A disappointing event because it would have been the most fun race, ever:

A couple of weeks ago on Fox News Sunday, Liz Cheney set off a round of (somewhat far fetched) speculation about her father running for president when she blurted out “Cheney 2012” in the middle of a panel discussion on national security.

Today, in an interview with Politico, the former Vice President put the kibosh any talk of a 2012 run, saying, ““Why would I want to do that? It’s been a hell of a tour. I’ve loved it. I have no aspirations for further office.”

Cheney is one of the most accomplished and intelligent men in American politics – just the thought of Cheney having a debate with his fellow GOPers (and, even better, with the lightweight Obama!) is enough to give us conservatives a thrill. But, he’s also massively hated – because the left spent 8 years lying about him and Cheney was too calm and reasonable to hit back. A loss to American politics, and a shame to our nation that we can’t find further employment for a man like Cheney.

Mish points out just how stupid we’ve been:

…we bailed out Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Citigroup, and Bank of America bondholders while raping the GM bondholders (the latter so that Obama could appease the unions). In other words, Paulson, Geithner, Bernanke, Obama, and Congress effectively conspired to rob the poor to bail out the wealthy.

Supposedly this was done so that banks would start lending, and the economy would get the Fractional Reserve benefit (using the word benefit loosely) of debt expanding 10-1.

It did not work that way, nor will it because consumer and corporate debt remain, unemployment is high and rising, debt levels are intolerable, and consumer (and bank) attitudes towards debt and credit reached a secular peak and the pendulum to deleveraging has begun.

I recommend reading Mish’s whole post as well as the backup article he linked to. I’d like to assure one and all that I don’t lay blame for this entirely on Obama – I blame the system we built up from 1913 until today. A system based on usury and fiat money which is tailor made to benefit financial sharks at the expense of people who actually produce things – people who make, mine and grow things have been sacrificed on the altar of Faux-Capitalism. An economic system which apes the free market but which actually guarantees that our economy is increasingly unfree because wracked by debt and backed by fake money.

Now, Obama isn’t off the hook – if he’ll pay attention and start thinking about things, he’ll fire Geithner, figure out a way to replace Bernanke and start listening to genuine free market advocates who have all sorts of good ideas on how to both get rid of the debt and restart the process of wealth creation. Trouble is, Obama doesn’t seem to understand that the whole thing is falling apart and the stories about an improving economy are just so much smoke and mirrors put out by people who want to get more suckers in to the stock market before it crashes.

One thing certain, what we Americans will need to do is go back to a hard currency and encourage wealth creation rather than get-rich-quick usury. Until we do this, we’ll just continue to wallow in these economic doldrums – and don’t think it can’t go on forever: Japan has been stuck in this condition for 20 years and they still haven’t learned the lesson. Japan is set to pour yet more fake money in to the Japanese economy in order to “inflate” themselves back to prosperity – an idiotic idea which never had the least bit of merit to it (and thus, naturally, something liberals swear by).

A long, hard road back to prosperity lies ahead – and as long as Obama is in charge, we won’t even take the first step.

With “strongly opposed” nearly double “strongly support”:

The U.S. Senate is now formally beginning debate on a plan to reform health care in America, but most voters remain opposed to the plan working its way through Congress.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 41% of voters nationwide favor the health care reform plan proposed by President Obama and congressional Democrats. Fifty-three percent (53%) are opposed to it. Those figures include 22% who Strongly Favor the plan and 40% who are Strongly Opposed.

The people don’t want it. Doctors hate it. Insurance companies are ok with it. You’d think by now rank-and-file liberals would grab a clue. But, no; intellectually stunted and easily lead by corrupt leaders, liberals just follow along. If Obama came out in favor of firebombing Sunday school, his followers would defend it.

Congressman Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) makes the GOP anti-war case for Afghanistan. The two salient points:

…We can win any war, Mr. President, but only with your full commitment to the mission. Absent such a commitment, our presence in Afghanistan does nothing more than endanger our troops, compromise our readiness, and waste our money…

…Mr. President, in my humble opinion I believe it is time to bring our troops home. The troops have fought valiantly and won. Yet, the fight is not over. For generations the United States must continue to hunt and kill terrorists around the world who want death and destruction for the American people.

Mr. President, if you believe we must continue to fight in Afghanistan with tens of thousands of our men and women, let’s do so with a full commitment to win by giving the commanders in the field everything they need so they can bring all of our troops home swiftly and safely.

There is no real argument against the assertion that if we’re to fight, we must fight for victory with every ounce of our being. But is there validity in the argument that we can pull out? Rep. Chaffetz offers up the prospect of using “hunter-killer” units to go after any manifestation of al-Qaeda, but asserts that the nation-building aspect of the Afghan campaign is not in our best interest – and notes that with the threats from Iran, domestic terrorist attacks and our increasing debt leading to national bankruptcy, we’ve got other matters which demand our attention. Does this state the unarguable case?

Not in my view.

Certainly, if President Obama is not willing to go all out for victory, then we’d better get out of there as swiftly as physically possible. But the only reason for this is that it is immoral to have a pointless effusion of blood. If we’re not fighting to win, then fighting shouldn’t be done at all. My largest concern about President Obama’s war policy is that he’s half-hearted – that he doesn’t want to have the stigma of military defeat, but that he also doesn’t have the plain guts to see a war through to victory. But supposing that President Obama’s plan does work out as a pledge to victory, is it still better that we leave?

I agree that Iran is a growing threat. But Iran is, also, an easily manageable threat at the moment. The trouble is that President Obama seems determined to go about Iran in exactly the wrong way – so there’s no point is saying that we should pull out of Afghanistan and concentrate on Iran: Obama will continue to get Iran wrong and thus I don’t see the policy benefit of surrendering in Afghanistan in order to concentrate on surrendering on Iran’s nuclear program. Better to win in both places, but if we can only possibly win in Afghanistan – and that is the case – then we should go for what victory we can achieve.

I agree that terrorism is a continual threat here at home – but I’m enough of a student of military history to know that the only thing which results from a purely defensive effort is defeat. We can’t sit tight here and believe we’ll be safe – any defense can be overcome by imaginative offense. No matter how tight we make our borders and how many security programs we implement internally, if we’re not striking at the enemy then he will strike at us, and with great success, in the by and by – he only has to get past our defense once, while we have to always catch him. Such is not possible. To me, fighting in Afghanistan is, among other policy desires, a means of not fighting here at home.

I agree that our debt is out of control – but Obama simply will not do anything to control our runaway spending. Any deficit reduction over the next four years will be mere happenstance – something which happens because Obama simply can’t think of something new to spend a lot of money on; or because an increasingly fearful Democrat Congress simply won’t go along as election years approach. To terminate the Afghan campaign in the hopes that the saved money will go towards deficit reduction is to live in a fantasy world. Its just not going to happen – any savings in military spending will just be spent elsewhere. I’d prefer that we did pay for the war as we go along – I’d even agree to tax increases if I could get some massive cuts in non-defense, discretionary spending…say, two dollars in spending cuts for each dollar in new taxes (it’ll still work out best for the economy – better to be taxed than to be borrowed in to oblivion; best if we can cut taxes and spending, but we’re never going to get anything like that past Obama and the Congress).

Finally, any American withdrawal from Afghanistan will be viewed – correctly – by the enemy as a crushing American defeat. The whole purpose of the asymetric warfare of our enemies is to wear down and discourage the stronger force until it just gives up. A US withdrawal would fit perfectly in with the Islamists campaign model – we’ll have proven to them that if they can endure us for years, we’ll eventually throw in the towel. This will, in turn, encourage them to try again – remember, to them it doesn’t matter how many people die or how many years it takes to get us to quit…if they can get us to quit, they win and as long as they’re winning, they’ll keep right at it.

Any withdrawal from Afghanistan will eventually be paid for in blood and treasure – and far more blood and treasure than fighting for victory would cost (but its still better to get out, now, rather than fight half-heartedly…the bad stuff will still follow, but we’ll at least have saved some lives and some treasure and thus the ability to fight down the road when the enemy over-provokes us, once again – Obama offers the prospect of years of killing, then a withdrawal/defeat – I’m willing to take the horrible course rather than the horribly bad course). And don’t think that hunter-killer units will dismay the enemy – they’ll consider that just part of the cost of doing business.

We have entirely lost sight, I think, of what this war is about. It wasn’t that 19 Moslems just got it in their head one day to drive planes in to our buildings. Those men, and the men who currently fight us, are the result of a complex series of historical events churned up by the horrific politico-economic morass of the Moslem world. Only a fundamental change in Islam will end this war – and this change cannot come from within, it must come from without. If we refuse this task, then all we’ve done so far will be fruitless and, eventually, we’ll pay a high price for our unwillingness to fight for victory. We’re all tired of the war – but wars don’t just “end”: they are won or they are lost. If we pull out now, we will have lost no matter how much we try to sugar-coat it. The question all Americans must ask themselves – from President Obama on down is: do you want to win, or to lose?

I want to win.

The news story:

Swiss voters Sunday approved a ban on the construction of new minarets on mosques, defying appeals from the government to reject the proposal and raising the specter of a new round of tensions in Europe concerning the role of Islam on the Continent.

The vote highlights the persistent conflict over the integration of Europe’s growing Muslim population into civil society. Earlier this month, France considered whether to bar Muslim women from wearing full-face veils, sparking a heated debate in which one French politician described burqas, the head-to-toe veils worn by some very devout Muslim women, as “walking coffins.” The government issued a recommendation against wearing burqas, but stopped short of an outright ban.

European governments also have struggled in recent years with popular opposition to the construction of mosques, as well as with a backlash to the murder of a filmmaker in the Netherlands by a Muslim extremist, and the reaction in some Muslim countries to the publication in Danish newspapers of cartoons of the prophet Muhammad.

The central issue is whether or not Moslems can be part of the Judeo-Christian west, or whether they are an indigestible morsel. Once upon a time there were only a few Catholics in the United States; starting in the 1850’s, massive numbers started to arrive and continues right through in to the 1920’s. Much nativist fear was generated about all these Catholics pouring in but, in the end, Catholics completely integrated in to American culture and trying to imagine America without its vibrant Catholic community is impossible. Are Moslems just the latest wave, akin to the successive waves of immigrants who have flooded in to America since the start?

To be sure, no Catholic ever shot up a group of his fellow soldiers; nor did any Jewish immigrants plot flying planes in to American buildings; and we’ve yet to see a Hindu immigrant murder his daughter about family “honor”. But because non-Moslem immigrants have not done these things while Moslems have, should we be concerned about the very existence of Moslems among us? I’ll have to give a qualified “yes” to that question.

I know Moslems and I’ve never felt the least threat from any of them. In fact, in my view the people who best demonstrate what it means to be a lady or a gentleman are Iranians; extraordinarily well-mannered and civilized people our increasingly barbarized society can learn a lot from. But with the Ft Hood incident, I’ve had to reflect upon the fact that here was a man who grew up in my nation, was given all manner of benefits – including, it seems, preferential treatment simply because he is Moslem – and yet he still became a mass murderer. What gives? I don’t know – and thus I have this growing concern.

It seems to me that Islam must demonstrate to us its good intentions. If there were loud, public Moslem statements against the Ft Hood massacre, I didn’t hear them. And then there’s the fact that people of my religion who live in Mecca practise our faith at the risk of their lives. Are we Catholics such a pollution to Islam that their city of Mecca is too good for us? We have mosques in Rome; why isn’t turn about fair play? And God help the Moslem who seeks to convert to Christianity – death is the punishment for such an action. How am I to conclude that Islam is my friend, when it shows itself the face of an enemy at almost every opportunity?

I do not wish to war on Islam – but until Islam shows itself friendly to me, I can’t help but keep up a defensive barrier. The vote in Switzerland is symbolic – its not like Moslems will be kicked out of that country, nor prohibited to worship as they like. The people of Switzerland have, from what I can tell, just laid down a marker – they don’t want to become second class citizens in their own nation. They don’t want political correctness and a fear of Islamic violence to result in the murder of a politician or the massacre of soldiers at the hands of a Moslem they nurtured.

The ball is in the court of Islam. Things are going in a certain way and disaster threatens. There is only so many times the people of the west will tolerate Islamist violence before the reaction becomes general. Eventually, either Islam changes its ways and accords due respect for we non-Moslems, or there will be war between Islam and the west. Our political elites are cowardly, but we, the people, are not. The elites might wish to bend the knee for another few months of peace, but we don’t want any more of our sons and daughters gunned down by someone who thinks he’s doing God’s will.

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.