Various proposals are making the rounds to increase taxes to pay for the campaign in Afghanistan and, once again, to institute some sort of draft – this last bit the product of a curious bit of leftist thought that if we have a conscript army, we’d be more wary about going to war (in response to this, I offer WWI, WWI, Korea and Vietnam – all fought with conscript armies and, in my view, made longer and less successful by that very fact). What are we to make of this?

That the left is up to its usual, dishonest tricks. The left doesn’t care about paying for government and certainly doesn’t want larval leftists taken out of ACORN and put in to uniform where they might learn things such as discipline, independent thought and personal honor. No, this is all just a gambit to get the war lost and over with as soon as possible. Once again, the left sees an American defeat in war as the preferred option.

On the face of it, none of us could have the slightest argument with an increase in taxes to pay for war – but, if we are to make paying for the war out of current accounts the paradigm, then we have to admit that mere taxation, alone, won’t do the trick. In the end, we’ll also have to cut non-defense spending. This would not only mean no health care reform, but deep cuts in non-defense, discretionary spending. My candidates for the axe are Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, Agency for International Development, Agricultural Marketing Service, AMTRAK, Appalachian Regional Commission, US Access Board, Bonneville Power Administration, Bureau of Economic Analysis, Bureau of Industry and Security, Bureau of International Labor Affairs, Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Reclamation, Bureau of Transportation Statistics, Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion, Citizens Stamp Advisory Committee, Department of Commerce, Commission of Fine Arts, Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, Community Planning and Development, National Institute of Food and Agriculture, Corporation for National and Community Service, Council of Economic Advisers, Council on Environmental Quality, Denali Commission, Department of Education, Department of Energy, Department of Housing and Urban Development, Department of Labor, Department of Transportation, Domestic Policy Council, Office of Economic Adjustment, Economic Development Administration, Endangered Species Committee, Energy Department, Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Export-Import Bank of the United States, Federal Communications Commission, Federal Consulting Group, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, Federal Executive Boards, Federal Inter-agency Committee for the Management of Noxious and Exotic Weeds, Federal Trade Commission, Federal Transit Administration, Foreign Agricultural Service, Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board, Indian Arts and Crafts Board, Innovation and Improvement Office, Inter-agency Alternative Dispute Resolution Working Group, Inter-agency Council on Homelessness, Japan-United States Friendship Commission, Joint Board for the Enrollment of Actuaries, National Bi-partisan Commission on the Future of Medicare, National Economic Council, National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Indian Gaming Commission, Rural Development, Surface Transportation Board and the Susquehanna River Basin Commission. Bet none of you had heard of most of those agencies.

Once the left gets serious about getting our spending under control by massively cutting these organizations, then we can sign on for tax increases. Heck, if the liberals would agree to the elimination of a random one of three of the above agencies, I’d agree to a 25% increase in my income taxes – I’d come out ahead just in the increased liberty and economic growth which would result from having that many government busy bodies no longer bothering people and wasting taxpayer money. Remember, most of these agencies grew up haphazardly – piled one on top of another by Congresses and Presidents making political hay by using the creation of a new agency or department as a means of pretending to be taking action.

Reform doesn’t necessarily mean adding something new – it can be re forming the government; making it back in to what it was before. A bit of weed whacking on the federal agencies would go a long ways towards getting our government under control as well as freeing up funds for other activities considered more pressing at the moment. But the left doesn’t want that – they just want to force us on the right to provide more funds for the insatiable maw of Big Government, and they will hold our troops in Afghanistan hostage until we agree.

We here at Blogs for Victory wish all of you a happy Thanksgiving. If you’ve a mind to discuss anything while we’re eating turkey, then have at it.

And now, bless the God of all,

who has done wondrous things on earth;

Who fosters people’s growth from their mother’s womb,

and fashions them according to his will!

May he grant you joy of heart

and may peace abide among you;

May his goodness toward us endure in Israel to deliver us in our days. – Sirach 50:22-24

Keep in mind that this is one of the States the GOP thought entirely out of reach:

Democratic incumbent Kirsten Gillibrand may have a serious problem on her hands if Rudy Giuliani gets in next year’s race for the U.S. Senate in New York State.

A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of voters in the state finds Giuliani, the former Republican mayor of New York City, leading Gillibrand by 13 points – 53% to 40%. Four percent (4%) like some other candidate, and just two percent (2%) are undecided.

2010 will be an interesting year, to be sure.

We seem to get stupider about everything by the day:

Navy SEALs have secretly captured one of the most wanted terrorists in Iraq — the alleged mastermind of the murder and mutilation of four Blackwater USA security guards in Fallujah in 2004. And three of the SEALs who captured him are now facing criminal charges, sources told FoxNews.com.

The three, all members of the Navy’s elite commando unit, have refused non-judicial punishment — called an admiral’s mast — and have requested a trial by court-martial.

Ahmed Hashim Abed, whom the military code-named “Objective Amber,” told investigators he was punched by his captors — and he had the bloody lip to prove it.

Now, instead of being lauded for bringing to justice a high-value target, three of the SEAL commandos, all enlisted, face assault charges and have retained lawyers.

Matthew McCabe, a Special Operations Petty Officer Second Class (SO-2), is facing three charges: dereliction of performance of duty for willfully failing to safeguard a detainee, making a false official statement, and assault.

Petty Officer Jonathan Keefe, SO-2, is facing charges of dereliction of performance of duty and making a false official statement.

Petty Officer Julio Huertas, SO-1, faces those same charges and an additional charge of impediment of an investigation.

Boys, if you need money for a defense attorney, you just let me and all other patriotic Americans know…we should be able to raise as much as you need in short order. As for me: word of terrorist vs word of SEAL…think I’ll believe the SEAL. At all events, this is war, not some childrens game – if all he got out of it was a fat lip, then the terrorist should count himself lucky.

We need to stop this sort of thing – we need, that is, to stop persecuting our own because of alleged slights to our enemies. Good discipline must be maintained in the military, but only the most serious infractions should be even brought before higher authorities – a fat lip, if it happened, should have resulted in a verbal reprimand from the SEALs CO, and that be the end of the matter.

Unfortunately, in Obama’s America we are unlikely to see any rationality on this – even the Bush Administration shied away from protecting our troops from this sort of nonsense…Obama’s people might take pride in such a thing.

About time:

Today, the Competitive Enterprise Institute filed three Notices of Intent to File Suit against NASA and its Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), for those bodies’ refusal — for nearly three years — to provide documents requested under the Freedom of Information Act.

The information sought is directly relevant to the exploding “Climategate” scandal revealing document destruction, coordinated efforts in the U.S. and UK to avoid complying with both countries’ freedom of information laws, and apparent and widespread intent to defraud at the highest levels of international climate science bodies. Numerous informed commenters had alleged such behavior for years, all of which appears to be affirmed by leaked emails, computer code, and other data from the Climatic Research Unit of the UK’s East Anglia University.

All of that material, and that sought for years by CEI, goes to the heart of the scientific claims and campaign underpinning the Kyoto Protocol, its planned successor treaty, “cap-and-trade” legislation, and the EPA’s threatened regulatory campaign to impose similar measures through the back door.

The jig is up, boys and girls – I think we’re going to be able to entirely destroy the environmentalist movement.

Environmentalism was the back door for totalitarian control of our lives – unable to win at the ballot box and unable to conduct an open coup, the left used concerns about pollution to gain increasing regulatory control over our lives. Global warming was just the finishing touch – it was to be the tool whereby recalcitrant Americans were finally put in their place and forced to live short, impoverished, miserable lives while the ruling elite lived in the lap of luxury.

Well, the truth always comes out, in the end – and now we merely have to keep pressing this issue, and the whole thing will fall apart.

This has gotta hurt:

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Tuesday shows that 27% of the nation’s voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Forty-two percent (42%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -15. This is the lowest Approval Index rating yet measured for President Obama.

Now, Obama is going to give his Afghan speech next Monday – that will be an interesting event. Provided he shows even the slightest bit of backbone, a lot of Americans – including me – will rally ’round him on the Afghan issue. I wonder, though, if such an event will translate in to any significant upswing in the President’s approval rating? I’m sure he’ll get a bump out of it – but will it be a large bump? Will it have any legs?

Time will tell – but if there is no bump, a small bump or a short bump, then Obama is in much worse trouble than anyone thinks.

The left is insistent that death be an integral part of Obamacare:

I’m getting a lot of constituent mail forwarded to me from family and friends in California. I thought I’d share this letter to a constituent from Rep. George Miller (D-CA), co-author of the House version of health care reform, and one of the most odious and dutiful representatives of the abortion industry in Congress.

The positive thing about this letter is that Rep. Miller is uncharacteristically polite about his enthusiasm for the legal killing of unborn children – the chief sacrament and concern of the Democratic Party’s California delegation. The politeness masks the fact that he’s basically telling the constituent that the Stupak Amendment is DOA if it returns to the House and he’ll help kill it…

…While I did not support the Stupak-Pitts Amendment, it was necessary to allow the amendment to be considered on the House floor in order for the overall health care bill to move forward. That was clear. But I do not believe the final health care bill that emerges from Congress should include language as restrictive as the Stupak-Pitts Amendment and I will work to find language that will guarantee no federal funds can be used for abortion but that protects the safety and rights of women who might need access to such services…

Without “Stupak”, NARAL and Planned Parenthood were ok with the abortion language in the bill – which means they knew that the federal funds would be flowing to the abortuaries. Miller, typical of culture-of-death stooges, is being dishonest.

We still have quite a battle on our hands – a battle for the basic humanity of protecting innocent, unborn life.

Pay attention, Democrats:

…Ensign refuses to bow out and step down and Doug Hampton has been unable to gain ground in forcing him out – especially with no one apparently pursuing the matter aggressively in any kind of official capacity.

It appears now that the only way for Hampton to bring Johnny Casino down is if his wife, Cindy Hampton, finally comes forward and speaks. If she validates her husband’s story and says she felt pressured in the situation in any way thanks to Ensign’s power and position….it’ll be lights out for Nevada’s self-righteous/self-absorbed Republican U.S. Senator.

Speaking of which, in response to the Nightline story last evening, Ensign released only a short statement, saying that Hampton’s allegations “are full of half-truths and untruths.”

Really, John?

In that case maybe you’d do your constituents the favor of appearing before the Nevada media and answering some legitimate questions, such as, “Exactly which allegations Doug Hampton made are half-truths and which ones are untruths and exactly why are they untrue?” Or are you just going to continue stonewalling us?

You can contrast this to the fact that after Barney Frank was found to have paid a prostitute for sex, hired him as a staffer, moved him in to his house and wrote letters on his behalf to the parole board he was re-elected with 66% of the vote in 1992 and has been continually re-elected since then by wide margins. Ensign: creepy guy who acted immorally. Frank: creepy guy who acted immorally. Ensign: roundly condemned by his fellow Republicans. Frank: lauded to the skies by his fellow Democrats. What is wrong with this picture?

This was the point of Caucus of Corruption – not that there isn’t corruption in the GOP, but that in contrast to the GOP, Democrats rarely call their own to account, and then only when their erring members risk losing an election. We really do have to fight corruption in politics – but we won’t get anywhere until Democrats get on board.

Well, it hasn’t worked – from Der Spiegel (for you liberals out there, that is a German – ie, foreign, ie better-than-America-in-your-view – magazine):

Obama’s Nice Guy Act Gets Him Nowhere on the World Stage

When he entered office, US President Barack Obama promised to inject US foreign policy with a new tone of respect and diplomacy. His recent trip to Asia, however, showed that it’s not working. A shift to Bush-style bluntness may be coming.

The Germans may wish for that bit of Bush-style bluntness (we do, too!), but I can assure all and sundry, it isn’t coming. Not from Obama – not unless his wife takes him for a spine transplant. I expect Obama to just go from Bad to Carter in foreign affairs…

Making nice/nice doesn’t cut it in the world – not in a world where wicked people plot evil. As long as there are tyrants in China, Russia, Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea and Syria, the key to peace and freedom will be the forceful use of raw, unapologetic, American power.

Viscount Monckton lets ’em have it:

This is what they did — these climate “scientists” on whose unsupported word the world’s classe politique proposes to set up an unelected global government this December in Copenhagen, with vast and unprecedented powers to control all formerly free markets, to tax wealthy nations and all of their financial transactions, to regulate the economic and environmental affairs of all nations, and to confiscate and extinguish all patent and intellectual property rights.

The tiny, close-knit clique of climate scientists who invented and now drive the “global warming” fraud — for fraud is what we now know it to be — tampered with temperature data so assiduously that, on the recent admission of one of them, land temperatures since 1980 have risen twice as fast as ocean temperatures. One of the thousands of emails recently circulated by a whistleblower at the University of East Anglia, where one of the world’s four global-temperature datasets is compiled, reveals that data were altered so as to prevent a recent decline in temperature from showing in the record. In fact, there has been no statistically significant “global warming” for 15 years — and there has been rapid and significant cooling for nine years…

…these arrogant fraudsters — for fraudsters are what we now know them to be — have refused, for years and years and years, to reveal their data and their computer program listings. Now we know why: As a revealing 15,000-line document from the computer division at the Climate Research Unit shows, the programs and data are a hopeless, tangled mess. In effect, the global temperature trends have simply been made up…

People seriously need to go to jail over this – and, yes, Al Gore should head the list of defendants. We have been the victim of a vast, criminal conspiracy to defraud the taxpayers and destroy freedom. All in the name of a myth called “anthropogenic global warming”. This is something we’ve long suspected was entirely bogus, and now we have the proof – they were fixing the data. Or, to put it more bluntly, they were just making sh** up as they went along. And this is what the environmentalist movement has always done since the publication of the mendacious Silent Spring.

I’ve had it with these con artists – and it is time we put them firmly in their place: a jail cell!