to Cain which I haven’t thought of? Other good things about him I haven’t learned? Can he win the nomination and beat President Obama?

What are your thoughts?

And Threedonia proves it by unearthing Grover Cleveland’s 1893 inaugural address – to quote:

…Manifestly nothing is more vital to our supremacy as a nation and to the beneficent purposes of our Government than a sound and stable currency. Its exposure to degradation should at once arouse to activity the most enlightened statesmanship, and the danger of depreciation in the purchasing power of the wages paid to toil should furnish the strongest incentive to prompt and conservative precaution.

In dealing with our present embarrassing situation as related to this subject we will be wise if we temper our confidence and faith in our national strength and resources with the frank concession that even these will not permit us to defy with impunity the inexorable laws of finance and trade. At the same time, in our efforts to adjust differences of opinion we should be free from intolerance or passion, and our judgments should be unmoved by alluring phrases and unvexed by selfish interests…

…The verdict of our voters which condemned the injustice of maintaining protection for protection’s sake enjoins upon the people’s servants the duty of exposing and destroying the brood of kindred evils which are the unwholesome progeny of paternalism. This is the bane of republican institutions and the constant peril of our government by the people. It degrades to the purposes of wily craft the plan of rule our fathers established and bequeathed to us as an object of our love and veneration. It perverts the patriotic sentiments of our countrymen and tempts them to pitiful calculation of the sordid gain to be derived from their Government’s maintenance. It undermines the self-reliance of our people and substitutes in its place dependence upon governmental favoritism. It stifles the spirit of true Americanism and stupefies every ennobling trait of American citizenship.

The lessons of paternalism ought to be unlearned and the better lesson taught that while the people should patriotically and cheerfully support their Government its functions do not include the support of the people…

Do read the whole speech.

More than a century has passed and the Democrat party was handed off to Bryan and Wilson and FDR and LBJ…to reach final degradation in the hands of Bill Clinton. Obama will always remain a unique, historical figure in that he is the first non-white person to be elected to our highest office…but in policy he’s just mindlessly following the dictates of those who took a party of the people and turned it in to a corrupt agglomeration of special political and corporate interests. There was a reason my great-grandfather, grand-father and father were Democrats – with Dad only switching his registration in 2008 in order to participate in the Nevada GOP caucus; and he died in April of 2009. The reason is that the Democrat party was once upon a time an American political party – not the plaything of grasping special pleaders.

Do keep in mind that the GOP was also wrecked in the course of history – the party of Lincoln, abolition and the free market became, in its turn, the party of the vested interests. But our party was rescued by Ronald Reagan….himself once a Democrat. Our party was wrested from the hands of corrupt, special interests (though, to be sure, the rear-guards of these forces continue to linger on, hoping against hope to take it back, and make it just another tool of the Ruling Class) and became a party of the people…an American party, dedicated to the ideals which make America the greatest nation in human history.

Who will rescue the Democrat party? Who will articulate for the Democrats what Reagan did for the GOP? Who will reach back across the chasm of history and revive the spirit of Cleveland? I don’t know – I don’t see any one or any group…but if someone doesn’t come along, then the Democrat party is ultimately doomed, because the American people will – and already are – rejecting it as a vehicle for American aspirations.

From Zero Hedge:

…Despite talk of a recovery, the economy is badly underperforming. Growth last quarter came in at just 1.8 percent. We’re not even creating enough jobs to employ new workers entering the job market, let alone the six million workers who lost their jobs during the recession.

The rising cost of living is becoming a serious problem for many Americans. The Fed’s aggressive expansion of the money supply is clearly contributing to major increases in the cost of food and energy.

An even bigger threat comes from the rapidly growing cost of health care, a problem made worse by the health care law enacted last year.

Most troubling of all, the unsustainable trajectory of government spending is accelerating the nation toward a ruinous debt crisis.

This crisis has been decades in the making. Republican administrations, including the last one, have failed to control spending. Democratic administrations, including the present one, have not been honest about the cost of the tax burden required to fund their expansive vision of government. And Congresses controlled by both parties have failed to confront our growing entitlement crisis. There is plenty of blame to go around.

Years of ignoring the drivers of our debt have left our nation’s finances in dismal shape. In the coming years, our debt is projected to grow to more than three times the size of our entire economy.

This trajectory is catastrophic. By the end of the decade, we will be spending 20 percent of our tax revenue simply paying interest on the debt – and that’s according to optimistic projections…

You should read the whole thing, but that covers the central problem – our debt has risen to the point where we will entirely collapse unless we stop adding to it. That is what Democrats do not wish to do – because whatever might have been the original purpose of Big Government liberalism, the current point of the exercise is to keep the government funds flowing because they, in turn, are filtered through government unions in to Democrat campaign coffers – lather, rinse, repeat. Cut down the size of government and Democrats lose the ability to bribe people in to voting for and donating to Democrats. Their political life is at stake…and thus the demands for more debt in an already bankrupt nation.

Cuts, cuts and more cuts – that has to be our aim. But not just a shotgun – we need precision guided political weapons. Keep digging up the worst aspects of government waste and present it continually to the American people. Combine that with routine reminders of just how boneheaded President Obama is (case in point: his statement that he wants the USA to be a good customer for Brazil’s offshore oil), and we can not only beat Obama and his Democrats next year, but crush them…and thus gain the power necessary to save our nation from collapse.

From Zero Hedge:

Those seeking the spark that will set off the next middle east conflagration can finally rest easy. Reuters reports that Shi’ite-ruled Iran sent a flotilla to Bahrain on Monday to show solidarity with mainly Shi’ite Muslim protesters, escalating tensions with the island kingdom that is home to the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet. As a reminder, Barhain is the nation that imposed a total and complete media blackout, going so far as to expel a Reuters correspondent, while most likely continuing its atrocities against protesting Shi’ites, which has raised the specter of a possible war erupting on the tiny island home, so critical to the US navy, and situated only 60 miles away from the world’s largest Gwahar oil field…

And now you know why everyone wants to keep a lid on this – why no one seems to be really reporting on it. We’ve got pretty good coverage of Libya; coverage of Syria is regular; even Yemen gets a lot of news….but not so much about Bahrain…because there the trouble is not just about having a ruling class tossed out, but having an Iranian-backed ruling class move in…and right on the border with Saudi Arabia…and right next to some of Saudi Arabia’s biggest oil fields, which seem to be in a heavily Shiite area of the country.

This could get very dicey…and the bad news is that Obama will handling whatever American response might prove necessary.