As if anyone – other than kool-aid drinking Obamaniacs – thought this wouldn’t happen:

President Barack Obama’s treasury secretary said Sunday he cannot rule out higher taxes to help tame an exploding budget deficit, and his chief economic adviser would not dismiss raising them on middle-class Americans as part of a health care overhaul.

As the White House sought to balance campaign (lies) with governing, officials appeared willing to extend unemployment benefits. With former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan saying he is “pretty sure we’ve already seen the bottom” of the recession, Obama aides sought to defend the economic stimulus and calm a jittery public.(Ed. Note: report edited to make it accurate in all respects)

You see, “the rich” don’t have as much money as liberal hate-mongers want you to think. This is because “the rich” don’t include people like Soros, Gates, Rockefeller and Kerry – “the rich” are actually just upper middle class people who either have some very valuable skill (like being a doctor) or who have built up a business. They might have a net worth in the millions of dollars, but they are not rich in the sense of having fabulous wealth which allows them to eschew work. The rich who do have that sort of wealth are off limits to liberals – mostly because these rich are liberals and tend to donate vast sums of money to trendy, liberal causes.

And so, “the rich” don’t have the bags of swag necessary to fund Obamunism while the real rich can’t be taxed – where do you get the money? Where liberals always get the money, when push comes to shove: From the middle class.

We on our side knew that Obama was either lying through his teeth or was a complete fool when he said in 2008 he wouldn’t raise taxes on the middle class. This is no surprise at all. Its par for the course – it is an example of the way liberals operate: relentlessly dishonest.

So, you see, I’m not the only person who figures that if we don’t create wealth, we can’t get rich:

…Whatever the politics, no new stimulus should be considered unless it deals with the fundamental illness undermining the country’s long-term economic prospects. Such a stimulus would address the country’s essential problem: persistent overconsumption amid underproduction…

…Though some parts of the stimulus, such as extending health and unemployment benefits, were clearly justified, the whole program never sought to address the roughly $800 billion annual imbalance between American consumption and production.

Instead, we have witnessed a grab bag of political handouts — Chicago machine politics on a grand scale — designed to placate key Democratic constituencies. Most have gone to what my old teacher Michael Harrington described as “the social-industrial complex” consisting of the education industry, social service providers and the various government bureaucracies…

…no matter how much the conservatives complain, Obamanomics most likely will end up with results remarkably like those of Bushonomics: more consumption, less production, expanding public debt, asset inflation on Wall Street and a slowly declining middle-class standard of living. The only real difference will lie in who gets to rob the public — instead of pharmaceutical and oil companies, we get Gorite “renewable” energy traders and well-connected “green” venture capitalists.

Americans need to place a pox on both these flawed models. We need a totally new approach that focuses on key productivity-enhancing investments such as improved transportation infrastructure — new roads, bridges, ports and waterways to meet the demands of an expanded economy for a growing population. We should be looking at modern equivalents of the New Deal electrification program, the GI Bill, the Eisenhower highway and the space program.

Bravo! Nice to know that I’m not alone. Making, mining and growing things – if we’re not doing that, then whatever else we’re doing, growing the economy isn’t it. And Joel Kotkin sees something my fellow conservatives are a bit blind about – we can, indeed, spend some government money to help the economy. The difference between Kotkin (and myself) and the Obamaniacs is in the realization that shoveling money at failed banks, failed car companies and ACORN just won’t stimulate anything. All it does is pay off supporters and mask failure.

The reason I’m convinced that we are heading for a massive economic collapse – something which will make the financial meltdown of 2008 seem tame – is because we’re not building any wealth which would allow us to deal with the horrifically bad debts we’re saddled with. Debts never, in a sense, go away. Even if you stop paying them, they are still a cost on the economy as a whole – and our debts, public and private, are both massive and non-performing (as they say in the financial industry). We owe vast sums and we’re not getting anything in return for the debt – and all Obama is doing is piling on more debt without taking any steps to do anything for the economy.

We can get away with Obamunism for a while – but eventually, the bill is presented for payment. With China in actually worse financial shape than we are, I expect the bill to arrive in March, or thereabouts. It’ll come like a bolt out of the blue to all who haven’t paid attention – there will have been one or two quarters of alleged economic growth and everyone will be patting Obama on the back and even conservatives will be waxing lyrical about the resilient American economy. And then we’ll all be completely broke and absolutely bewildered. Well, nearly all of us: I won’t be.

As I drove out to Laughlin, Nevada the other day, I saw in a rock formation by the side of the road made up of green rocks – indicating a large copper deposit right on the surface. And there it was – vast wealth, just sitting there by the side of the road, a few miles outside Harry Reid’s home town of Searchlight, and nothing was being done with it. Meanwhile, the United States imported $7.8 billion in copper in 2007. Its raining soup out there, and we’re not even looking for a bowl. Anyone want to bet that the reason why we’re not exploiting the resource is because of non-economic programs and pressures? Lets put it this way – anyone want to bet that US taxes and regulations have convinced the “money” behind copper that we might as well buy from foreign sources which are not subject to American control?

This incident started up a whole train of thought in me – in case you haven’t noticed, at your local hardware store probably a majority of the tools for sale are made in China. Does someone want to tell me that the United States cannot make a wrench more efficiently than slave labor in China does? I realize that our money twits are just interested in quarterly profit margins and thus its not a matter of “can’t compete” but “why compete when we can buy from them and still get big bonuses?” – but why do we, and our government, go along with this idiocy?

I’m not advocating protectionism – I’m just pointing out the fact that if we wanted to, we could darn well make our own tools, at a lower retail cost and with higher quality, than can be done in China and then shipped thousands of miles to the United States. There’s no way you can convince me that a modern, efficient tool factory in Tonopah, NV, will be undersold in Las Vegas, NV by an inefficient tool factory in Shanghai, China. China can probably outsell us in Korea, but not in Nevada. If we put our mind to it and cease and desist these idiot restrictions on the use of our own resources (in land, materials and labor) we can compete with anyone – and, given a choice, which of us would by the $2.99 Chinese hammer when there is a $2.89 US hammer right next to it? To be sure, the Chinese can (and already do) “dump” products on us below production cost – but wise trade action can swiftly detect and deter such actions.

If we want to stimulate the economy, we can – by shelling out money to start up new factories, open new mines and bring more of our arable land under cultivation. Yes, “green” jobs are ok, too – anything which lessens our dependence on foreign oil is a good thing, but you’re not going to create 3.5% GDP growth just by making wind farms. We need to do for our selves – and in so doing, we’ll make wealth and keep it at home. That wealth kept at home would be used to discharge our debts and provide the seed for further wealth creation. “Shovel ready” infrastructure also has its worth – but much better to make new infrastructure which would make American transportation more efficient. Why our are freight trains still crawling along on tracks designed 100 years ago, pulled by 60 year old locomotive technology? Why aren’t there plans for high speed rail lines to go right down the center of our interstate highway system?

Making, mining, growing: this is the key to economic success. Obama doesn’t see it. Most conservatives don’t see it. I do – and I’m going to run with it.

I hope I eventually earn this complaint – and this wisdom in answering the complaint:

They criticize me for harping on the obvious; if all the folks in the United States would do the few simple things they know they ought to do, most of our big problems would take care of themselves. – Calvin Coolidge

Instapundit has the info and the picture of the crowd. You liberals just keep believing there’s nothing to this.

And if this happens, the GOP should be able to mop the floor with the Democrat party in California in 2010:

California’s largest state employees’ union voted on Saturday to approve a strike authorization measure to protest furloughs of state workers and pressure state officials to ratify its labor contract.

A spokesman for Service Employees International Union Local 1000 said a strike was not imminent but that the vote authorized union officers to initiate certain job actions, including a strike if necessary.

The SEIU represents about 95,000 state employees, including clerical workers and teachers.

Please, please, please go on strike – it would so clearly indicate just how out of touch this major portion of the liberal base is. We’ve been looking for the means of demonstrating the problem – this would neatly fill the bill.

You see, the parts of the liberal problem tend to distance themselves, in the public mind, from each other – there is a public perception that the SEIU is not a mere adjunct of the Democrat party. If they go on strike during this crisis, it would force the Democrat leadership to back the strike. Presto! In the public mind, Democrats and SEIU are one, and both go down to defeat.

So typical:

…From 2006 to the present, Human Rights Watch’s reports on the Israeli-Arab conflict have been almost entirely devoted to condemning Israel, accusing it of human rights and international law violations, and demanding international investigations into its conduct. It has published some 87 criticisms of Israeli conduct against the Palestinians and Hezbollah, versus eight criticisms of Palestinian groups and four of Hezbollah for attacks on Israel. (It also published a small number of critiques of both Israel and Arab groups, and of intra-Palestinian fighting.)

It was during this period that more than 8,000 rockets and mortars were fired at Israeli civilians by Palestinian terrorist groups in Gaza. Human Rights Watch’s response? In November 2006 it said that the Palestinian Authority “should stop giving a wink and a nod to rocket attacks.” Two years later it urged the Hamas leadership “to speak out forcefully against such [rocket] attacks . . . and bring to justice those who are found to have participated in them.”

In response to the rocket war and Hamas’s violent takeover of Gaza in June 2007, Israel imposed a partial blockade of Gaza. Human Rights Watch then published some 28 statements and reports on the blockade, accusing Israel in highly charged language of an array of war crimes and human rights violations…

The bottom line for international do-gooder organizations is that they simply cannot be trusted. Its not a gigantic, anti-Israel or anti-America conspiracy. But the fact is that the people who volunteer to staff these organizations come from a small group of similar-minded people. Its not too often that, say, a US soldier will leave the Army after an illustrious career and go in to Human Rights Watch – he should, as he’s done more for human rights than most, but its just not in the cards. Meanwhile, people with advanced degrees – but no practical experience – flock to such groups and as they have been heavily pre-indoctrinated in to a leftist worldview, it is natural that they’ll reserve their heaviest fire for those targets hated by the left.

We shouldn’t allow this state of affairs to continue – we should get some real money and talent behind groups who will tell the truth – the whole truth – about the state of human rights in the world. We should not have groups more beholden to a leftist worldview than to truth.

Its actually a sad commentary on how pathetic we’ve become:

Last week Florida Gators Quarterback Tim Tebow’s photo may have graced the cover of Sports Illustrated, the same magazine that is best known for its annual “swimsuit issue,” but the contrast between the two cover stories couldn’t have been more glaring.

At 21 years of age and graced with boyish good looks, Tebow is one of the most talked about rising stars of the NCAA; but the football superstar literally left reporters speechless last week when he answered a question during a press conference about whether or not he is “saving himself” for marriage.

“Yes I am,” said Tebow briefly, who then indicated he was ready for the next question. However, in the video of the press conference, a reporter is heard stumbling over his words in the background as he tries to ask a follow-up question. Tebow then laughs, obviously reacting to the reactions of the reporters in the room.

“I think y’all were stunned by that,” he says. “Y’all can’t even ask a question. Wow. I mean, I was ready for that question. I don’t think y’all were.”

It wasn’t the only controversial remark that Tebow made that day. In response to another question about whether or not people may be tired of the volume of coverage devoted to the young football star, Tebow, a devout Christian, said that the level of exposure he receives is a mixed blessing. However, he said, he looks at the positive side that, thanks to his fame, he has been able to share his Christian faith with so many people.

Tebow is also an abortion survivor – as the story goes on to note, Tebow’s mother was pressured to have an abortion due to infections during her pregnancy. She chose life, the world got a good quarterback and, more importantly, someone who is smarter than most of us.

I think all of us who convert or “revert” (as I did) to the Christian faith almost immediately realize that pre-conversion, we were a bunch of creeps and we’d give just about anything if we could make the past as if it had never been. Talking it over not too long ago with a single-mother friend of mine – shortly after I got married and after she became engaged to be married – we both realized that it is a very large regret that the particular aspect of physical intimacy would never be, for us, something we solely self-donated to the person we decided to marry. Tebow will, God willing, never have such issues. It is to be hoped that he’ll find himself a woman who is as wise as he’s been (though, of course, if God wills that it end up being a woman who gave herself to folly, then that will be fine, too; and Tebow will be a rock of support for such a woman rebuilding her life).

This is a man who is altogether admirable – doubly so because I’ll bet large amounts of money that he’d be the first person to deny anything special about himself. And in the larger sense he is right – he is the normal man; those of us who bought in to the lies of the modern world, we’re the abnormal ones…even if that means most people alive are abnormal.

God bless the Second American Revolution:

Our contest is not only whether we ourselves shall be free, but whether there shall be left to mankind an asylum on earth for civil and religious liberty. – Samuel Adams

John Hawkins comments on the level of elite conservative vitriol directed at Sarah Palin:

…But why would the right have it in for Palin? The excessively vicious attacks on Palin from some quarters on the right make people scratch their heads — particularly since her critics claim to agree with her on the issues and so much of their criticism seems to be, at least on its face, completely irrational.

They said Sarah Palin wasn’t experienced enough — but, despite the fact that Obama has been in the White House for six months, he still has less executive experience than Palin. They said Palin spent too much time talking in platitudes — after America elected a man whose campaign primarily consisted of repeating the words “change” and “hope” over and over again. They got upset because Palin was parodied on Saturday Night Live — but what candidate isn’t going to be ripped to pieces on that show?

To many conservatives, those complaints didn’t seem to make sense when the people making them often seemed to give Obama a free pass for the very flaws they seemed to hate so much in Palin. Where did these strange complaints come from? …

…An unspoken assumption was made by many conservatives: Palin is like me and the real problem that Palin’s enemies on the right have with her is that they’re snobs and they don’t accept common people like me in their leadership.

Given the way that conservatives are regularly betrayed and the contempt for them that some Republicans have shown over the last few years, that assessment is probably correct more often than not.

Palin is, indeed, just like me. Just like most of the people I know. Quite honestly, whom do you want coming over for dinner – Sarah Palin, or John Kerry? The former has “American” on her like a crown; the later is barely identifiable as an American, at all. There are two Americas – that part which is proud to be American and that part which is not, or at least not so proud of being American that it trumps an Ivy League degree or the knowledge that the oyster fork is placed to the right of the plate. Palin is hated because she’s one of us who also has a chance of governing the elite – and they can’t stand it.

We are to sit down and shut up. Pay our taxes. Serve in the military/police/fire department. And leave governing to those who know better than us – and, sad to say, there is a substantial conservative elite who also feel this way. Even if they would agree to policies which allow the common man more leeway, they still don’t want that common man barging in and breaking wind in the palaces of the great (10 points to whomever can identify where I took that last bit from). This is why I characterize the real political battle of 2010 forward as “people vs powerful”.

The left is going to be excluded from this – they think that with Obama in charge they’ve got a seat at the table. They haven’t learned that their seat is in the corner where fund raising and volunteering is done…not where decisions are made. Conservatism may be excluded – to a degree – if the GOP leadership listens to the DC/NYC conservative elite and tries to shut out things like the TEA Party movement. The changes which are sought in the populace are revolutionary – no more tinkering about the edges and trying to figure out who gets what government subsidy. The desire is for a complete house cleaning and a re-emphasis on the rights of the people.

Scared to death of Palin and what she represents, the powerful are essentially closing ranks – preferring, to a certain extent, even the continuation of the Obama disaster if that is the only means of keeping the people out of power. Anything is better than some yokel like Palin (backed by a legion of House members and Senators elected first elected in 2010) actually ripping the government to shreds and insisting upon honesty and results. She must be stopped – and so they go after her thinking that if they get her, the danger is over (they forget people like Jindal – after his excruciating national debut, he’s discounted…but, he’s also of the people and, if you take any random 1,000 Americans, you’ll probably find he’s smarter than any of them…even if that 1,000 people were made up of Harvard and Yale PhD’s). Of course, she can be stopped – but what she stands for, can’t be. At best, the powerful will win a temporary reprieve – but the political executioner is not to be denied.

And they’ll be sure to buy it:

U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday ramped up her criticism of insurance companies, accusing them of unethical behavior and working to kill a plan to create a new government-run health plan.

“It’s almost immoral what they are doing,” Pelosi said to reporters…

Meanwhile, Her Majesty has taken – over her career – $311,250.00 from the insurance industry, $176,450.00 from the pharmaceuticals industry, $542,250.00 from “health professionals” (which ain’t all selfless docs and nurses, ya know? A phrase like that covers a multitude of job descriptions…and sins) and $324,369.00 from lobbyists, some substantial part of which is sure to be insurance lobbyists.

She won’t be giving any of this money back.

Liberals will not put two and two together.

She’ll be thumpingly re-elected in 2010.