The news story:

For General Motors Corp., the task at hand is so difficult that experts say a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing is all but inevitable.

To remake itself outside of court, GM must persuade bondholders to swap $27 billion in debt for 10 percent of its risky stock. On top of that, the automaker must work out deals with its union, announce factory closures, cut or sell brands and force hundreds of dealers out of business – all in three weeks.

“I just don’t see how it’s possible, given all of the pieces,” said Stephen J. Lubben, a professor at Seton Hall University School of Law who specializes in bankruptcy.

And I don’t see how it is desirable – except, of course, for the Democrat party which needs the cushy, union contracts in order to keep bags of campaign money flowing in. The big question: in order to keep liberalism afloat, should the taxpayers be on the hook for GM’s problems?

Discuss

Melissa Clouthier over at Pajamas Media has an excellent blast against the concept that the GOP must become more “moderate” if we are to win again. Of course, we are most recently treated to the Specter party-switch and some how or another the fact that a rank opportunist ran away and hid when the going got tough is supposed to tell the GOP that just as discretion is the better part of valor, so is cowardice the better part of discretion. We’re supposed to valiantly hide conservatism in a closet and hope no one notices that we stand for something. This is designed to make it easier for us to pour money and effort into re-electing moderates in Pennsylvania…which just worked out oh, so well for us, didn’t it?

Ladies and gentlemen, did you know that your humble correspondent is a moderate? Oh, I know – to our liberal friends who visit here I’m just a step away from advocating a return to feudalism, but the fact remains that I’m a moderate. Think about it – I’m opposed to the death penalty; I’m against free trade; I want amnesty for illegal immigrants. In all of these things, I am clearly out of step with the large majority of GOP voters. And yet I’m a GOPer. And I’m not asking my fellow GOPers who are in favor of the death penalty, free trade and deportation to change or mute their views or risk losing my support. Honest people can have honest disagreements and remain friends and close allies. I am absolutely confident that no GOPer will ever wish for me to be out of the party on account of my views. Why is this?

Because I believe in the core GOP values: limited government (which means low taxes and spending above all); judicial restraint; strong defense; law and order, faith and family. Now, if I were to ever be in elective office, after garnering ardent GOP support for my bid, just what sort of person would I be if I then went on to vote in favor of some Democrat spending boondoggle? How is that in accord with the core GOP ideal of limited government? Why, in the end, should a GOPer put his faith in me if I can’t even hold to something as basic as that? On the other hand, if I were a staunch vote for spending restraint, national defense and family independence, what would a GOPer have to say to me if I, in addition to this, cast a vote in favor of a path to citizenship for illegals long in country? Oh, to be sure, a lot of GOPers would disagree and say so…but there would be no call for my ouster. There’d be no reason for it – I adhered to core GOP principles.

This what we mean by the “big tent” – that you can have differences of opinion, even quite stark ones, but when push comes to shove and a basic belief is at stake, its time to come down on the side of the basic belief. As a for-instance, GOPers can argue about whether we should cut the income tax or cut spending…but no GOP can say its time to raise taxes and/or raise spending. The moderates, so-called, will have to dance to core tunes. I do. We don’t have to agree on everything all of the time, but we do have to agree on a few things when push comes to shove. We tried the moderate path in 2006 and 2008 and it got us clobbered – we tried to be a nice version of the Democrat party. No more; no, thanks. Time to be the Republican party, and win under that banner, as we’ve won so many times before.

In loving memory of Barbara Jane Noonan (1933 – 2003) and Dolores Margaret Wilinski (1930 – 2009)

I’m a mother and a homemaker, and it isn’t glamorous. It’s tedious, monotonous, thankless, messy, germy, and it can be really hard on your manicure. It’s also the greatest job in the whole world.

Read the whole thing. And call your mother, if she’s still with you.

A Catholic rightwing extremist:

It is not morally possible for any Catholic to support abortion, euthanasia, fetal stem cell research, human cloning, or same-sex marriage. There are no ways around this, no justifications whatever. Why? For the simple reason that the Church holds these things to be intrinsically evil. They are evil in themselves, and no circumstances or subjective conditions can ever change that. – Fr. John Corapi

Nancy, we’re looking at you…

As I suspected all along:

The Federal Reserve significantly scaled back the size of the capital hole facing some of the nation’s biggest banks shortly before concluding its stress tests, following two weeks of intense bargaining.

In addition, according to bank and government officials, the Fed used a different measurement of bank-capital levels than analysts and investors had been expecting, resulting in much smaller capital deficits.

The overall reaction to the stress tests, announced Thursday, has been generally positive. But the haggling between the government and the banks shows the sometimes-tense nature of the negotiations that occurred before the final results were made public.

Government officials defended their handling of the stress tests, saying they were responsive to industry feedback while maintaining the tests’ rigor.

When the Fed last month informed banks of its preliminary stress-test findings, executives at corporations including Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc. and Wells Fargo & Co. were furious with what they viewed as the Fed’s exaggerated capital holes. A senior executive at one bank fumed that the Fed’s initial estimate was “mind-numbingly” large. Bank of America was “shocked” when it saw its initial figure, which was more than $50 billion, according to a person familiar with the negotiations.

The banks pushed back – but since when does the regulating agency organize itself around the desire of the regulated to look as good possible? What likely happened here is a desire to avoid a complete collapse of the banking industry and a Dow of 2,000. The Fed – largely responsible for that part of our mess not caused by Fannie and Freddie – is playing fast and loose in order to avoid scrutiny while the banks and the Obama Administration are more than willing to go along for their own reasons. The only problem here is that if, as I suspect, our financial system is completely collapsed, then the longer we avoid facing it the worse it will ultimately be.

Our financial system is based on funny-money and set up in a crazy-quilt of various usurious programs which do little or nothing to advance the genuine wealth creation of making, mining and growing things. It all worked well for a while, but the only way we’ll get back on track is to ditch what we’ve been doing and essentially start over with a clean slate. Doing this, of course, will mean that we have to allow a lot of huge corporations to fail and, of course, we won’t have the funds for grandiose schemes to Europeanize America – and thus the Powers That Be are determined to pretend that all is well.

Its gonna really suck when everything hits the fan – but, we’ll survive. We’re Americans, after all, and once we clear out the corrupt cretins in DC, we’ll be able to start building again.

The news story:

A voter registration drive last year illegally required canvassers to meet quotas to keep their jobs and resulted in thousands of “garbage” registrations gumming up Clark County voter rolls, officials said Monday as they released a criminal complaint against the drive’s organizers.

The complaint names the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, as well as Chris Edwards, the group’s former Las Vegas field director, and Amy Busefink, who was regional director for voter registration.

In all, there are 26 charges of compensation for registration of voters and 13 charges of being a “principal” in the incident. An initial hearing has been set for 7:30 a.m. June 3 in Las Vegas Justice Court.

“In Nevada, it is unlawful for a person to provide compensation for registering voters that is based on the total number of voters a person registers,” said state Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto.

ACORN’s canvassers, she said, had to gather at least 20 voter registrations a day to keep their jobs. There was also a bonus program, known as “blackjack” or “21 plus,” which rewarded employees with $5 extra per shift if they brought in 21 or more completed registrations.

Canvassers under pressure to keep their jobs turned in registrations with fake names and phony addresses — even, in one case, the starting lineup for the Dallas Cowboys.

“These practices are clearly a violation of Nevada law,” Cortez Masto said. “By structuring employment and compensation around a quota system, ACORN facilitated voter registration fraud in this state.”

You liberals out there still want to claim that ACORN, as an institution, is innocent and merely the victim of over-zealous employees?

What have you got? The fact that your man, Barry, was elevated to the White House at least partially on the back of illegal actions. Now Obama wants to shower taxpayer dollars on this corrupt, anti-American group. What say you?

The news story:

One of the nation’s largest liberal advocacy organizations, MoveOn.org , is resisting efforts to clear the Democratic primary field for Republican-turned-Democratic Sen. Arlen Specter.

The political arm of MoveOn flexed its muscle Friday by releasing the results of an online poll that showed the vast majority of the group’s roughly 170,000 members in Pennsylvania — 85 percent — would consider supporting a Democratic challenger against Specter.

The group expressed concern over Specter’s vote against President Obama’s $3.4 billion budget just one day after defecting to the Democratic Party. MoveOn also cited comments Specter made in an appearance on “Meet the Press” last weekend suggesting he would oppose a public health insurance option that some Democrats would like to see included in any health care reform proposal.

Now, the story does go on to note that if Specter goes flat out kook left in his voting, a lot of MoveOn members will be willing to back him, but I still like the fact that these screwballs at MoveOn have a little bit of sense. Why should people who have worked desperately to enact an insanely destructive agenda allow the Democrat powers-that-be to saddle them with a person only moderately-insane? The Democratic party gets an advantage – securing a Senate seat on the cheap…but for the drooling morons of MoveOn, what do they get?

So, have at him, MoveOn…force the Democrats to either get Specter to go so far ’round the bend that Chuck Schumer looks conservative, or defeat him and get an even more batsh** crazy nominee. Either way, we GOPers are behind you 100% in this effort. Meanwhile I, personally, wish to congratulate you on a bit of backbone – after years of watching you bend over and say, “thank you sir, may I have another?”, its nice to see that there is a least one or two American blood cells remaining in your systems.

The proof:

…The government had to pay greater interest than expected in a sale of 30-year Treasurys. That is worrisome to traders because it could signal that it will become harder for Washington to finance its ambitious economic recovery plans. The higher interest rates also could push up costs for borrowing in areas like mortgages…

This means it will be harder to finance the massive debt Obama wants to run up, which means we’ll have to pay more to do so, which means deficits will be higher than expected, which means debt will rise faster than forecast…which means, not to put too fine a point on it, we’re screwed.

America’s New Economic Rule Number One:

You can’t spend your way to prosperity.

One of these days even liberals might figure that out.

From a Liberal extreme non-extremist:

Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around. – G K Chesterton

Those American Jews who voted for Obama really should have thought about this before they cast their ballots:

Once U.S. foreign policy is based on moral equivalence — that a Western democratic state is about the same as an undemocratic, radical authoritarian entity that embraces terrorism as a tool of state policy — then anything is possible, from calling for Israeli nuclear disarmament as part of an Iranian deal, to pretending that a Hamas ten-year truce is something other than a decade of chest-thumping before the final assault.

Given the fact that the vast majority of American Jews voted for Obama — despite clear indications that he would embrace radical changes in U.S. policy toward Israel — the politics of what is to come will be as fascinating as they will be tragic.

And given the Obama method of grandly professing the opposite of the reality that will soon follow (most ethical administration nominees in history lead to Geithner, Richardson, Daschle, Solis, etc.; no desire to interfere in the private sector means near nationalization of the banking, car, and soon health-care industries; commitment to public campaign financing equals first candidate to reject it in the general election; strong desire for fiscal sobriety translates into a $1.7 trillion annual deficit; Bush shredding the Constitution means adoption of Bush’s wiretaps, email intercepts, Predator attacks, Patriot Act, Iraq plan, renditions, etc., and on and on), the tell-tale sign of the final U.S. break with Israel will be a dramatic Obama hope-and-change declaration that “our historic commitment to Israel will remain unchanged.”

When we hear that, we know exactly what follows…

The problem with doing the right thing is that it is always, at the start, much harder than doing the wrong thing. Its harder to tell a child he must study than to allow him to watch TV for an extra 15 minutes. Its harder to tell a shiftless brother that you won’t bail him out any more than to give him $100 “just one more time”. Its harder to deal with securing peace for democratic Israel than it is to reach an accord with undemocratic Islamo-fascism. Democracy, liberty, justice, mercy, truth – these are all difficult, messy things which require diligent effort and great patience…tyranny, slavery, injustice, cruelty, lying – these are all easy things which, in order to have done, one doesn’t even have to do them…just allow them to happen.

We’ve got an extraordinarily difficult problem in the Middle East. It isn’t a problem entirely of our own making. It isn’t a problem we had no hand in creating. It isn’t a problem which happened over night. It isn’t a problem which commends itself to easy solutions. It does, however, commend itself to a simple solution – the solution is to insist upon freedom. Freedom in Israel, freedom in Gaza, freedom in Egypt, freedom in Lebanon, freedom in the West Bank, freedom in Syria, freedom in Iraq, freedom in Saudi Arabia, freedom in Iran…once everyone in the area is free, genuine agreements for the long term regulation of Middle Eastern affairs can be entered in to. As long as any part of it is un-free, only the most temporary and expedient things can be done. In order to get from here (mostly tyranny) to there (entirely free) there is a long, difficult process to go through. On the other hand, in order to get to a “peace deal” all that is required is that Israel be ruthlessly pressured into agreement and then we just go along with whatever situation the enemy wishes to create as one step in their long process of destroying Israel.

For all of the time from the foundation of Israel to 9/11, American policy revolved around trying to make a “peace deal” – some set of agreements which would allow Israel to exist. The problem was that as long as the other party to the deal – the Moslems – were living under tyrannical regimes, there was really no one to treat with. In other words, people who don’t obtain their just powers from the consent of the governed cannot enter into a peace deal – not really. The next dictator might easily repudiate the deal and, as we’ve seen happen all the time, the dictator of the day just finds it too convenient to use Israel as an external enemy to justify internal tyranny. After 9/11, President Bush and others finally figured out that, come what may, the only way to have peace in the Middle East was to secure for our Moslem brothers and sisters God’s gift to mankind – freedom. In Afghanistan and Iraq, a large step forward was taken…and while it was being taken and before domestic, American anti-war efforts reached crescendo, the rest of the Moslem world was taking note of the changed circumstances and loosening up the grip of tyranny. Now we stand at the crossroads – the job stand about 1/4 done…what will Obama do?

The worry is that given his moral cowardice and lack of knowledge in this area that he will fall for the sirens of defeatism and “peace deal” regarding the Middle East. We know that Obama throws difficult problems and persons under the bus at the first opportunity and we know, just from reading his biography, that he doesn’t know about strategic and military affairs. Carried away by his own megalomania, he might think that the applause of France and the Arab League and the frightened agreement of Israel under pressure might be the real thing – that he’s bringing peace. If Obama pursues a peace deal as opposed to peace, then we might as well get ready to dig a lot of graves – peace comes from freedom, which allows justice to flourish…as our lefty friends say (quite mindlessly, as they don’t know what the words actually mean), “no justice, no peace” and there can’t be justice if most of the people in the area are held to bondage.