From the Wall Street Journal:

…In a speech Wednesday, Mr. Obama will propose cuts to entitlement programs, including Medicare and Medicaid, and changes to Social Security, a discussion he has largely left to Democrats and Republicans in Congress. He also will call for tax increases for people making over $250,000 a year, a proposal contained in his 2012 budget, and changing parts of the tax code he thinks benefit the wealthy…

The story goes on to note that the President’s proposals have caught Congressional Democrats off guard…which indicates to me that this is a trial balloon. All of this, of course, is geared towards positioning Obama for his 2012 re-election effort. It is pretty much a certainty that no major reforms will take place right now – everyone is just going for position.

We Republicans have to be careful here – the fact that entitlement reforms are even being so much as mentioned is a good thing. The plain fact of the matter is that without entitlement reform, no budget plan will really solve our problem – at best, any other reforms will just put off the day of reckoning, and likely make it worse when it finally gets here. We need to tackle this – and if Obama is going to start talking about it, so much the better. But keep in mind that he won’t be serious about it…he’ll just want to talk about it, hoping that we GOPers will then trip ourselves up and he can present himself as both a deficit hawk and a savior of Social Security. In the matter of Social Security and other entitlements, our tactic should be to smoke out the President…don’t let him get away with platitudes about reform; force him to actually put something concrete on the table…something we can either incorporate in to real reform, or ridicule as damaging.

In this, our best tactic is to lay out generalities of our own but not commit ourselves to any specific action plan on entitlements until we at least have something solid from the President. As he is dishonest and only interested in getting re-elected, this will be difficult. He will put things off, make mealy-mouthed statements and, in general, do everything he can to vote “present” on the most important fiscal issue facing us. Naturally, he’ll want to put us in a bad light and, even more naturally, take credit for any worthwhile ideas and legislation which comes out of it. Caution, caution and more caution is necessary for us in the debate over entitlements.

On the other hand, we should get out in front of the President on taxes – and we can’t do that by just automatically condemning a tax increase proposal. We all know that a tax increase on incomes over $250,000 is not a tax on “the rich” – we know, that is, that such a tax is a tax on the most productive and economically worthwhile Americans. But as Obama will cast it as “the rich” and the MSM will endlessly say it is “the rich”, we have to live with the public perception that “the rich” are the only people being taxed…most people don’t make more than $250,000 a year and so in a lot of public minds, “the rich” will become “Bill Gates”, rather than the real target: the local plumbing contractor who grosses $800,000 a year and employs half a dozen people. We have to answer this, and “no new taxes” is not the best way to go.

Showing our willingness to compromise and our understanding that all must make sacrifices in order to get us out of this fiscal mess, we should make our rejoinder – we know that we need more revenues, and thus we are proposing a tax on wealth. Temporary; sunsetted after 3 years, but a tax none the less. It would be a 10% annual tax on wealth (cash, government bonds, commodities, property; but not stocks or private sector bonds) in excess of $5 million dollars. You have a fortune of, say, $1 billion? We’re taking $30 million of it. Sorry – but, please note, if it is in stocks, we won’t…if its just sitting around earning you money off taxpayer dollars (which is what government bonds do) or locked up in your mansion or just sitting in a cash account, then we’re grabbing it. Put it to work in the private economy, and it is safe. Now, why would I want this? I mean, other than having a law which pretty much forces investment in the private economy as opposed to parking it in government bonds or gold?

Because it allows us to play the class-warfare card against the Democrats as well as gets us off the hook for being perceived as pro-rich. You want to tax the rich? Fine – but we’re going to really tax the genuinely rich. Not the hard working small business owner, but the bazillionaire…and, most especially, the bazillionaire who is bankrolling a lot of leftist causes. The dirty, little secret of the super rich is that when they are not indifferent to politics, they mostly tilt to the left. Only a very few of the Forbes 400 can be classed in any way as conservative. Democrats have been playing class warfare on the cheap – protecting the super-rich who provide so much funding to liberal causes while hammering productive people with taxes…and all the while pretending they are fighting against the rich and their GOP protectors. This will turn the tables on them…imagine the phone call Obama will get from Soros when this is floated! Imagine Republicans being able to get out there on the stump arguing that, yes, the rich do need to pay their fair share…and here is our proposal to do it, and it is in marked contrast to Obama’s plan which would tax people of modest wealth while leaving the very rich alone.

By doing this we would put the Democrats out of their reckoning – they would be hard pressed to come up with a logical reason to oppose it (especially as this would come out after Obama announced his plan to increase income taxes on people making more than $250,000 a year), but their super-rich money-bags will be demanding that this be stopped in its tracks. We’ll be throwing a hand grenade in to their ranks while at the same time cultivating a populist and reasonable profile for ourselves. Keep in mind that liberal rank-and-file types really think that when Obama says “tax the rich” he means the genuinely rich; making such a proposal would sow confusion in liberal ranks as they try to digest the fact that we will tax the super-rich while Obama won’t…and, may, indeed, fight hard against it. And, remember, most of this is about positioning for 2012 – it is, once again, highly unlikely that anything resembling a permanent fix will come out of the upcoming budget debates.

Democrats are working their plan – unite the liberal base, divide the GOP base; Obama figures that a proposed tax hike combined with some rhetoric about entitlement reform will peel off some RINOs and create a rift in the GOP. By answering him back with a tax on wealth while holding fire on entitlement reforms, we’ll be splitting them…and as we would wrap our plans up with a pretty bow of budget cuts to useless spending (and there are bags of that in the government, as we all know), we’ll be uniting our base at the same time.

Anyway, that is my idea – whatever does come out of the leadership, it had better be something smashing and unique. We can’t play by Obama’s rules – we have to make a new set of rules and force him to play on our field. That is the only way we beat him, and beat liberalism in general. Winning in 2012 calls for boldness – for getting out of the political rut; thinking anew and acting anew. Obama is the weakest President in our history; liberalism is a dead ideology – we have to bury it. I’ve presented my shovel to dig the grave of Obamunism – if you’ve got a better, then let’s hear it.

Delighted to find that at least one nation has figured it out – from the Wall Street Journal:

Voters in Iceland have rejected a government-approved deal to repay Britain and the Netherlands $5 billion for their citizens’ deposits in the failed online bank Icesave, referendum results showed Sunday.

With about 90% of the votes counted, the “no” side had 59.1% of the votes and the “yes” side 40.9%. The result reflects Icelanders’ anger at having to pay for the excesses of their bankers, and complicates the country’s recovery from its 2008 economic collapse…

The story goes on to note what happened – during an easy money boom in Iceland, a lot of Brits and Dutch invested money in a high-yield Icelandic bank. These yields were only possible in a massively over-heated economic atmosphere and could only continue as long as a “greater fool” was around to keep buying over priced financial investments. Eventually, the last fool appeared and there was no one in line after him, and Iceland’s economy completely collapsed. So, everyone is out their money – except, of course, for the fact that the United Kingdom and Netherlands used public funds to cover the losses of British and Dutch investors…and now the Brits and the Dutch want the people of Iceland to agree to tax themselves to cover the losses to the investors. The people of Iceland gave an answer to this idea – the first word in their answer begins with “F”, the second word is a possessive pronoun.

It is the same answer we should have given when we were told we needed to bail out the “too big to fail” banks. Or to bail out GM and Chrysler. Or, indeed, to fix up anyone who loses money in an investment. An investment is by its very nature a risk – you are looking to increase your money supply without having to do actual work and so you invest it in this, that or the other enterprise and hope that it gives you a nice return…but there is always the chance that you’ve invested your money with idiots and you’re going to take it in the shorts. If you do, then there’s no use whining about it. You deal with it, and move on. As is so often said – and so often ignored – if its too good to be true, it probably is.

If someone says “hey, invest with me and I’ll get you a 15% return”, he’s either a con artist, or an idiot, or a combination of the two. He’s playing upon your greed…your wisdom tells you that 6 or 7% is a more than reasonable return and, hey, history shows that you should get that kind of return in a wise investment…shooting for more than that is the equivalent of shooting dice. Which, by the way, is a fine thing to do – as long as you realize that its a gamble (and, additionally, as long as you do it here in Vegas…and, man, we’re hurting out there, so if you’ve got a few bucks…or a couple billion, actually…to blow, come on down!). Essentially, what the banksters did towards the end of the boom is offer us absurd returns on our money and we (or, at least, a lot of us) fell for it. And when it all went belly up, we should have just told the banksters to take their lumps like the rest of us.

Iceland has done this, and I admire them for it. Sure, things will be tight for them…and no one is going to want to lend them a lot of money any time soon. But, who cares? All this means is that Iceland will have to some how struggle through life debt free and have to earn its living by hard work. Hardly a sentence to the salt mines, you know? If only we had that level of courage and wisdom.

HAT TIP: Mish’s

Which would, of course, work out as a “lots of missiles over Israel zone” – from France 24:

Arab League Secretary General Amr Mussa announced Sunday his intention to appeal to the UN Security Council for a no-fly zone over Gaza, where repeated Israeli air strikes have left at least 18 people dead since Thursday…

And this puts us in quite a pickle – given that civilians do die in Israel’s retaliatory strikes and our whole announced purpose in Libya is to protect civilians, how do we oppose this? Especially given the Obama Administration’s penchant for pressuring Israel and kowtowing to Islamists?

The absurdity of intervening in Libya “to protect civilians” is laid bare – you don’t just go to war to stop someone from doing something; you go to war to obtain a definite, desired outcome. If our stated aim in Libya was to oust Gaddafi, then we’d be able to easily tell the Arab League to go jump in a lake. Now, not quite so easy. Perhaps next time our Administration will think a bit before setting a policy?

Additionally, and of course, the situation in Libya is not the same as the situation in Israel. The Libyan government was deliberately massacring civilians in order to maintain control. Israel, on the other hand, is merely trying to stop unprovoked missile attacks from the Islamists – and as the Islamists, cowards to a man, hide behind women and children when they launch their attacks, it is certain that some civilians will die. The answer is not to stop Israel from protecting herself, but to find a means of stopping the Islamists from committing wanton murder.

But US policy won’t be able to carry on such a logical, just and, indeed, merciful policy. We’re stuck “defending civilians”, but only against air strikes…no defending civilians who are being rounded up and murdered by a thug in Libya; no defending civilians who are being used as human shields by terrorists in Gaza.

2012 can’t get here fast enough…

Donald Trump, pro-lifer.

Obama takes credit for keeping the Lincoln Memorial open. Hail the conquering hero!

Rosenberg child: Hey, maybe Dad was guilty, after all. 1,000 points to the kid for filial loyalty, minus a million, though, for lack of common sense. I mean, come on, the evidence was always conclusive on the Rosenberg’s guilt – recent revelations from one of the co-defendants just puts a cherry on top of the conviction sundae. At least he’s moving forward…still got plenty of liberals out the convinced of the Rosenberg’s innocence. Lies die very hard.

Why Obama will lose in 2012. Can’t say I agree with all the opinions expressed – and, in fact, some of them I am quite in opposition to – but it is a strong case against Obama…and any such is welcomed by me.

How to tell if your neighbor is a bomb maker.

Poll: 9% still suckered by Obama on the economy issue. Rest of us have either figured him out or are well on the way to doing so.

So how can we do that and avoid the constant whining of dumb hippies and having all those useless countries in Europe call us warmongers?

Perhaps we should:

…William Josephson, former head of the New York Law Department Charities Bureau, recently told a joint hearing of House Ways and Means subcommittees that a report from Representatives Wally Herger (R-California) and Dave Reichert (R-Washington) gives reason for Congress, the IRS, and the Government Accountability Office to investigate AARP.

The Republican congressmen claim that AARP is a billion-dollar, for-profit organization where commercial interests outweigh those of its members, and that AARP stands to make huge profits off ObamaCare by adding seniors to Medigap plans upon the loss of Medicare advantage plans…

AARP presents itself as a non-partisan group dedicated to advancing the cause of older Americans – and, for the most part, that is how AARP is treated both by the MSM and the politicians. But AARP’s support for ObamaCare – which is, at best, flawed and doesn’t offer much long-term hope for seniors in the matter of health care – should have rung alarm bells. It does indicate that AARP has ceased to be a non-partisan, advocacy group and has, instead, just become another locus of power and money in DC which is just looking after itself. Only an investigation can settle the matter.

Additionally, we do need to figure out some way to both allow such groups their fair say in political debates without risking them becoming the merest of hidebound, self-serving interests. One thought might be to ban such groups from selling insurance, but then you realize that groups like the Knights of Columbus sell insurance, too. It is tricky to figure out. And, so, initially, our task is just to find out the facts – does AARP have a vested interest in the changes of ObamaCare? Will AARP stand to increase its wealth if ObamaCare is fully implemented? Did such considerations cause AARP to back ObamaCare? These are the questions we need answers to – and I hope Congress will get them for us. We cannot afford to have a group working for itself while living in the public mind as a selfless advocacy group.

Over at NRO’s The Corner Lindsey Burke notes one of the provisions of the budget deal:

In a momentous victory for D.C. schoolchildren, Speaker John Boehner succeeded in reauthorizing the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program in the long-term continuing resolution to which the Obama administration agreed just before midnight. As Kathryn noted late last night, “John Boehner just walked Barack Obama into being a civil-rights leader.”…

This is a big deal – and it shows that Boehner has both his heart and mind in the right place. That even in the most intense, political battles, he remembers that there are genuine people out there who need help. This is a far cry from the Democrats using suffering as a political prop…this is actually doing something which will help. And Boehner got it past the Democrats.

This also illustrates, again, how scared the Democrats are of a shut down…that they let slide this program with its inherent threat to corrupt, union control of education indicates that they’ll pretty much do whatever we want, as long as we press it to the risk of a shut down.

Some times a picture really is worth 1,000 words:

Grassroots efforts at $335 a week. Well, did you really think that anyone supports the right to an abortion? I mean, outside a few fanatics, who is going to volunteer their time and effort to advance something which has as its end result a murdered child?

And so it is with most liberal ideas – no one volunteers to protect pornography, vile popular culture, high taxes, wasteful spending. You either have to dupe people in to coming out for you, or pay them…this ad shows that at least in the abortion debate, our liberals have opted for cold, hard cash to raise the troops.

HAT TIP: The American Catholic

A lot of discussion about the deal to keep government running – some saying Boehner blew it, others saying he was a master strategist. The big debate, right now, is over who won it. That, to me, is entirely unimportant. The most important thing is who lost: Obama and his Democrats.

First and foremost it must be remembered that if the Democrats thought they would have won the battle over a government shut down, they would have shut it down in a heart beat. Absolutely no question about that – the only reason they agreed to a deal is because they must have done some internal polling and it showed the American people trending towards the GOP or, at best, at least not trending in favor of the Democrats in a shut down situation. No, I don’t have proof of this – no one ever will. But it is none the less certain – Democrats agreed to a deal because they felt it was the best option in regards to their political future.

One has to think about what the deal did – it turned a $40 billion Democrat spending increase in to a genuine, $38 billion cut. Remember, most of the time when we talk about cuts to federal spending it is really just a reduction in the rate of growth. In Democrat-land, which has ruled such debates until just recently, if you spent $10 billion last year and would like to spend $20 billion this year, then if you end up spending $19 billion, that is a $1 billion cut. Times have changed – and now we have a genuine reduction in the amount of spending. Not much. Not nearly enough. But Democrats gave in on it rather than shut down the government. This is a first.

And, so, we know what to do – keep forcing things to a shut down crisis and watch them back down. No, they won’t back down enough and we daren’t press too far, too fast lest our desire to cut back fire on us. But, keep pressing. Cut, all the time. Every bill that gets sent up to the Senate should have some form of deficit reduction in it – and make them real cuts. That way when the inevitable deal is cut, we can still carry home at least some genuine reduction in spending.

The people are on our side, the Democrats are running scared – their whole existence now is just to hold on to as much Big Government as they can…our job is to keep pushing the limit and then work for victory in 2012.

One must agree, Donald Trump as a candidate would be endlessly entertaining, at the least. So, NY Times writer goes after Trump – Trump fires right back:

Even before Gail Collins was with the New York Times, she has written nasty and derogatory articles about me. Actually, I have great respect for Ms. Collins in that she has survived so long with so little talent. Her storytelling ability and word usage (coming from me, who has written many bestsellers), is not at a very high level. More importantly, her facts are wrong!..

This, of course, in response to Trump raising the birth certificate issue. Just to be clear before we get started: My view is that Barack Obama was born in the United States. Furthermore, even if someone could demonstrate that he was born in Kenya, the fact that he was born to an American mother is sufficient, in my view, to make him a native-born American. Certainly he’s as much an American as any kid of an illegal immigrant just born here today. What is happening here, however, is that the refusal to simply dispose of the issue is keeping it alive…and allowing someone like Trump to make a lot of hay about it.

As to why Obama won’t simply clear up the matter is beyond me. I don’t know. Perhaps he is just annoyed with the questions and doesn’t want to show respect to those raising them? I can understand that because if anyone were to ever question the status of my birth, I’d tell them to go jump in a lake. It is highly doubtful that I would ever go to the trouble to find the original of my birth certificate and hand it off to critics. On the other hand, I’m not President of the United States and thus there isn’t much interest out there in where, precisely, I was born.

I’m not quite sure what Trump’s real plan is. It could just be media-mongering…the guy might like being in the lime light so much that he’ll use any means possible to get in to it. On the other hand, he has very correctly identified some of the problems facing the nation – especially in his harping on China’s unfair trade practices. It might be that he really is seriously thinking of running for President. One thing I have noted talking to people who love this nation but who aren’t political junkies, they are liking the fact that Donald Trump doesn’t hide behind mealy-mouthed words…he says what is on his mind.

In this, Trump could end up being formidable – whether he enters the GOP primary or seeks a third party run. And if he does really run for office, it could be that bringing up the birth certificate issue was just a clever means of getting him on the political map. How so? Well, regardless of what pundits and liberals and conservatives like me think about Obama’s nativity, for a large and (apparently) growing segment of the population the questions about Obama’s birth are just part of a pattern about Obama…the utter dishonesty of his biography, the secretiveness about his associations and accomplishments, his endless failure to level with the American people about what he really wants to do. When you want to attack a man in politics, its best to pick one, simple stick to start with…Trump has picked his, and its working.

From the IMF:

Mr. Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), issued the following statement today on Portugal:

“The IMF has received a request for financial assistance from the Portuguese authorities and we stand ready to join the effort, together with our European partners, to help restore growth and financial stability in Portugal…”

The primary support for the IMF comes from the United States – and so, dear Americans, if you want to know who will be on the hook to help pay off Banksters who loaned Portugal too much money, look in the mirror. Yes, you can be mad at the Portuguese, if you like. They did go on a spending binge using borrowed money to give themselves a life style they hadn’t earned by hard work…but, then again, they wouldn’t have been able to do it if there weren’t bankers whose greed is only exceeded by their stupidity.

Think about it – from what I’ve read, Portugal, a nation of about 10 million people, needs $99 billion to square accounts. There is no way on earth that a population of 10 million – which is, by the way, declining because of a collapsed birth rate – can ever pay off $99 billion while also finding money for, you know?, living. It just can’t be done…but the Banksters loaned them that absurd amount and now want their money. Meanwhile, the Ruling Class is frightened that if the Banksters don’t get it, financial collapse will ensue with dangerous political consequences for, well, the Ruling Class. And, so, to the taxpayers they go…and not just us; they will also be hitting up European taxpayers, too.

More debt and more money printing…higher inflation and lower economic growth. All done because stupid people simply don’t want to face the consequences of their actions. Really, at best they are only buying some time. They are hoping against hope that some how, some way, a magical spurt of economic growth will ensue to create the phenomenal amount of new wealth necessary to both service the debt and make the newly printed money worth something. It won’t happen – we are doomed to financial collapse. The only question is how bad it will be – from really bad (the best-case scenario, right now) to utterly catastrophic (which is what we’ll get if we don’t stop this nonsense right quick).

Just burns me up – that it is happening and that there is little or nothing we can do to stop it before Election Day, 2012.

HAT TIP: Zero Hedge