Charles Krauthammer explains it better than any I’ve seen:

…Radical Islam is not, by any means, a majority of Islam. But with its financiers, clerics, propagandists, trainers, leaders, operatives and sympathizers — according to a conservative estimate, it commands the allegiance of 7 percent of Muslims, i.e., more than 80 million souls — it is a very powerful strain within Islam. It has changed the course of nations and affected the lives of millions. It is the reason every airport in the West is an armed camp and every land is on constant alert.

Ground Zero is the site of the most lethal attack of that worldwide movement, which consists entirely of Muslims, acts in the name of Islam and is deeply embedded within the Islamic world. These are regrettable facts, but facts they are. And that is why putting up a monument to Islam in this place is not just insensitive but provocative…

The only thing I’d add to that is the fact that while almost all Moslems are not terrorists, the evidence clearly indicates that we, in the West, are incapable of determining which particular Moslems will or won’t become a Jihadist. There is no patter to who joins – long-domiciled Moslems in the West; Moslem who are rich; Moslems who are poor; Moslems who have never committed a crime; Moslems who have a rap sheet a mile long; Moslems straight out of the middle east; Western converts to Islam; Moslems who until just yesterday were acting like Westerners; Moslems from the worst Islamic tyrannies; Moslems from comparatively moderate Islamic nations. We can say who is recruiting, we can determine where the appeal of the Islamist message lies – we just can’t tell who will fall for it.

To then try to separate the wheat from the chaff becomes an impossible task – any Moslem, any where, might wind up being an enemy or a friend, and may change sides back and forth. Given this, great care has to be taken in dealing with Moslems – with the most important thing being a clear assertion on our part of strength. Flabbiness invites contempt and people – especially the gullible sorts of people who would go in for jihad – like to be on the winning side.

By standing firm against the mosque – while maintaining our respect of Moslems as individuals and for those truths which Islam adheres to – we are showing the Moslems of the world our strength. While a few – and invariably these are in the enemy camp – will loudly complain, most reasonable, decent Moslems will both understand and respect us for standing on principle.

This War on Terrorism is only partially a military conflict – it is primarily a conflict of ideas. And ideas are not sold entirely on their merits but also on the public perception about the ideas. Who wants to subscribe to the ideas of people who won’t even stand up for themselves? We spoke in our Declaration of Independence of our manly firmness in resisting tyrannical demands – we must be just like that in confronting and dealing with Islam. Do that, and we’ll be half way home on defeating terrorism.

Its like they think we’re not bankrupt:

Next month’s opening of the Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools will be auspicious for a reason other than its both storied and infamous history as the former Ambassador Hotel, where the Democratic presidential contender was assassinated in 1968. With an eye-popping price tag of $578 million, it will mark the inauguration of the nation’s most expensive public school ever.

The K-12 complex to house 4,200 students has raised eyebrows across the country as the creme de la creme of “Taj Mahal” schools, $100 million-plus campuses boasting both architectural panache and deluxe amenities…

The news report goes on to note several other profligate, white elephants in the LA school district – and reports, as if its shocking, that a lot of the most expensive schools are in low-performing school districts. Might come as a shock to an MSMer, but to anyone living in the real world, its easy – of course that is the case…the reason they have $578 million schools is because they are failing system. A system run successfully would never dream of wasting that much money on a mere school building.

We teeter on the edge of complete financial meltdown – and Los Angeles is spending more than half a billion dollars on a school. They just laid off 3,000 teachers – and they are spending more than half a billion dollars on a school. They just got a federal bail out – and they are spending more than half a billion dollars on a school.

Does anything else need be said? Is more proof required that the Ruling Class must be shown the door?

From today’s Mass readings – I thought it very appropriate given the burdens we all face, and the extra burdens my family has been carrying of late:

Brothers and sisters,

You have forgotten the exhortation addressed to you as children:

“My son, do not disdain the discipline of the Lord

or lose heart when reproved by him;

for whom the Lord loves, he disciplines;

he scourges every son he acknowledges.”

Endure your trials as “discipline”;

God treats you as sons.

For what “son” is there whom his father does not discipline?

At the time,

all discipline seems a cause not for joy but for pain,

yet later it brings the peaceful fruit of righteousness

to those who are trained by it.

So strengthen your drooping hands and your weak knees.

Make straight paths for your feet,

that what is lame may not be disjointed but healed. – Hebrews 12:5-7, 11-14

All of us balk at the troubles of life – but wisdom dictates that we accept the good and the bad and remember that the bad, even if deliberately caused by others, is permitted to happen, at least in part, because we are to learn from it.

There will be an “unexpected” drop in home sales reported next week. Remember, it is going to be unexpected – so, look surprised when the MSM reports it to you.

GOP up by 7 in Washington State senate race. This is another one of those 2010 races we GOPers were supposed to have no chance at all.

MSM is starting to notice China’s real estate bubble – they are still behind the curve as they are just now getting around to noticing its existence. The fact that it has already burst still escapes them, for the most part. Good question to ask, however: does China’s government buy a couple more years of political peace by sustaining absurdly high real estate prices, or risk potential revolution by allowing the crash to happen right away?

Charlie Cook has a prediction about the outcome of the mid-terms which Democrats may read and Republicans must ignore. No, seriously – all you darned Republicans out there stay off that link! Now, why did you go an click it? For crying out loud – just remember: don’t get cocky.

Miss USA – a Moslem – understands the necessity of not building the mosque at Ground Zero. This makes her both very pretty and very smart – pity our liberals can’t muster the same IQ as Miss USA.

2010 Democrat campaign strategy: Run Away!

From the Associated Press:

The rate at which U.S. homeowners fell behind on their mortgage payments remained stubbornly elevated in the second quarter.

In the three months ended June 30, the number of mortgage holders 60 days or more behind on their payments was 6.67 percent, credit reporting agency TransUnion said Tuesday. That’s a big jump from 5.81 percent in the second quarter of last year, and well above the historical norm of 1.5 percent to 2 percent…

Later in the report the MSM earns its Slavish Devotion to Obama Award by spinning that late payments are rising slower than they did last year. Woohoo! We’re not going bankrupt quite as fast as we were last year! Give Obama a second term!

The fact of the matter is that unemployment is increasing and people are exhausting all resources to maintain mortgages with eliminated or reduced income – adding to the mix is the increasing willingness of people to just walk away from their “underwater” mortgage in “strategic default” (meaning you can pay for the house, but choose not to). This situation will only get worse until new ideas start to be implemented aggressively in what will amount to a bankruptcy reorganization of America’s housing market. Long time readers know my preferences, but just about anything which doesn’t involve either bailing out the banks nor attempting to maintain artificially high home prices should be on the table – we need to think and we need to act. The Keynesian dogmas of a dead, liberal economic system simply won’t do the trick.

HAT TIP: Mish’s

Whatever it costs, we should put this out on TV every day from now until the election.

HAT TIP: The American Catholic

This is a good thing to have – it shows, in graphic terms, the increasing economic disaster…a disaster made worse, not better, by Obama’s foolish, tax-and-spend liberalism policies:

From the Associated Press:

Nearly half of the 1.3 million homeowners who enrolled in the Obama administration’s flagship mortgage-relief program have fallen out.

The program is intended to help those at risk of foreclosure by lowering their monthly mortgage payments. Friday’s report from the Treasury Department suggests the $75 billion government effort is failing to slow the tide of foreclosures in the United States, economists say…

We’re on track, according to the linked article, for 1,000,000 foreclosures in 2010 – far outstripping the 900,000 we had in 2009. But the really bad news is that we might have 1,500,000 in 2011. This will put massive downward pressure on home prices, thus putting ever more people “underwater” and that, in turn, will increase the phenomena of “strategic default” (people bailing out on homes they can afford, but which are underwater) – and so yet more downward pressure.

This is a crisis of massive proportions. Even if nothing else goes wrong with the economy, this will be enough to push us in to full-blown Depression. We need to get creative here – just modifying the payment so people are still stuck owing banks the massively over-inflated home prices of 2005 simply won’t do the trick. We have two tasks in front of us:

1. Keep as many people in their homes as possible via “cramming down” the mortgage to match current market value.

2. Get as much of the inventory off the market as possible by working out incentives for foreclosed homes to be leased for 2-5 years rather than sold.

I’ve discussed this issue here, as well as many other times over the past two years. I realize it is unfair to the people who aren’t “underwater” that some people will have their mortgages crammed down. I realize that it is, often, best to just let things take their course – but we’re facing the complete collapse of home values in the United States. The loss of that stored wealth would cripple our economy for a decade. Think of all the follow-on things which go with homes: televisions, washer/dryer units, landscaping, etc, etc, etc. Houses drop to 10% of their 2005 value, my friends, and we’re well and truly in a bad spot – and they can drop that low, and take the remainder of the economy down with them. 25% unemployment might seem like a good thing at that point.

We need to figure a way out of this – we need to both spread the pain and the benefits around. Bailing out banks has failed. Letting the market completely collapse will be ruinous (including to those of you out there who aren’t underwater or who have paid off your home…think about it: if you’ve got a paid off house worth 200,000 right now, how will you feel when its worth 100k? 50k? 20k?). We’ve got to put a floor under housing prices – we’ve got to get the massive inventory to go away, at least for a while.

Or we can just let things drift – and have a world of economic hurt. Our choice.

Naturally:

ShoreBank, a Chicago-area community lender praised by Democrats, was taken over by the government Friday and its assets sold.

Chicago-area Democrats pushed hard for regulators to extend bailout money to the bank from the government’s $700 billion aid program. The bank was praised by President Clinton and numerous other lawmakers and industry players. The bank was started in the 1970s…

Now I’d like there to be a minute examination of the banks books – if Democrats wanted to save this bank, there must be something screwy going on in there. They just don’t do that for any, old bank – always, always Democrats direct their bail out efforts towards those people and institutions which help Democrats. And I am doubly interested because it is a Chicago-area bank…not an area of the country noted for business and political ethics.

From Ramussen:

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Voters in Arkansas shows Boozman capturing 65% of the vote, while Lincoln earns 27% support. Four percent (4%) like some other candidate in the race, and three percent (3%) are not sure…

Lincoln won 56% of the vote in 2004, in a GOP year in a red State…she’s toast, and so are the rest of her sorry Democrats.