If you haven’t been entirely outraged yet, this will do the trick:

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expressed “great regret” in August that the U.S. is not a signatory to the International Criminal Court (ICC). This has fueled speculation that the Obama administration may reverse another Bush policy and sign up for what could lead to the trial of Americans for war crimes in The Hague.

The ICC’s chief prosecutor, though, has no intention of waiting for Washington to submit to the court’s authority. Luis Moreno Ocampo says he already has jurisdiction—at least with respect to Afghanistan.

Because Kabul in 2003 ratified the Rome Statute—the ICC’s founding treaty—all soldiers on Afghan territory, even those from nontreaty countries, fall under the ICC’s oversight, Mr. Ocampo told me. And the chief prosecutor says he is already conducting a “preliminary examination” into whether NATO troops, including American soldiers, fighting the Taliban may have to be put in the dock.

“We have to check if crimes against humanity, war crimes or genocide have been committed in Afghanistan,” Mr. Ocampo told me. “There are serious allegations against the Taliban and al Qaeda and serious allegations about warlords, even against some who are connected with members of the government.” Taking up his inquiry of Allied soldiers, he added, “there are different reports about problems with bombings and there are also allegations about torture.”

It takes a village idiot to regret that we’re not part of the ICC. The real purpose of the ICC is to bring charges against western nations in general and the United States in particular. The global left wants nothing more than US soldiers in the dock – with their ultimate dream of having President Bush stand trial. They hate – its all they do and they do it all the time. The pitiable part of it is that they really hate themselves. Parasites who live off un-earned wealth and who are defended by their betters, these people wish to lash out as a means of blocking their ears against the call of their own conscience.

I think all of us patriots will know what to do if even one US soldier is hauled before the ICC.

Allegedly because Beck made a very apt analogy to prostitution regarding the ill-famed “Louisiana Purchase” of recent days – but more accurately because CNN is afraid of losing their last three viewers to Fox. Here’s a link to the video.

We told you so, liberals:

Iran angrily refused Sunday to comply with a demand by the United Nations nuclear agency to cease work on a once-secret nuclear fuel enrichment plant, and escalated the confrontation by declaring it would construct 10 more such plants.

The response to the demand came as Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said his cabinet would also order a study of what it would take for Iran to further enrich its existing stockpile of nuclear fuel for use in a medical reactor — rather than rely on Russia or another nation, as agreed to in an earlier tentative deal.

Cabals of corrupt lunatics are not amenable to logic and appeals to human decency. It wasn’t a guess that Iran’s government would take President Obama’s “engagement” and spit in his face; the only thing to guess was just how they would do it. Here’s how.

What you liberals fail to understand – quite amazingly as its common knowledge – is that when you want to “engage Iran”, you’re not engaging Iran. If we could get together with legitimate representatives of the Iranian people, we’d make great progress…but, then again, if the Iranian people had legitimate representatives, there would be no big issues to deal with (you’ll note that we don’t have a lot of war-threatening confrontations with Canada).

The problem is that there are no legitimate representatives of the Iranian people to deal with – we’re dealing with wicked men who do nasty things because they delight in being evil (and they know its evil – we are judged as we judge…and as the kooks running Iran don’t want an American to strap on a bomb and blow up their families in Tehran and as they don’t want America threatening to “wipe Iran off the map”; they know full well they shouldn’t be facilitating these things, and they do it any way).

Until we steel ourselves to the prospect (not the inevitability – the prospect) of war with Iran and take actions which use American power to force Iran to the negotiating table, this problem will just get worse. One day, perhaps soon, Iran will have built nuclear weapons unless we act to prevent them…and “act to prevent them” does not mean “engage them”. It means “confront them” and risk war in order to thwart their wicked designs. More than likely, it won’t come to war – but if we don’t have the threat of it at back of all we do with Iran, nothing we do will work.

And he really, really needs to show it:

…Obama has made his own job worse. By empowering the likes of Joe Biden and his domestic policy advisers to second-guess the recommendation of Gen. Stanley McChrystal and to warn openly of the domestic consequences of embracing the only viable plan for victory, the president has signaled that he’s looking over his shoulder. The sole target of his concern has not been the enemy and the horrendous potential consequences of a halfhearted effort. Instead he’s been fixated on his left-wing base. He’s obsessed over an exit strategy, forgetting that his predecessor won a war without one…

…Frankly, it might be a good time for the president to battle his left flank and demonstrate some moxie, if he has it. The world and a vast number of centrists in America, not to mention conservatives, think he’s a wimp. This is his time to prove them wrong.

This is true, though I do have a growing worry that his intellectual ability – his ability, that is, to see what happens and adjust thinking to fit reality – is not up to par. We could have a man with a Carteresque ability to dither on national security combined with mental unwillingness to admit error and change course. This could be a disaster for our nation.

As I’ve said before, President Obama has my fervent backing for any efforts taken to secure victory in Afghanistan. Not for me is the leftist “if my guy isn’t in charge, I want America to lose” attitude. I prefer victory for America even when it will work to the benefit of my political opponents (its called patriotism, liberals; you should look in to it, some times). But for America to win, we need a President – any President – who has the courage to make a decision and the intellectual flexibility to see when things aren’t working out and make adjustments.

So far, Obama has shown a painful unwillingness to commit to a decision coupled with indifference to changed circumstances. I hope this changes rapidly – and Obama’s Monday address is as good a place to start, as any.

Which is the level of excuse we’re now getting from the con artists at AGW, Inc.

SCIENTISTS at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based.

It means that other academics are not able to check basic calculations said to show a long-term rise in temperature over the past 150 years.

The UEA’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) was forced to reveal the loss following requests for the data under Freedom of Information legislation.

The data were gathered from weather stations around the world and then adjusted to take account of variables in the way they were collected. The revised figures were kept, but the originals — stored on paper and magnetic tape — were dumped to save space when the CRU moved to a new building.

And if you believe that, I’ve got a bridge to sell you in Brooklyn. The logical conclusion is that the data never even so much as indicated AGW was happening. But with money and reputations at stake – not to mention the leftist war against God and Man to advance – nothing is out of bonds. They just fudged numbers, make a “hockey stick”, had it “peer reviewed” by people in on the scam and, hey presto!, Gore is filthy rich and President Obama is set to sign the United States on to this asinine theory.

Very understandable:

Sarah Robinson was just a teenager when World War II broke out.

She endured the Blitz, watching for fires during Luftwaffe air raids armed with a bucket of sand.

Often she would walk ten miles home from work in the blackout, with bombs falling around her.

As soon as she turned 18, she joined the Royal Navy to do her bit for the war effort.

Hers was a small part in a huge, history-making enterprise, and her contribution epitomises her generation’s sense of service and sacrifice.

Nearly 400,000 Britons died. Millions more were scarred by the experience, physically and mentally.

But was it worth it? Her answer – and the answer of many of her contemporaries, now in their 80s and 90s – is a resounding No.

The article goes on to note how these elderly Brits – by far better people than their slacker grand-children – simply don’t understand why their nation was destroyed, and why they weren’t even consulted by the political bosses who made it happen. Do read the whole thing.

My father at least got to be delighted in seeing that today’s Marines are still Marines – and had to admit that, man for man, they are probably better Marines than those of WWII. But he was also dismayed by what had been wrought in the nation he fought for in World War II. To be sure, there are the undeniable good things – most notably the end of “Jim Crow”. But the problem is that the end of official racism in America is one of the few things we can really be proud of over the last 60 years. Dad and his fellow Marines did not charge ashore on Saipan so that teen pregnancy rates could go through the roof; so that prayer would be banned in public schools; so that Christmas would become “Winter Break”; so that illegals would pour in to our nation; so that our manufacturing base would be shipped to China; so that people could choose between 100 channels of feces on the television.

No, they fought for an America which doesn’t exist, any more. To be sure, they did have a hand in creating the problem – most of them voted for FDR, and thus cemented in place the New Deal provisions which entrenched the left in to American life. But they also backed McCarthy in his anti-communist investigations – and thus they wanted to get the left out. But, they failed – and as time advanced, things just went from bad to worse.

We conservatives are no longer really conservatives – to be a conservative implies trying to retain what you have. We don’t have it – we’re trying to get it back. Thus we’re actually revolutionaries – and conservatives must be such, at times. We have to recapture power and then restore the America our fathers and grandfathers knew – so that they won’t ever have to say that they wish they hadn’t fought for this nation.

Its Advent, boys and girls:

The days are coming, says the LORD,

when I will fulfill the promise

I made to the house of Israel and Judah.

In those days, in that time,

I will raise up for David a just shoot ;

he shall do what is right and just in the land.

In those days Judah shall be safe

and Jerusalem shall dwell secure;

this is what they shall call her:

“The LORD our justice.” – Jeremiah 33:14-16

I know not all our readers are Christian, but there’s something about this Advent which is making me more reflective than usual. I’ve come far in my walk with Christ, but I’ve also stumbled – and some times quite seriously. I am waiting, of course, as all Christians are for the time when it’ll no longer be possible for me to stumble – for the time when I will be what I was always meant to be.

I’ve much to do – you do, too – and some times I grow weary, but in this time of expectation, I feel a thrill of renewed hope. And I hope you are do, as well.

The real cost of Obamacare is likely to be vastly higher than stated:

Congressional Democrats are using several budget gimmicks to disguise the cost of their health care overhaul, claiming the House and Senate bills would cost only (!) about $1 trillion over 10 years. Now that critics have begun to correct for those budget gimmicks, supporters of ObamaCare are firing back.

One gimmick makes the new entitlement spending appear smaller by not opening the spigot until late in the official 10-year budget window (2010–2019). Correcting for that gimmick in the Senate version, Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH) estimates, “When all this new spending occurs” — i.e., from 2014 through 2023 — “this bill will cost $2.5 trillion over that ten-year period.”

Another gimmick pushes much of the legislation’s costs off the federal budget and onto the private sector by requiring individuals and employers to purchase health insurance. When the bills force somebody to pay $10,000 to the government, the Congressional Budget Office treats that as a tax. When the government then hands that $10,000 to private insurers, the CBO counts that as government spending. But when the bills achieve the exact same outcome by forcing somebody to pay $10,000 directly to a private insurance company, it appears nowhere in the official CBO cost estimates — neither as federal revenues nor federal spending. That’s a sharp departure from how the CBO treated similar mandates in the Clinton health plan…

And on and on it goes. They are lying to us. Obama is lying. Reid is lying. Pelosi is lying. Everyone who is pushing for this bill is lying – not only lying, but they know they are lying. And they don’t care. Because its not about justice or love or even good policy – it is about control.

Obama, Pelosi and Reid like being in control – and the price they are ordered to pay for retaining the support of their leftist paymasters is a health care bill. And the leftist paymasters want it so that they can gain control over us – they’ll do it via health care or global warming, but by one means or another, the left is determined that the American people lose power over their own lives. The left is tired of dealing with us and wants us shackled and silenced so that the left may remake society in the left’s ideals.

The left is at war with God and Man, and wants to make a society where God is forbidden and Man is a mere block of wood for social experimentation. This has been the goal of all leftists since the dawn of leftist thinking in the 18th century. That each experiment tried has been insanely stupid and, often, costly in lives is unimportant – the key is that God not be allowed and Man be a willing pawn. Eventually, the left figures they’ll get it right and heaven on Earth will result. And in America, the left just doesn’t want to argue any more – and the figuring on the left is that even if Obamacare costs the Democrats the 2010 and 2012 elections, the fact of Obamacare becoming reality will eventually force Americans on the public dole and thus make them unwilling to vote for any anti-government party – Europe will come to America.

So, expect a raft of lies and a huge amount of skullduggery – and keep faith; we shall have them and we will restore our nation.

I know, you’ve probably heard stories of big crowds at the stores for “Black Friday” – but those initial stories are probably put out by people hoping to boost the retail stocks on Monday in order to make a short-term killing off the suckers. The reality is more grim:

Retailers succeeded in enticing deal-hungry shoppers into their stores on Friday, but at the checkout lines many people were sticking to the most deeply discounted items.

That may prove to be a disappointment to executives at the nation’s major chain stores, which have been battered by the recession. Many have been hoping that, once in the stores, consumers would spend a little more freely than they did a year ago.

Ask yourself – what did you do? The Mrs is picking up a new hobby and so I went to a particular store to obtain items she’ll need for it. The first item I actually bought about ten days go – I think it was discounted 30%. That was the biggest-ticket item on the list. Next up were two $89.00 items. One of them I got for $29 as a “door buster” (and I busted that door at the crack of 11:30am…still a dozen of the items left). The other was also listed for $89, and I used the nifty 50% coupon. It was $389.00 plus $89.00 twice, or $567.00 worth of stuff for about $343.00. There is one more item to get, but it wasn’t discounted nor did I have another coupon – so, it’ll sit on the shelf until I do get that discount, or it won’t be purchased at all.

So, any of you out there pay full price for an item yesterday? I don’t think too many people were out there buying the full priced items – my bet is that while the volume of items sold was probably pretty good yesterday, the amount of money spent was significantly less than last year. And that is going to kill retail profits for the year. But, in the nature of modern times, I do expect an “I heard good news stories about Black Friday” stock run-up on Monday to counterbalance the really serious news out of Dubai. This is because there are two sorts of people in the stock market these days – sharks who are fleecing the suckers, and suckers who are hoping against hope that everything is back to normal.

HAT TIP: Mish’s

It can’t be for the health care:

Hundreds of patients died needlessly at NHS hospital due to appalling care

Poor nursing care, filthy wards and lack of leadership at Basildon and Thurrock University NHS Hospitals FoundationTrust led to the deaths of up to 400 patients a year.

Figures compiled by a health watchdog showed death rates at the Essex trust were a third higher than they should have been.

This is entirely unsurprising. Why? Because their is no upside in government run health care in providing high quality care. All you get when you do that is more hassles – more people to treat, more procedures to do, more tests to make…it really eats in to your time and as you don’t get paid any more if you do it, what is the point? And so, the natural result of government run health care is poor care – and there is no way to fix it.

Doesn’t matter how much money you pour in to it. Doesn’t matter how many commissions you create to deal with the problems of poor care. Doesn’t matter how much public outrage there is. You can’t fix a government bureaucracy – they are impervious to facts, logic and basic human decency. The only thing they do well is perpetuate themselves – anything else they do is, at best, mediocre and it only happened because they dare not have no results at all (unless you get on a really sweet government agency like the Inter-agency Alternative Dispute Resolution Working Group where there can be no measurable results).

We turn our health care over to such people and in short order we’ll all just have bad care – except for the politically connected and the well off; they’ll continue to have first class care because the rich can just buy the talent and the health system makes certain they do provide good care for those who can jeopardize the annual budget.

Is this what the liberals want? I don’t think so – and that means we have to go with their innate desire to control others. There is really no other explanation for it. Unless, that is, they are just plain and simple stupid.