Mark Steyn notes:

Two months ago, the Labour government was exhausted and discredited, under an unpopular leader presiding over the ruins of an economic policy he was largely responsible for and which had finally caught up with him. “Dave” Cameron, on the other hand, had signed up to every shallow, pandering fancy the slickers had recommended (I seem to recall more than a few Republican “reformers” recommending the Cameronization of the GOP).

And what was that worth in the end? There was a swing of over six per cent against Labour, and barely three-fifths of that went to the Conservatives. I can’t say I’ve ever cared for Cameron, but, whenever I raised the point with Tory heavyweights, I was told that they didn’t personally care for him either but “he smelt like a winner”. As I wrote over four years ago:

This is dangerously close to the rationale of Democratic primary voters in 2004, when they told pollsters that what they liked most about John Kerry was his “electability”. Sadly, electability isn’t enough to get you elected.

It looks as though Cameron will be able to get in to Number 10, but at the price of Liberal-Democrat support…and this means he won’t be able to do even the slightest Tory thing. Any attempt to move even slightly right will cause the coalition to collapse – and given that Cameron did run as a centrist, get-the-job-done kind of politician, we can expect him to toe the Liberal-Democrat line in order to retain office.

This is the likely death of the Tory Party – they’ll get all the blame for everything which is about to go wrong and when a vote is held (probably only in a year or two as Britain does not have rigidly scheduled elections as we do) they’ll be wiped out. The only way to avoid this is for Cameron to eschew power – and he doesn’t seem to have the backbone to do this.

Why does this matter to us? Because what happened to the Tories is precisely what the liberals and RINOs want to happen to the Republican Party. They want us to mute our conservatism; move away from Evangelicals; drop the life issue; surrender on gay marriage; not be serious about border security. In liberal and RINO prescription, the only way for the GOP to save itself is to surrender core principle. Well, the Tories did that, and look what they got.

The key to victory is to stand firm – but even if it were the demonstrable recipe for defeat, it would still be the way to go. Liberalism is a dying creed. Its economic prescriptions have proven false and no matter how hard they try to juggle the books, the ultimate collapse of this fiat money economy is certain. They are also dying in the sense that they are the party of despair, dissolution and death. They are trying to import voters because they won’t got out and make them on their own. They are finished.

But they still dispose great resources of power – and thus they might be able to keep things going for a while and might even beat us at the polls. It makes no matter – their end is certain. And when that end comes, we want our side to be the blazing light of truth. We want it to be super abundantly clear that we had separated ourselves from liberalism and had nothing to do with it. We do that, and when the crash comes, our victory will be complete.

Or, we can RINO ourselves in to oblivion and allow liberalism to retain power by default. Not for me – I refuse to be a conservative who winds up conserving liberalism. I refuse the office of efficient manager of the welfare state. I stand firm, and await the final death of liberalism.

From, of all places, the New York Times:

Among the many reverberations of President Obama’s election, here is one he probably never anticipated: at least 32 African-Americans are running for Congress this year as Republicans, the biggest surge since Reconstruction, according to party officials.

Allen West is, by far, the most prominent (and if he doesn’t blow it in some manner, clearly has a governorship in his future…and maybe much higher office, as well), but well-known or obscure, it is heartening to have so many black Americans running as Republicans. It is a restoration – a sign that, just perhaps, one day black Americans as a whole will return to their ancestral political home, the Republican Party.

The Big Lie that the GOP is racist is being put to rest – we’ve all had it up to our necks with this slander, and if we can get West and more like him in power then we will be able to turn the tide. We’ll force Democrats to defend poverty-inducing welfare and having hucksters like Sharpton and Jackson while we Republicans have men of sterling quality like West.

I look forward to the future – and, remember, if we can just get 30% of black Americans to come home, then we’ve crushed liberalism for good.

HAT TIP: Crock Tock

The story:

Vintage High School students were suspended for fighting and burning a Mexican national flag during incidents on campus Wednesday, school Principal Craig Lewis said.

At 3 p.m., four female students were involved in a fight related to the burning of a flag, according to Napa police.

Thursday, school administrators found out the burned flag had been discarded on the school campus. They checked trash cans and found a partially burned Mexican national flag, police said.

Investigators believe two students burned it in protest for the celebration of Cinco De Mayo, police said. The investigation continues and school officials are dealing with the involved students.

This unhealthy state of affairs is 100% the fault of liberal political correctness. Had we not spent the better part of the past 20 years marching down the road of race-baiting this would not be an issue. No one would care about Mexico’s flag because there would be no threat in it…but because we’re being told, endlessly, that Mexico has some sort of legitimate gripe against us and that “tolerance” means truckling to Mexico, that flag has become a threat to the American identity.

To defuse this situation is rather simple – quit it with all the nonsensical “ethnic studies” programs; cease having official notice of foreign celebrations and start emphasizing American history over an above non-American. Poof, like magic, the problem would be gone.

This is the United States of America. Learning about foreign lands is good – but the primary purpose teaching things like history and culture in the public schools must be directed towards teaching our history and culture. This is just common sense – it is insane that we do otherwise.

Putting a positive spin on it, the State-Run Media is concentrating on the alleged creation of 290,000 jobs in April – but most of that is mere estimate. No one really knows how many jobs were created in April – the Bureau of Labor Statistics has this thing called a “birth/death” model which purports to predict how many jobs should be created at this or that period of the business cycle.

Today’s numbers presuppose an actual recovery – if we’re not in such, then BLS numbers are pretty much worthless. The bad news is that it’ll be about a year before we’ll find out if the BLS was right, or just pulling numbers out of thin air.

That said, while we’re up off the employment nadir of December, 2009, the fact remains that we’ve still lost a net of 7.8 million jobs since employment peaked in December of 2007, while since Obama became President we’ve lost about 3.4 million jobs.

And if, as I expect, this recovery is bogus…

UPDATE: Mish beaks down the jobs report.

Brits seem to have handed the most seats to Tories, but not enough to really get rid of Labour. This means that government will be really screwed up. Question: Will anyone in the UK notice the difference?

Hutaree case seems to have some problems – and so does the MSM narrative.

Democrats fear losing Murtha’s seat. Good. They also seem to be giving up on the Hawaii special election. Extra good.

Double dip? It isn’t just gloom and doomers like me saying it.

GOP dinosaur admits he’s in trouble. Now, if he’d just draw the proper conclusion, announce his retirement and campaign like heck for his replacement, he’d not only be a bit wise, but would make a bit of hero out of himself.

The news:

Florida’s Republican Senate candidate Marco Rubio has shifted his stance and now says he approves of a new Arizona immigration law that has many others outraged.

Rubio said the Arizona Legislature went too far when it passed the original bill, but he says a recent tweak to the law makes him feel comfortable supporting it.

Boiled down, its a good law vitally needed for the safety and liberty of the people of Arizona. Complaints against it stem from either rank ignorance of its provisions, or a desire to inflame racial animosities for political purposes.

Rubio’s position puts and end to any attempt to rationally call the law anti-hispanic. This won’t stop liberals, of course, because they are irrational – but anyone with any sense at all will now have to seek other areas to oppose the law. Race just isn’t a factor either in the enactment or enforcement of the law.

Wonderful news!

Navy SEAL (Petty) Officer 2nd Class Matthew McCabe was found not guilty Thursday evening on charges of assaulting detained terrorist Ahmed Hashim Abed, dereliction of duty, and impeding an investigation based on a false statement.

A seven member military jury deliberated for an hour and forty minutes before reaching a verdict. For a verdict to be reached, two-thirds of the jury had to agree on each charge.

It is good that this hero was acquitted, but it is still a nauseating miscarriage of justice that charges were even brought. I am sick and tired of our best and bravest having to defend themselves against accusations made by our enemies. Especially when it comes to people our troops capture in the field, the presumption must always be that any accusation is a lie – only if evidence emerges which is not in any way connected to enemy sources should an investigation be launched.

We send these men in to harm’s way and they have a right to expect that we have their back – and its time we started doing that.

Got this from NRO’s The Corner:

Seat predictions:

Conservatives: 307

Labour: 255

Liberal Democrats: 59

Others: 29

This puts the Conservatives 19 short of an overall majority. The BBC’s presenter David Dimbleby is already casting doubt on the poll’s value because the Liberal Democrats have dropped three seats.

But Conservative Home says this:

Contrary to the exit poll which has the Tories 19 short we are expecting a good night for the Conservatives; probably a small working majority. David Cameron will become Prime Minister. The party will make deep inroads into Labour territory but will not do well against the Liberal Democrats. The LibDems may come third, winning 100 seats in total. The exit poll has the LibDems only on 59 seats.

We’ll see how it comes out.

UPDATE: Live coverage from the UK here. Rumors are flying, but it looks like the Tories just might eke out a majority. Which is, in my view, would be a bad thing – they won’t be able to make the necessary changes, but will get blamed for the double dip when it hits.

We have some video links to this over at Noonan for Nevada.

In a nutshell, the school authorities held that American kids wearing American flags at an American school in the United States of America would cause trouble because Mexicans take offense at Old Glory.

This may, after all is said and done, be true – but if anyone out there is offended by the American flag, then I suggest living some other place besides the United States of America.

UPDATE: More on this stunning, un-American news.

Mish has a good run down here and here.

No one really knows what is happening but I figure it can’t be good that we’ve shoved trillions in to the global economy while at the same time massively increasing government debt here and around the world.

We stand poised for another crash. Will it happen right now? I don’t know – but it is coming. We need to clear out the rot built up in 75 years of phony money and usurious finance. It won’t be pretty – it will, indeed, be very painful. But it has to happen – only by clearing all this garbage out can we really determine our level of wealth and only when that happens can we really start to rebuild.