From Texas Insider:

Members of the Project 21 black leadership network strongly disagree with the President’s contention, as reported in the new book Family of Freedom: Presidents and African Americans in the White House, that the tea parties are motivated more by the color of Obama’s skin than the content of his agenda.

“As a keynote speaker at numerous tea party events around the country which has allowed me to meet tea party activists from all walks of life, I know it is Obama’s progressive politics and not his race that motivates these patriotic Americans to protest our nation’s slide toward socialism,” said full-time Project 21 Fellow Deneen Borelli.

“By engaging in race-card politics, Obama shows he is willing to follow the lead of Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson to ignite racial tension as a means of maintaining power and furthering his agenda.”

Its going to get harder and harder for the left to sell the notion that Republicans and conservatives are racists. They won’t stop trying, of course, but it will have less and less effect. Part of this is the fact that “racism” has been grossly over used by liberals – especially by people like Sharpton and Jackson. Use a word too much and it starts being less potent. But in addition to that there is the fact of a rising generation of black and other non-white leaders in the conservative movement…hard to call a white GOPer a racist when he’s donated to Allen West and is thinking that Cain might make an excellent GOP nominee.

The tide has turned; we are winning this.

A bit more hope and change for you all – from Bloomberg:

Bill Gross, who runs the world’s biggest bond fund at Pacific Investment Management Co., eliminated government-related debt from his flagship fund last month as the U.S. projected record budget deficits…

…Gains in so-called headline inflation matter more for the U.S. economy than Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke suggests and rising oil prices may cut U.S. gross domestic product by a quarter to half a percentage point, Gross said March 4 in a radio interview on “Bloomberg Surveillance” with Tom Keene.

“Bernanke tends to think this doesn’t matter — at least in terms of headline versus the core — we do,” Gross said…

It is rather absurd to hold any government debt, at the moment – and even someone like Gross is still doing that; he just doesn’t want to hold our debt because returns are too low and risks are too high. But even the allegedly strong economies out there really aren’t. Its all a bubble – fueled by central banks around the world printing money like mad.

But here’s the thing – US debt was once upon a time the most secure investment anyone could make. You could absolutely bank on it that you’d get your money back with interest. Now, no one is really sure that you will. Buy a ten year bond today and you can’t really assert that by 2021 the United States will be in a position to pay principal and interest. There is just too much debt and while Obama is in the White House and Reid is running the Senate there is no chance for any of the structural reforms necessary to get it under control – let alone get us to a position where we’ll actually have less debt at the end of the year than when we started.

And the window of opportunity for us to fix this short of default is rapidly closing. I figure we’ve got, at the outside, until FY 2015 (which starts October 1st, 2014) to start debt reduction in the United States. If we don’t get to that point by that time we’ll probably have to go through some form of default by 2016 or 2017…and the longer we hold off making the hard choices, the worse it will get when the default happens. Learn this lesson – do lay this to heart – you cannot borrow and print yourself to wealth…only hard work, savings and careful investment can do that. In the end, debt is an economic killer.

This action by Gross is just a shot across our bow. We ignore it at our peril.

And as a former Marine, he’s worth listening to – from the Kansas City Star:

…A former Marine and former assistant secretary of Defense in the Reagan administration, West has little use for the strategy as applied in Afghanistan or for its key proponents: Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates and Gen. David H. Petraeus. In citing the strategy’s limitations, West offers vivid accounts of the war from ground level and an unsparing analysis of the chances for U.S. success.

While prosecuting this 10-year conflict, West argues, the U.S. has created a culture of dependency and entitlement among the Afghan civilians as the risk-averse Afghan military prefers to let the U.S. Marines and soldiers do the fighting – and the dying. It doesn’t help, West writes, when Gates gives yet another speech that seems to put a higher priority on “nation-building” than in confronting the enemy. Of one Gates speech, West says: “That was obfuscation, not guidance. No commander can carry out a mission that the secretary of defense cannot define.”

West is not opposed to counterinsurgency in all places, at all times. In fact, his earlier book, “The Village,” about Marines living with and fighting alongside Vietnamese villagers, is one of the seminal texts of counterinsurgency: It’s required reading for Marines bound for Afghanistan. But as West sees it, in Afghanistan, politicians and “political generals” have mated counterinsurgency with nation-building, with disastrous results…

While not the bloodiest type of fighting one can engage in, counter-insurgency is certainly the most morally difficult. It requires not just high courage and foresight, but also patience and a determination to stick it out over a very long term. Successful counter-insurgency campaigns always take years. Given this, I won’t subscribe to West’s apparent conviction that we’re not doing it right in Afghanistan – while West certainly knows his business, he is not placed where he can render absolute judgment on the effort. Only the commanders in the field can do that, and only absolute success or failure will demonstrate the wisdom or folly of their strategy.

That said, I am worried that the Obama Administration has set up a situation in which victory is impossible – much as Johnson did in Vietnam. Never fall for the idiocy of an unwinnable war – anyone who says a war is unwinnable is as much an idiot as someone who says a war can’t be lost. All wars are winnable and losable – whether you win or lose depends no your strength, your courage and your intellectual capacity. Our soldiers are certainly strong enough to win; and of courage there is no lack – but I do wonder if at the top of the leadership there is the intellectual capacity necessary.

Celerity of movement and suppleness in planning are the pre-requisites for any successful military strategy. You have to be able to move very fast and be able to swiftly adapt to fluid conditions. All too often in military campaigns the leaders commit the cardinal sin – “forming a picture”; that is, figuring the enemy will do a particular thing when he may, in fact, do something very much different. I am concerned that we got ourselves a plan in Afghanistan and we’re going to carry it out on a time line – looking to meet a mythical end date set by the political leadership – regardless of actual conditions on the ground. But the plan, even if was great when first implemented, is almost certainly to need major adjustments as time goes on – as the enemy reacts to our moves and tries to foil our plan with plans of his own.

I have absolute faith in the troops, and I hope the leadership – especially on the political side – is worthy of the sacrifices of our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines. While Afghanistan may be off our political radar, an American defeat in that country would be devastating to our position around the world. We simply must win, regardless of cost or how long it takes. But we can’t just keep banging away at it – we need to have a vision for victory and then allow the troops the resources and flexibility necessary to achieve it. Does Obama’s Administration provide that? Only time will tell.

From the AP:

The Wisconsin Senate voted Wednesday night to strip nearly all collective bargaining rights from public workers, approving an explosive proposal that had rocked the state and unions nationwide after Republicans discovered a way to bypass the chamber’s missing Democrats…

This was actually expected – and one wonders why the GOP didn’t do it sooner. The apparent way Wisconsin law works on this is that fiscal matters require a quorum while things like stripping out collective bargaining which don’t have a direct fiscal impact (though, long term, this is the best means of ensuring fiscal responsibility) can be passed by a simple majority. Republicans should have done this a week or two ago – rather than let these un-American clowns on the left go off on a rampage (yes, I called them un-American…because they are: an election was held, the GOP won…running away from office is un-American, as is backing such actions).

Now we’ll see what the Democrats will do – allegedly, this was the bone of contention and now refusal to return means refusal to address the fiscal issues Democrats said they were ready to move forward on. Of course, this action has stirred up the rank and file liberals and got them donating, so Democrats might try to keep this thing going for a while.

UPDATE: In response to this Democrats lie and act like thugs. So, business as usual…

UPDATE II: With liberal thugs trying by main force to prevent the Wisconsin legislature from meeting tomorrow – in other words, trying to shut down our democratic government – a comment from over at Instapundit:

I guess that this means the new civility bullshit is officially over?

Yes, it is. You want this kind of a fight liberals, we’ll give it to you.

UPDATE III: And here’s a good place to start – a National Right to Work law has been introduced by Senate Republicans.

Some thoughts on Ash Wednesday here.

A good quote from G K Chesterton on those who would have us worship Mother Nature:

The essence of all pantheism, evolutionism, and modern cosmic religion is really in this proposition: that Nature is our mother. Unfortunately, if you regard Nature as a mother, you discover that she is a stepmother. The main point of Christianity was this: that Nature is not our mother: Nature is our sister. We can be proud of her beauty, since we have the same father; but she has no authority over us; we have to admire, but not to imitate.

That in response to the absurd view that becoming “green” should be part of our Lenten efforts.

Boiled down, about 1/3 of all wages are paid by government in the form of welfare and other transfer payments. Liberals like this; conservatives realize that as government doesn’t actually produce anything of value, it is really can’t work…as our impending national bankruptcy shows.

Mish has an update on the Eurozone financial crisis. Trust me, folks, it ain’t over…in fact, the very worst is yet to come.

Poll: Maine Republicans are tired of the Snowe job they’ve been getting…bet that Sen. Snowe draws a primary challenger but I’m not sure if she’ll pull an Arlen on us. You see, even if she did and won, she’d just wind up in the minority party come 2013…Arlen did his flip so that, in his hopes, he’d stay in the majority party. For Snowe, it is very tricky but I bet she stays GOP. Whether or not she’ll win the primary is another matter…

A women’s rights demonstration in Egypt comes out just as we should expect – Moslem men going bonkers and abusing the women.

How to make an Obama appearance more appealing to high schoolers.

From the PJ Tatler:

Up to 4,947 non-citizens may have voted in Colorado in November 2010

That’s the conclusion from a report issued today by the Colorado Secretary of State. Here is the money line: “For the reasons discussed above, however, it is likely that many of the 4,947 voters were not citizens when they cast their vote in 2010.”…

No surprise – voter fraud is built in to the system by Democrats because they like it. A lot. How do I know? Because they do it all the time. I bet that a full investigation of voting fraud in the United States will reveal that in every single election contested by a Democrat there is voter fraud at least at some level. They cheat “just in case” – always having some fake votes in the mix in case the vote comes out real close with a Democrat slightly behind.

But in order to build a system which allows this endemic fraud, you have to have it be a system which allows anyone to vote – including foreigners not eligible. A real voter system would carefully screen out anyone not eligible and would strictly ensure that everyone who shows up on election day is supposed to be there – there would be strict requirements for voter registration, stiff penalties for anyone committing even the mildest forms of voter fraud (such as ACORN submitting thousands of bogus registrations), a requirement for picture ID at the voting booth…Democrats, naturally, fight tooth and nail against any such things because it would prevent them from cheating.

But we really must correct this – if the people ever lose faith in voting because of fraud, then our democratic liberties will be gone. If elections become a battle of who can cheat the best, then there is no reason to vote, at all…and people will start to follow those who promise to “get things done” regardless of what laws and voting require. Freedom is not something assured – it has to be carefully tended, day by day, lest it die…Democrats are poisoning the roots with their insistence upon voter fraud, and it must be brought to a halt.

From the House Majority Leader:

As we continue to identify ways to cut spending and save valuable resources, this disturbing video makes clear that taxpayer dollars should no longer be appropriated to NPR. Not only have top public broadcasting executives finally admitted that they do not need taxpayer dollars to survive, it is also clear that without federal funds, public broadcasting stations self-admittedly would become eligible for more private dollars on top of the multi-million dollar donations these organizations already receive.

At a time when our government borrows 40 cents of every dollar that it spends, we must find ways to cut spending and live within our means. This video clearly highlights the fact that public broadcasting doesn’t need taxpayer funding to thrive, and I hope that admission will lead to a bipartisan consensus to end these unnecessary federal subsidies.

The “disturbing video” is that of NPR’s Ron Schiller lambasting everyone who is not, well, more kook left than Michael Moore. It can be seen here. This sort of thing on the part of NPR is entirely unsurprising – liberals are filled with hatred for those they disagree with; the only difference here is that some citizen-journalists did what the MSM should have done ages ago – turn over the rock and see what scurries out.

It is well past time for NPR to be de-funded. And we can go through our budget and find scores of things to cut along these lines. The dirty, little secret of liberalism is that it is heavily taxpayer funded – liberalism is unpopular and cannot rely upon people voluntarily supporting them to the point where they gain a commanding position in society – that they have this commanding position is because of government subsidies.

By cutting off taxpayer funds for the left, we’ll deal a body blow to them – each dollar cut means one more less dollar being spent advancing the liberal agenda. In the end, this is just a leveling of the playing field – now liberals will have to compete for support and pay heed to the needs and desires of the people. Of course, they’ll fail miserably at it…so get ready to imagine a world with no liberals.

So much for the absurd rumors that he was ready to quit – from Sky News:

Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s forces are reportedly using tanks and warplanes to attack the rebel-held town of Zawiyah in western Libya.

One eyewitness, who wished to remain anonymous, compared the town to “a city of ghosts” because of the violence and bloodshed.

He told Sky News: “Here, it is chaos. Buildings completely crumbled, mosques brought down to ashes, blood flowing through the streets.

“No human should go through this… what kind of human would do this to another human?”…

I suspected when I first heard it that the stories of Gaddafi’s imminent departure were a scam – someone trying to manipulate the oil and/or financial markets. Gaddafi has given no indication of a desire to leave – and the story earlier was that he was negotiating “safe passage” out of the country. That was just a stupid rumor – as in only a very stupid person would believe it. To get out, all Gaddafi has to do is hop on a plane to Saudi Arabia or Syria.

As I see it, only a robust, American intervention can ensure the end of the Gaddafi regime. It might be that the rebels will gain the upper hand, but I doubt it. Meanwhile, even if they do win, it will likely take weeks (and, perhaps, months) for it to be over, and all that time people are dying and the global economy is increasingly disrupted. Unfortunately, Obama seems determined to dither over this – while he is, about 10 days too late, finally saying some of the things he should, there is no indication of an imminent move by the United States.

This could get very much out of hand – and American leadership is lacking. Not a good thing.

Peace? We can, indeed, have peace – Allen West has defined the peace terms: when I can fly to Mecca, Bible in hand and cross around my neck, and celebrate Mass openly. Until such a time, there will never be true and full peace between Islam and West.

…real events continue to happen around the world – from the Jerusalem Post:

…A heavy police presence was reported in north-west Tehran on Tuesday and a video uploaded on YouTube showed Iranian security forces beating protesters in what was apparently a demonstration for International Women’s Day.

Women’s rights activists have called for demonstrations to advocate and defend the rights of both men and women in Iran, as well as more general democratic principles, BBC Farsi reported…

Meanwhile, in spite of rumors – floated by who knows whom, but which clearly manipulated stocks up and oil down – that Gaddafi is ready to call it quits (for which there isn’t a bit of evidence), the civil war in Libya continues, unrest continues to surge in Yemen and the Gulf States, while the Saudis are still trying to keep a lid on growing protests in that country.

In other news which should be getting 24/7 coverage, while Obama went on his 60th Presidential golf outing, the US clocked its highest ever monthly deficit while Democrats complain that even a $10 billion cut in spending is too much. Gas and food prices continue to surge; companies start planning more layoffs and a Chinese man was noted as complaining of a 100%+ increase in prices…

We now return you to your regularly scheduled reports on pointless, Hollywood zeros….