Iraqi President Talibani has no objection:

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said on Wednesday that he has no objection to form a special province for Christians in Iraq.

“There are regions with Christian majority in Iraq and we do not have an objection regarding forming a special province for Christians in Iraq,” the president told France 24 television.

“Protecting Christians is a holy duty for Iraqi government and all political blocs,” he continued, asserting that Shiites have expressed their readiness to form armed teams to help and protect Christians…

This is an act of wisdom and justice on the part of the Iraqi President and I applaud him for it. This is also the fruits of liberation in Iraq – in most Muslim nations the merest thought of Christians being able to rule themselves in an outrage. The fact that in Iraq people now have to try and live and build in a society at least partially free means that such things as anti-Christian persecution cannot be swept under the rug.

A province of Assyria (which I assume it would be called – most Iraqi Christians are Assyrian), would provide a safe haven for Iraqi Christians, allow them to prove their loyalty to the nation of Iraq by working for Iraqi peace and prosperity, and give weight to efforts elsewhere in Iraq to protect the Christian minority. I hope our government engages the Iraqi government on this issue and offers whatever aid is necessary to bring it about.

Some great news to report to my fellow Bush fans: Decision Points is flying off the shelves!

The Decider has written a blockbuster.

Random House Inc. says former President George W. Bush’s “Decision Points” sold 775,000 copies through its first week of publication. Random House made the announcement Tuesday.

In the book, the two-term president discusses the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, his decisions to send troops to Afghanistan and Iraq and the response to Hurricane Katrina.

An initial print run of 1.5 million copies has been increased to 1.85 million. E-book sales alone are 100,000.

If you haven’t got your copy yet, I urge you to order it now.  If you need more convincing, you can read my review, posted here.

Michael Medved ably states my point:

…With or without the current urgings of some tea party and gay rights personnel, Republicans should continue to emphasize the economic concerns and small government priorities that brought them their victories earlier this month. But the impulse to segregate fiscal and social issues ignores the way that economics and values inevitably interact, and the importance of sturdy middle-class virtues as the basis for both durable families and free-market prosperity.

The only real alternative to government as a source of assistance, authority and a functioning civil society remains the “little platoons” described by Edmund Burke — families and communities shaped by attitudes that count as both economically and culturally conservative.

The two halves of conservatism cannot exist one without the other – and, in fact, the social aspect of conservatism is far more important, long term, than the merely fiscal. After all, if we are not a society of life, sobriety, hard work and thrift, then we won’t be a society for very long. Low taxes and free trade won’t amount to much in a dying America.

It is a false separation that both liberals and some conservatives are trying to create – to say that we, on the right, must only go after the fiscal issues. Liberals want this because the understand that the crucial battle isn’t over tax rates and spending, but over morals and manners. Some on the right have been suckered in to going along with this thinking because, let’s face it, discussing issues like abortion and gay marriage makes some people very uncomfortable…and it is going to be difficult, no matter how you slice it, to fold in to overall conservatism something as odd as gay conservatism.

But the trick can and must be done – and we social conservatives must show respect of and love for our fellow conservatives who are not entirely with us on the social issues. We need them just as they need us. United we stand, divided we fall – unless you want Nancy Pelosi and her successors destroying both family and business, we’d better all figure out a way to work together.

From Zero Hedge:

First Philadelphia, now San Francisco, and all in the same day. Fasten your seatbelts ladies, the muni maul is going mainstream.

Moody’s Investors Service has downgraded to Aa2 from Aa1 the rating on the City and County of San Francisco’s General Obligation Bonds and assigned an Aa2 rating to the city’s General Obligation Bonds (Earthquake Safety and Emergency Response Bonds, 2010) Series 2010. We have also downgraded by one notch our ratings on the city’s various general fund obligations, including its abatement leases and settlement obligation bonds. The outlook on the city’s ratings has been revised to stable…

I wonder if they mean “stable” in the sense that a corpse is “stable”?

This is the wages of liberalism – they spend, spend, spend and never take a thought for how it will all be made good. San Francisco is bloated with departments and boards and commissions, employing enough bureaucrats to staff an entire nation’s government.

This is just a slight foretaste of what is coming all around the nation. San Francisco is just one of many urban areas of the United States which have been, essentially, under one-party, Democrat rule for decades. They’ve spent themselves in to oblivion, and now the bill has come due. And come due at a time when the States are strapped and Obama won’t be able to get a cent in bail out money through the House.

From NRO’s The Corner:

Just checked in with a Republican source in the Senate about the state of play on the New START Treaty. Sen. Jon Kyl is being portrayed as a threat to national security for telling Harry Reid there’s not enough time to ratify the treaty in the lame-duck session. This source counters that the White House was slow to take Kyl’s calls for enhanced nuclear modernization seriously. It wasn’t until last Friday that the administration really began to engage him on modernization, flying officials out to Phoenix to brief him. It was only this afternoon that Kyl got a revised modernization plan from the administration…

Even if we get nuclear modernization – something we desperately need in order to maintain a credible nuclear deterrent – I still can’t see the worth of START. Russia is a dying nation, run by a megalomaniac dim wit who can’t see that playing bully-boy and tweaking our nose is doing nothing for Russia…China greedily eyes Siberia while Czar Putin pretends Russia is still a Great Power. Negotiating with Russia as if it mattered is just a waste of time.

At any rate, arms control treaties are pointless. Free nations don’t need such things between each other, while tyrannical regimes will cheat on whatever they negotiate. We’re expecting Putin to keep his word? On what grounds does anything suspect that Putin even knows what “honesty” means? For crying out loud, he’s a former KGB apparatchik!

Spike this stupid treaty and move on.

Just try it:

From Politico:

President Obama may have postponed the so-called “Slurpee summit” with Republican leaders originally planned for this Thursday, but 7-Eleven is still going ahead with theirs.

“Ours certainly isn’t postponed,” said Margaret Chabris, the director of 7-Eleven corporate communications told POLITICO Tuesday night. “We’re still on. We’re gonna spread the Slurpee love with or without this meeting.”

Chabris said the company is going ahead with plans to have Slurpee trucks outside of Union Station, where they will be handing out red, white and blue icy, sugary drinks as well as “Purple for the people” Slurpees…

…”We are still at their beck and call,” she said. “If they want us to cater the Slurpee summit or put Slurpee machines in the White House, we’re there.”

“We’re still hopeful,” she said. “We have the ‘audacity of hope.'”

During the next State of the Union, the GOPers should all have slurpees in hand during the speech.

From Gateway Pundit:

Get your popcorn…

The God hates F*** people will protest at the Islamic Center in Dearbornistan tomorrow…

From Bloomberg:

Dick Durbin of Illinois, the Senate’s No. 2 Democrat, said he is “not very” optimistic that the Bush-era tax cuts will be extended at this point.

Durbin said a preliminary discussion yesterday between Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, and Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the chamber’s top Republican, “did not go well.” …

We’ll have to see how this plays out – refusal to extend the tax cuts will be an economic disaster for the United States. It would ensure that American business remains gun shy about expansion as well as eating up a great of American wealth and shoving it in to the black hole of government spending.

On the political side, Democrats’ refusal to extend will be a boon to the Republican party – come January, the new GOP House can send up a tax cut bill once a week and allow Democrats to either kill it, or agree to a popular, GOP proposal.

Allahpundit has a good bit about the issue of McCain vs Rand Paul on the matter of defense cuts and notes that no less than Allen West, retired Lt. Colonel and now Representative-elect, is also on board with defense cuts. So, too, will be any veteran who honestly remembers his military service. There is plenty of fat to cut in the Department of Defense.

That said, we should lay down a few markers. What can’t be cut is:

1. Military pay.

2. Supplies and other readiness items (spare parts, reserve ammunition, etc; the troops must have everything they need instantly ready for major combat operations).

3. Training budgets (the troops must be regularly exercised for combat).

4. No reduction in the number of aircraft carriers and attendant ships.

5. No reduction in the number of attack submarines.

6. No reduction in the number of first line fighter and bomber strength (we must maintain absolute aerial supremacy, regardless of cost – and this means staying a generation ahead of the competition).

With that, we can look to base closings, withdrawal of US forces from peaceful areas of the globe (Europe, save that which is necessary to support on-going operations; Japan, save ditto), reductions in civilian personnel; putting off new ship construction; and a general scrubbing of the military for any duplication and waste.

We need to get our budget balanced, and we’re not going to get to even step one on that with a liberal President and a Democrat Senate without offering up at least some substantial military spending. And, truth be told, all departments of government must be cut – without affecting readiness, the military must be made to work for less. It can be done – early in the 20th century, “Jackie” Fisher revolutionized the British Navy making it more powerful than ever at less cost than before. Big defense budgets don’t necessarily equal strong military forces.

Care will have to be taken, of course, to ensure that our liberals don’t gut defense – and for each dollar of defense cuts, we should insist upon two dollars of non-defense, discretionary spending cuts. The people, I believe, will be on our side in this – understanding the need for cuts, and willing to go far in such cuts, as long as they see that everyone is under the knife. If the Democrats try to play screw around on this, we’ll be able to hammer them in 2012 over it.

Now, to work.