From Gallup:

More than half of Americans (55%) describe the U.S. economy as being in a recession or depression, even as the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) reports that “the economic recovery is proceeding at a moderate pace.” Another 16% of Americans say the economy is “slowing down,” and 27% believe it is growing…

The government can put out all the (carefully engineered) statistics it wants and the FOMC can put out all the happy talk in the world, but the American people feel the economy every day – and with wages flat or down, unemployment still high, housing prices still collapsing and gas and food prices rising, not too many of us are feeling confident in this “recovery”.

Our Ruling Class is still talking up how the “wealth effect” of rising stock prices will make us all feel better and start spending – forgetting that in real terms, stock prices are no higher than they were a year and a half ago. We’re not fooled – sure the DOW is racing towards 13,000, but gold is above $1,530.00 an ounce. We know our money is being eaten away because we can see it day by day at the gas pump, among many other places.

The key to recovery is to start creating wealth – and that means (here goes Noonan’s broken record, again) we have to start making, mining and growing more of our own stuff. Meanwhile, Obama is keeping with the “green energy” tomfoolery while bags of money are passed out to special interests who produce little or nothing of value. We need to drill for oil, mine coal, build nuclear power plants and oil refineries; we need to open up more farm and ranch land; we need to start making the mundane things of modern life – not outsource them to China where slave labor can do a bad job making the consumer goods we buy.

It really is just a matter of vision – Obama has never worked at a productive enterprise and thus doesn’t know what one is. To him, money is made by gaming the system and raking it in, one way or another, via government action. He doesn’t understand that the fairy tale life he leads is ultimately based upon people doing hard, grubby work…and if that work doesn’t get done, the whole house of cards comes tumbling down. Our economy needs to be geared towards the needs of the producers but is, instead, geared towards the need of Big Government and Big Corporation leeches.

2012 really can’t get here fast enough…

Obama and his Administration have implied that the Mexican drug gangs are largely being armed by legal, American gun dealers within the United States. But the truth seems to be that it is our own, butterfingered government which is providing the weapons. From Fox News:

…According to leaked diplomatic cables, there are three sources (for the drug gang weapons).

1. U.S. Defense Department shipments to Latin America, known and tracked by the U.S. State Department as “foreign military sales.”

2. Weapons ordered by the Mexican government, tracked by the State Department as “direct commercial sales.”

3. Aging, but plentiful arsenals of military weapon stores in Honduras, Guatemala and Nicaragua.

Even though these facts were well-known by the Obama administration, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Attorney General Eric Holder, it blamed much of the violence in Mexico on U.S. gun stores.

“More than 90 percent of the guns recovered in Mexico come from the United States, many from gun shops that line our border,” President Obama said in February 2009…

To be sure, this problem pre-dates the Obama Administration, but it is an outrage that Obama essentially tried to blame law-abiding, American gun dealers for the incompetence of the US government and the corruption of the Mexican government. The article goes on to note how we’re selling weapons to the the Mexican government and corrupt government officials are transferring them to the criminals…and I’ll bet that Mexican weapons orders are placed by the corrupt officials with a mind towards selling them on to the drug gangs. Its a fat business – and as long as the US government is being stupid, might as well keep it up, right?

Mexico’s problems are always America’s problems – uncomfortable as we have been together, there are just too many ties between us for us to pretend we can ignore what goes on there. The violence of Mexico is already spilling over to our side of the border and it will get worse unless we both secure our border and figure out a way to provide aid to Mexico in exterminating the drug gangs. One thing we can’t afford is to just keep on as we are – remember, those arms being sold to the drug gangs can just as easily be sold to terrorists planning to kill Americans. This must be stopped and stopped right away. And that means Obama will have to stop lying about it and stop blaming honest Americans for the crimes of others. It is time to treat this as the serious, national security threat that it is.

Just can’t get it out of his system, I guess; he simply must find the worst anti-human tyranny in the world and then say we’re being the bad guys – from Hot Air:

Via Greg Hengler, why would an American cap a three-day visit to Kim Jong-Il’s national gulag by accusing the U.S. of human rights violations? Well, much like Superman, Carter’s more a “citizen of the world” now than part of the country he used to lead. In fact, he wasn’t there on behalf of the State Department but as part of a delegation from “The Elders,” an elite team of ex-statesmen who travel the world sharing the sort of wisdom that’s made “Jimmy Carter” synonymous with successful foreign policy ideas here at home…

The crux of Carter’s argument seems to be that if a horrific dictatorship is starving its own people, the United States is at fault. This is the same logic used by Carter to usher the Mullahs in to Tehran. Either that, or Carter is still smarting over the fact that we kicked him out in 1980 and this is his on-going revenge.

The disaster just gets worse as more is known – from the AP:

Firefighters searched one splintered pile after another for survivors Thursday, combing the remains of houses and neighborhoods pulverized by the nation’s deadliest tornado outbreak in almost four decades. At least 290 people were killed across six states — more than two-thirds of them in Alabama, where large cities bore the half-mile-wide scars the twisters left behind…

You can donate at the Red Cross here; Catholic Charities here; please add any links to other charities you know in the comments. Time to come together, again, as a nation – our brothers and sisters are suffering.

May God receive those who have died, comfort those who have lost, strengthen those rushing to help. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.

Showing that bankster idiocy is truly bi-partisan – from Zero Hedge:

…”I wish Tim Geithner would say, when we reach the debt ceiling, we reach the debt ceiling, we are not going to do tricks down here…The Congress needs to be responsible and adult and take action on the deficit. The people who are threatening not to pass the debt ceiling are our version of Al-Qaeda terrorists. Really. They’re really putting our whole society at risk by threatening to round up 50 percent of the members of the Congress, who are looney, who would put our credit at risk.”…

Shows the level of panic our banksters are reaching – they are scared spitless that we won’t raise the debt ceiling, thus calling a halt to their schemes to protect their wealth by picking the pockets of the middle class. That is all the money printing and the borrowing amounts to – Bernanke prints up money which devalues the money we, the people, hold. The newly printed money is handed off to the banks, who then use it to buy bonds – which we, the people, have to pay back with interest, using our rapidly devaluing dollars. To really nutshell it – banks are being given free money which they then loan to us. Great gig, if you can get it – but it only works as long as the United States keeps borrowing like no tomorrow.

Anyone out there still wonder why I want to abolish the Federal Reserve and pass a balanced budget amendment?

For the immediate future, this is just another good reason to really fight it out on the debt ceiling debate. Do not agree to raise it unless fundamental tax and spending reform is enacted. This is a fight we must have – and a fight we would win easily. All we have to do is show the courage to ignore scare tactics like this – accusing us of being terrorists because we don’t want to borrow more money! The statement is absurdly stupid…but they’re going to keep on trying, because they can’t actually debate us on the merits of the issue.

From Bloomberg:

Japan’s sovereign-rating outlook was cut to “negative” by Standard & Poor’s as the nation’s reconstruction needs following last month’s earthquake will likely add to what’s already the world’s biggest debt load.

The outlook on Japan’s local-currency debt rating, at AA-, the fourth-highest grade, was lowered from “stable,” S&P said in a statement today. The company had reduced the rating by one step in January in the first cut since 2002. Moody’s Investors Service said last month the disaster may bring forward the “tipping point” for the country’s bond market…

So much for the early, post-earthquake, “don’t worry, this will actually help” nonsense. Japan has been teetering on the edge of disaster for 20 years…kept limping along by pure, unadulterated Keynesianism which has now left Japan under a mountain of debt right when they suddenly need bags of money just to put things back the way they were. Here’s a news flash for all the financial experts out there: this will not be good for the Japanese and global economy. It will make things worse. As will rising oil and food prices. As will Chinese inflation. As will burgeoning US debt. All the good news you can scratch up out there amounts to nothing compared to the fundamental problems of the economy.

So, hang on to your hats – and your wallets – this is going to get rough.

HAT TIP: Mish’s

From NRO’s The Corner:

When Reince Priebus became chairman of the Republican National Committee in January, it was $24 million in debt and had only $350,000 in cash on hand. By the end of March, however, the debt had dropped to $19.8 million and the cash had grown to $3.2 million. Last quarter, in fact, the GOP raised $17.7 million in total.

“We had a good first quarter,” Priebus tells National Review Online, “because we spent a lot of time on the phones, rebuilding trust and reinvigorating our major-donor program, which I think needed some TLC. We’re providing that every single day here and building that network.”…

This is important as we head in to 2012 – the disarray at the RNC probably cost us half a dozen House and one or two Senate seats in 2010. While the RNC isn’t the wizard of political victory, having a national organization firmly on message and in strong financial position is key to national victory. We lost some good opportunities – hopefully, by the time 2012 dawns we’ll have a well-oiled RNC to coordinate all efforts.

My hat’s off to Priebus on this – he’s doing a good job and I pray for his continued success.

From Politico:

Ralph Nader is convinced that Barack Obama will win reelection in 2012, but that won’t stop him from trying to organize a slate of Democrats in the coming months to challenge the president in party primaries next year.

Nader told POLITICO on Wednesday that he is working on bringing together about half a dozen presidential candidates who could “dramatically expand a robust discussion within the Democratic Party and among progressive voters across the country.” Each would focus on a specific issue where the far left says Obama hasn’t done enough, including the environment, labor and health care…

So, the Nader theory is that Obama has a mortal lock on being re-elected, so Progressives had better launch a primary challenge in order to get Obama back on the left wing straight and narrow? This is either Nader being monumentally dumb, or incredibly slick. Dumb if Nader is thinking that a more leftist Obama will be electable in 2012; smart if its a way to get leftists thinking of a primary challenge as a means of derailing Obama’s re-election effort, lest an Obama loss crush liberalism for a generation.

Hard to tell what it is with Nader – he’s such a bizarre mixture of honest and dishonest; elitist and populist; screwball and level headed that it is hard to tell which is coming through at the moment. I’ll take it that Nader, like a lot of hard core leftists, is upset at Obama’s course and wants to find a way to express it in the 2012 election. Whatever odd ball reason Nader – or any other leftist – comes up with for doing this is immaterial…what is important, for us, is the evidence it gives of trouble over in liberal land.

Five truths about Planned Parenthood. I’ll add a sixth – PP is a horrible, anti-human organization.

The intolerance of the left as displayed by advocates of same-sex marriage.

Inventer of the tele-prompter dies. Obama speechless.

The economy is in great shape!

Or, maybe not.

Terrorists had the BBC on speed dial?

So, downloading porn at the library is ok – at this point, is there any reason for us to have libraries?

From the AP:

Administration sources say President Barack Obama plans this week to name CIA Director Leon Panetta to replace Defense Secretary Robert Gates, and Gen. David Petraeus, now running the war in Afghanistan, would take the CIA chief’s job.

The officials all spoke on condition of anonymity because the changes are not final.

The changes would probably take effect this summer. Gates has already said he will leave this year…

At least Panetta is an adult, so the Defense Department will have some worthwhile leadership. Petraeus is a good choice for CIA, as well, if that works out to be correct. In the sorry list of potential Democrats, these would be the best picks possible for the posts. I can only figure that Gates, Panetta and Petraeus kinda worked it out amongst themselves and Obama is just signing off on it.