From the AP:

Bursts of heavy gunfire rained into Cairo’s Tahrir Square before dawn Thursday, killing at least three anti-government demonstrators among crowds still trying to hold the site after an assault by supporters of President Hosni Mubarak, according to a protest organizer.

Sustained bursts of automatic weapons fire and powerful single shots rattled into the square starting at around 4 a.m., and was continuing more than an hour later.

Protest organizer Mustafa el-Naggar said he saw the bodies of three dead protesters being carried toward an ambulance. He said the gunfire came from at least three locations off in the distance and that the Egyptian military, which has ringed the square with tank squads for days to try to keep some order, did not intervene…

Which tells me that there is a lot of force in Egypt which, while perhaps not wanting to keep Mubarak, doesn’t want to lose power and position. Got to remember that the way a Mubarak maintains himself in power is only partially through brutality – the other half the the equation is bribery of select parts of society. Those bribed parts don’t want to lose their place at the trough. The army is standing aside while thugs are killing and robbing – and some strong indications that the thugs are police officers; this could be a ploy to intimidate the crowds and thus allow a reassertion of Ruling Class control.

To be sure, a complete return to “normal” is probably out of the question – new forces are rising and they’ll want their piece of the pie (seen lots of “man on the street” quotes to the effect of “I’ve got a college degree and yet I only earn a pittance”; meaning that the problem isn’t Mubarak’s dictatorship, but the lack of material advancement, at least for some of the people out in the streets). Adjustments and accommodations will have to be made and Mubarak is almost certain to be gone some time soon (I doubt he’ll be allowed to hang around until the next election; but we’ll see). In the end, however, those who have appear to be doing quite a lot to ensure they continue having.

The sorta good news about this is that it might end up freezing out the Moslem Brotherhood. There might rise a coalition of people who are willing to slowly loosen the chains while keeping a lid on the Islamists. On the other hand, the MB seems pretty popular at least in some quarters and they might demand a share of power in return for getting off the streets…and even a small share of power is enough for a tightly organized, committed group to eventually take over the whole thing. Bottom line, this still doesn’t look to be coming out as a good result for the world.

And his name wasn’t Barack Obama – from Commentary:

…It’s worth comparing what is happening in Egypt with what happened in the Philippines during the Reagan presidency.

In his book An American Life, Reagan writes about how Ferdinand Marco had stolen an election and that an uprising of Filipinos on behalf of Corazon Aquino, the legitimate winner, was inevitable.

On February 23, Reagan was at Camp David and told that Marcos and a loyal general, Fabian Ver, had amassed a force of tanks and troops to attack army units of two military leaders who had resigned from the Marcos government and given their support to Aquino. Ver’s tanks were turned back by hundreds of thousands of civilians — “but the next time,” Reagan wrote, “the result might be huge casualties.”

Reagan drafted an appeal to Marcos not to use force and attended a meeting in the Situation Room on February 23, 1986. “We agreed that it was inevitable that Marcos would have to give up power,” Reagan wrote. “He no longer had the popular support to remain in office. … Everyone agreed that we had to do everything possible to avoid bloodshed in Manila; we didn’t want to see it come down to a civil war. I also wanted to be sure we did not treat Marcos as shabbily as our country had treated another former ally, the shah of Iran. At the same time, I knew it was important to start off with a good relationship with the new government of the Philippines.”

On February 24th Reagan noted that Marcos would have to be told to step down, some negotiations went on about what would happen and on the 25th, Marcos and family presented themselves at the then-US airbase in the Philippines and out the dictator went. The situations are not, of course, exact – but here we have Reagan acting with courage and conviction, not wanting to harm a man who had been a loyal ally yet understanding that a new day was dawning. Obama has been floundering around trying to figure out if he should stick with Mubarak or go with revolution.

There is an indecisiveness in American policy these days; no hard center – nothing which you can identify as an “Obama Doctrine”. With Reagan it was “not one more square inch falls to communism”; with Bush the Younger it was “freedom is God’s gift to mankind”. What is it for Obama? Given this, we’re already starting to see us getting the short end of the stick in Egypt – the regional tyrants are not pleased with us while the revolutionaries are increasing the anti-American rhetoric. We stand to lose friends on both sides of the equation.

Getting ready for the long battle – from The Daily Caller:

TheDC Exclusive – The Obama administration snubbed top GOP oversight official Rep. Darrell Issa on his first major document deadline as new chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, sending a short letter promising to comply in response to a major information request that was due Saturday at noon.

But Issa is hitting back Tuesday with a demand key documents be sent in two days…

We’ll see how this plays out, but Obama’s Chicago-style Administration doesn’t really want a lot of scrutiny.

Nevada’s new governor calls for a review of all 183 State boards and agencies to determine if they are worthy of tax payer funds. 183 – and that is in a libertarian-conservative State.

Governor Cuomo declares New York bankrupt. Liberalism in action.

Democrats cave in on an earmark ban; the revolution continues.

Things are looking good for the GOP in 2012.

Senate GOP looks to force a vote on ObamaCare repeal. With 15 Democrat Senators vulnerable in 2012, this might actually work. Even though it has been correctly ruled as unconstitutional, we should still press repeal…repealing ObamaCare is, along with budget cuts, the way to conservative victory in 2012.

In 1983 a poor girl came up pregnant and, at her wit’s end, turned to Catholic Social Services. At that place, she didn’t get advice to have an abortion. The other day, she went back to CSS and expressed her gratitude for what she did receive – Christian charity.

Much has been said over the past week that the prospects in Egypt and the larger Moslem world are pretty bleak. Anyone who takes the time to consider things realizes that whatever the average man or woman in Cairo might hope for out of the revolt, what they are likely to get will fall far short of desires. At best, we might get regimes which are only moderately Islamist in character; at worst, we get a series of Iranian-style regimes. There has been an interesting debate over at NRO’s The Corner to the effect that the only way to get to a liberal Islam is to go through some sort of Islamist Islam – and there is much to be said for that, though there is also a rather grating error in the line of thinking.

Taking their cue from a bit by Reuel Gerecht, the conception is that we have to go through Martin Luther before we can get to Thomas Jefferson. That, in fact, enlightenment can only come once the people have travailed through religious obscuritanism. After that, once that has failed, the people will suddenly start reading Voltaire, I guess. All of that is a load of nonsense.

First of all, it presupposes that until the Enlightenment – until we get to Jefferson – no one has a clue of a properly governed society of free men. The Enlightenment, though, wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. During that time, what happened was a group of shallow, half-educated and self absorbed people starting attacking what they didn’t understand – Christianity and the past. As things weren’t perfect, all that existed up to the moment of judgment was condemned out of hand and a whole, new future was envisioned where people who were properly up to the job would organize everything for everyone. In the long run, this got us the French Revolution with its Terror…and then the successors to the French in Lenin’s Russia, Mussolini’s Italy, Hitler’s Germany and Mao’s China. And, indeed, the Islamists who think they are advancing Islam, but actually advancing a socio-cultural bit of nonsense which is only possible for people who don’t know about the past. Islamism has cooked up a story of a glorious Caliphate which can be restored once the right people are in charge and able to organize everything for everyone. This is no more or less stupid than the pathetic imaginings of a Karl Marx.

From the 11th to the 14th century the Christian west was very well governed. This is the time of St. Francis; of St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Bernard, Dante, Albertus Magnus, Boccaccio, St. Louis IX, Abelard, Petrarch, the Gothic flowering, universities for higher education, the invention of the compass, eye glasses, the blast furnace, windmills…hardly the Dark Ages of mankind. We didn’t need an Enlightenment to allow justice to be established – and, indeed, in a very real way the establishment of the United States (a federal system where government is strictly limited in nature) is a means of recapturing what was strongly developing until the disasters of Black Death and what amounted to a civil war in Christendom when the Reformation took place.

What does Islam need in order to have a just social order? It needs to desire it. Will the people on the streets of Cairo desire this so strongly that they’ll get it? That remains to be seen. But no one should fear these events – they are working themselves out. They may prove a cure or a poison for Moslem society. Our job is not to wring our hands in worry; our job is not to try and plaster on to current events a false template of what happened in our own past; our job is simply to do what is right – and at this moment that means giving our blessing to anyone who will fight for justice and liberty. Cut our ties with the tyrants, completely and stand ready to assist anyone who is actually fighting for justice, and to smite anyone who would seek to create and export injustice.

Such has really been the actual tasks of men from the beginning of time. To do what is right, as far as our abilities allow. We won’t get it right in all respects. We will make terrible errors. But if our desire is to help the good and defy the bad, then we won’t go altogether wrong, nor instigate complete disaster. Of course, it would be helpful to us if we’d strip away a lot of the nonsense we’ve been fed upon for a couple centuries now about how the world developed. The truth does set you free, and thus the truth is obscured as much as possible – because a select part of our population doesn’t want the rest of us to be free.

But, stand firm for what is right; condemn what is wrong – in the end, that is all anyone can do. And if we do that, then no matter what comes now and in the future, we will be able to meet it with a clear eye and a clean conscience.

Not a good bit of news – from the Vancouver Sun:

Al-Qaida is on the verge of producing radioactive weapons after sourcing nuclear material and recruiting rogue scientists to build “dirty” bombs, according to leaked diplomatic documents.

A leading atomic regulator has privately warned that the world stands on the brink of a “nuclear 9/11″…

We can only hope that our military and law enforcement people are on the job here – with the understanding that we have to get it right all the time, al-Qaeda only has to get it right once. Another reminder of the fact that we live in a dangerous world and that our fight with the Islamists is a war, not a law enforcement issue. Keep that in mind, liberals, the next time you decide to wax eloquent on the horrors of waterboarding.

Is this now, finally, going to be enough to get his anti-human organization de-funded?

A Planned Parenthood manager in New Jersey coaches a man and a woman posing as sex traffickers how to secure secret abortions, STD testing, and contraception for their female underage sex slaves, and make their whole operation “look as legit as possible” in an undercover video released this morning.

Clinic manager Amy Woodruff, LPN, of Planned Parenthood Central New Jersey’s Perth Amboy center, warns the pimp and his prostitute to have their trafficked underage girls lie about their age to avoid mandatory reporting laws, promising, “even if they lie, just say, ‘Oh he’s the same age as me, 15,’…it’s just that mainly 14 and under we have to, doesn’t matter if their partner’s the same age, younger, whatever, 14 and under we have to report.” She says, “For the most part, we want as little information as possible.”…

Here is a link to the whole story and the video. Its pretty terrible – but, once again, if your product is death, then you’re not going to be a person or organization of high moral standards. You can’t be honest, merciful and just if what you do is either prevent pregnancy or butcher unborn children for a living. Its like trying to be a moral whore, or an honest con artist; the trick can’t be done.

At all events, it is time for PP to lose all taxpayer funding. The practice of abortion is legal in the United States, so we can’t get rid of it completely – but, certainly, no decent nation should be directly participation in such crimes.

Even when its 40 to 1 in your favor:

Bishnu Shrestha, a brave Gurkha soldier in Indian Army, defeated 40 train robbers while returning home after a voluntary retirement. The Indian army, is going to awarded Bishnu with Sourya Chakra, Bravery Award and Sarvottam Jeevan Raksha medals during the Indian Republic Day celebration on January 26.

While in the train, Maurya Express from Ranchi to Gorakhpur on September 2, 2010, 35 year-old Bishnu saved a girl about to be raped by train robbers, in front of her helpless parents. After looting the train, when the robbers started stripping the 18 year old girl in front of him, he couldn’t contain his calmness. He took out his khukari and attacked the group of 40 robbers, alone. In the fight, he killed three of dacoits and injured eight others. Remaining looters ran for their lives…

A brave man who does the right thing – the way the world should be. A khukari, by the way, is that wicked looking knife that Gurkha’s have always carried.

From Gallup:

About 7 in 10 national adults, including 88% of Republicans, say it is important that Republican leaders in Congress take the Tea Party movement’s positions and objectives into account as they address the nation’s problems. Among Republicans, 53% rate this “very important.”…

Here’s the real kicker in the poll – 72% of Independents think that it is “very” or “somewhat” important that the Republicans in Congress pay heed to the TEA Party. This shows a couple things:

1. The GOP leadership ignores the TEA Party at its deadly peril.

2. The TEA Party is not viewed by Independents as a Republican entity – it is the mainstream.

This doesn’t mean the TEA Party gets to call the shots, but it does mean that this movement of the American people must have its voice heard in all debates. Any attempt to shove it out or to cut deals with the left behind closed, Congressional doors will spark outrage and lead to GOP defeat. Once again, the GOP had better have a TEA Party in 2012, or things will get very rough.

The liberal welfare State, write large – from Zero Hedge:

Much has been said about Bernanke’s wealth effect and how it impacts a whopping 1% of the US population… Unfortunately, a little less time has been spent discussing the equal and opposite effect: that of the poverty effect. Luckily, every month we get an update on this just as useful metric. And as of November, the SNAP program had 43.6 million participants, an increase of 400k from October, and a 14% increase, or 5.3 million from a year prior.

Congratulations, Americans! We’ve bailed out the banks, devalued the currency and driven ourselves further in to bankruptcy – and in return, you get food stamps!

Is this hope, or change?