Another blow to Obama’s dishonest “we aren’t fighting a war” in Libya assertion – from Post Politics:

The Defense Department decided in April to pay an extra $225 a month in “imminent danger pay” to service members who fly planes over Libya or serve on ships within 110 nautical miles of its shores.

That means the Pentagon has decided that troops in those places are “subject to the threat of physical harm or imminent danger because of civil insurrection, civil war, terrorism or wartime conditions.” There are no U.S. ground troops in Libya.

President Obama declared last week that the three-month-old Libyan campaign should not be considered “hostilities.” That word is important, because it’s used in the 1973 War Powers Resolution: Presidents must obtain congressional authorization within a certain period after sending U.S. forces “into hostilities.”…

In a nation of laws and courage, it would now be quite clear: Obama must get Congressional authorization or Congress must move articles of impeachment. Of course, we’ll likely get neither…there being little respect for law and not much courage in the American government these days.

The natural reaction to all this is to shrug it off but we really must not do that. A republic can only exist as long as the citizens feel themselves bound by laws of their own making. Just as soon as the citizens feel otherwise, dictatorship follows almost immediately. Ancient Rome was thick with laws prohibiting what Pompey and Caesar did – but by the time those two came along the laws had been so routinely violated (often to the applause of the people) that it was the most trivial of affairs for them to fight for mastery with only war as an arbiter of who won. If we let this sort of thing go on – this setting aside and/or making up of laws – by our politicians, there will eventually rise a complete disrespect of law, and then a dictator to rule a people no longer capable of ruling themselves.

Remember: I am in favor of intervention in Libya. I’m not saying this out of routine opposition to Obama. By intervening Obama, for once, did something he should have done (though he did it very badly). But Obama must obey the law – even a law as badly written as the War Powers Act (which was really written for no other purpose than to ensure that South Vietnam would be defeated). Laws can be stupid. Laws can be out of date. Laws can make things worse. A great deal of latitude is given to common sense in applying the laws. But as long as they are laws, they must be obeyed – only when they are properly, constitutionally altered or abolished can they be set aside.

I can’t emphasize enough how crucial this is to our future as a free people. Here is where we must draw the line. This is as clear a case as there can be. There is a law prohibiting the President from engaging in war beyond a date certain without Congressional approval. That date has passed – the War in Libya must end, or it must obtain Congressional approval. To do anything else puts at risk all that patriots have fought and died for.

We report, you decide:

Dovetailing neatly with my initial thoughts on the matter, Bob Owens over at Pajamas Media takes note of the disturbing truth about “Gunwalker”:

…ATF agents testifying in front of the House Oversight Committee could not explain how the operation was supposed to succeed when their surveillance efforts stopped at the border and interdiction was never an option.

ATF Agent John Dodson, testifying in front of the committee, said that in his entire law enforcement career, he had “never been involved in or even heard of an operation in which law enforcement officers let guns walk.” He continued: “I cannot begin to think of how the risk of letting guns fall into the hands of known criminals could possibly advance any legitimate law enforcement interest.”

The obvious answer is that Gunwalker’s objective was never intended to be a “legitimate law enforcement interest.” Instead, it appears that ATF Acting Director Ken Melson and Department of Justice senior executives specifically created an operation that was designed from the outset to arm Mexican narco-terrorists and increase violence substantially along both sides of the Southwest border…

When you put this together with the oft-repeated lie by the Obama Administration that a large portion of the cartel’s weapons are legally purchased in the United States, you can easily start putting two and two together – send weapons from the US to Mexico, wait for the mayhem, claim that the mayhem requires stricter gun control. As the official story that this was designed to provide traceable weapons to the cartels is clearly idiotic, I can only work on the assumption that the backdoor to gun control was the real purpose.

Of course, the only way to find out for sure is to thoroughly investigate – something which can’t be done as long as the Obama Administration continues to stonewall. We might not get to the full truth about this matter until after Obama is out of office.

2012 really can’t get here fast enough…

Very interesting result from Pew:

While the overall shift is notable, it is not surprising. After 10 years of intense, overseas military campaigns, the American people are weary of it. What is most remarkable to me is the similarity in both the conservative and liberal viewpoint – 55% of conservative Republicans and 57% of liberal Democrats would prefer a less robust US role overseas. It must be presumed that both sides are working it from different angles – liberals out of general (and immoral) pacifism while conservatives because of a wariness of the ability of the American people to sustain a drawn-out operation.

That is pretty much my view. In hindsight, we went about it with several fatal errors over the past 10 years. If there is one lesson of war to be learned it is that you must go to the heart of the problem. If we are to fight, we must fight all the enemies, all at once. In the aftermath of 9/11, President Bush should have made the case for and requested a declaration of war upon all the terror-sponsoring States. To leave even one of them out of the immediate equation is to provide a safe-haven for the terrorists – a place where they can build, plan and launch their attacks from. Because we left the Islamists safe havens, the efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan have proven costly and grueling. We’ve been fighting for ten years – five or less would have proved sufficient had we gone after the whole problem. Clearly, as long as Iran and Syria are untouched by American power, the terrorism of Islamists will never be defeated.

Additionally, if we fight it must be all out – any nation which is deemed an enemy must be given a choice between surrender and destruction. No two ways about it, no softening of the blow – the entire force of American power to be directed relentlessly until they are utterly destroyed, or surrender unconditionally. In the long run, it is mercy in war to hit with the hardest possible blows – the immediate destruction is worse, but the long run loss (for ourselves as well as the enemy) is less.

We live and we learn. But this lesson, I think, will not be fully digested until the terrorists manage another horrific attack upon us. It is to be hoped that our military and security forces are sufficient to the task of forever thwarting such an event, but it is unlikely we’ll prevail like that. We have to do it perfectly every time, they only have to get it right once. America is entering another period of isolationism, I believe – partially as a result of recent wars, partially because our economic problems are making us look inwards. We will not, however, be permitted to ignore the world forever…we cannot keep out the evil people forever.

HAT TIP: Hot Air

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A bit of sage advice from Charles Hugh Smith over at Zero Hedge:

…The Eurozone debt “crisis” is nothing but another credit cycle, in which debt expands beyond the carrying capacity of consumers and economies. Debt then contracts as uncollectable debt is written down; borrowers go bankrupt and their remaining assets are auctioned off (if they put up collateral; if not, then tough luck, lenders, you blew it and will have to suck the entire loss). Insolvent lenders are also declared bankrupt and dissolved.

There is absolutely nothing unusual about this cycle. Impaired debt is renounced and the system is purged of bad debt. Once the economy has been cleared of garbage, so to speak, then everyone can stop pretending and start dealing with reality. Businesses will be able to start up in a transparent and open market…

I agree with how that will work, but I disagree that we’ll be able to start fresh right away. In addition to clearing out the bad debts and letting the insolvent go belly up, we also need to engage in some genuine reform in order to better protect ourselves against the excesses which brought on the current crisis. But the main thing is: be not afraid.

This is not to say it won’t be lousy for a while. It will. Very much so. In fact, it’ll hurt a great deal. No illusion ever collapses without causing someone some pain. The illusion that we could borrow and spend our way to wealth will die hard, and it’ll hurt a lot as it dies. But die it must – first off because it is immoral, but also because we can’t start to rebuild until the illusion is gone. Only when we’re at rock bottom and as broke as we can be will there come the will to do the right thing – to build an economy based on hard work, savings and careful investment.

Right now we’ve got about a half dozen triggers around the world just waiting to set off the crash. If they manage to cobble together a deal for Greece then we still have to worry about Portugal. If something is figured out for Portugal then we have to worry about Japan’s deepening economic crisis. If Japan dodges the bullet then we have to be deeply concerned about runaway inflation in China. If China manages to put a lid on that, then our own debt crisis remains a gigantic risk. And if we get around our debt crunch then it will be time to turn back to Greece because no matter what is done, it won’t make it possible for the Greeks to ever repay their debt; or it will be Spain, or Italy, or Ireland, or the entire EU, etc, etc, etc…the problem of the world, too much debt, is intractable. It cannot be solved in the sense of everyone gets paid. There isn’t enough money in the world to pay everyone back. Someone has to take it in the shorts, eventually…and when it is so taken, it will trigger a global financial crash. The question is not if, but when.

But it won’t be the end of the world. At least, not for most of us. For some bankers and bureaucrats, it will be…but it will also be a chance for them to rethink their priorities and perhaps find a useful trade. So, even for them, it won’t be the end of the world. It’ll just hurt a bit – but it will also be over fairly swiftly if we just let it happen…no more attempts to backstop a failed system or bail out an insolvent bank. It doesn’t work. It can’t work. Better to just let the chips fall where they may and then get on with it.

Attempting to clarify his reasons for not signing the pro-life pledge, he just makes it worse, in my view. From NRO:

I am pro-life and believe that abortion should be limited to only instances of rape, incest, or to save the life of the mother…

So, Mitt, your view is that justice is best served by executing the child if his father is a rapist? Or is it that you just didn’t think this dodge around the life issue all the way through? Oh, to be sure, plenty of RINOs over the years have used it…used to work like a charm, too. But the problem is that we know where it leads…and in a President it leads to something like a Justice Souter or Kennedy.

It appears more and more to me that Romeny’s “evolving” positions are nothing but a means of securing support he must have for the GOP nomination. He must have TEA Party support, so he’ll put out some small government rhetoric. He must have pro-life support, so he’s now put out some pro-life rhetoric. But my concern is what will happen once Romney is safely ensconced in the White House…will the rhetoric of the campaign trail rule the day, or will a desire to be liked in the MSM and among the “sophisticated” people lead him to throw TEA and Life under the bus?

Unless and until Romney can provide a convincing answer to this, I won’t be able to back him in the primaries. To put it bluntly, I don’t trust him.

From Reuters:

NATO admitted it carried out an air strike that killed civilians in Tripoli on Sunday.

“Although we are still determining the specifics of this event, indications are that a weapons system failure may have caused this incident,” said Lieutenant-General Charles Bouchard, Commander of Operation Unified Protector in a statement.

NATO said a military missile site was the intended target of the air strikes and acknowledged the civilian casualties…

We’ve been at this three months and we’re still fooling around with knocking out Libyan missiles sites – 9 civilians are dead and calls for an end to this campaign will just grow from this point on. Had we fought this war as a war from the get-go and with full effort to end it swiftly, then this campaign would have ended within two weeks of its start, and thus there would have been no need to try and take out a missile site three months on.

When you go to war you go to war, darn it. You don’t half-in, half-out maybe we’ll fight today, maybe not tomorrow. The way we’re conducting the war in Libya is asinine beyond belief. While we can hope that the President will see the folly of his plan and change it, the more likely outcome will be some liberal hand-wringing and then some sort of sorta-ending which likely will leave Ghaddafi in charge.

Just disgusting.

J E Dyer over at Hot Air has the story of the collection of kooks and scoundrels who are setting up another “Gaza flotilla” to “break the blockade of Gaza”:

…The ships left in the flotilla are the US and Canadian “Boats to Gaza,” the Irish Boat, the Swiss-German Boat, the Italian Boat, the Greek Boat, the Netherlands Boat, the Norwegian-Swedish Boat, and possibly one or two Spanish Boats. (CrethiPlethi has a very extensive write-up from late May.) That tally squares roughly with the Wednesday statement of activist Adam Shapiro (founder of the International Solidarity Movement, or ISM) that about 10 ships, other than the IHH contingent, would sail in the flotilla, which will reportedly get underway next week.

Thus, it is ships sailing under the flags of NATO and the EU that will be attempting to break the blockade of Gaza. But not all the flags of NATO; only the flags that fly over the liberal, democratic, traditionally Christian nations. In the surreal progress of events, Islamic Turkey has dropped out…

There is, actually, no blockade of Gaza. You can get pretty much anything you want in to Gaza – you just have to get the cargo inspected by Israelis because for some strange reason, the Israeli government frowns upon sending weapons to people who have pledged to kill every last Jew…and who fire rockets on a regular basis in to Israel. I know, go figure: what are the Israelis thinking? But, still, you can get stuff in. So, that isn’t what this “break the blockade” stuff is about.

It is also said that the purpose here is to help the people of Gaza be free. Trouble is, the government of Gaza is a collection of corrupt terrorists who will never, ever allow the people of Gaza to be free. The government of Gaza is like a normal, Third World government – it had a one man/one vote election, one time. The people who won will never voluntarily surrender power. And there is plenty of evidence to indicate that the government of Gaza is quite ruthless in suppressing anyone who doesn’t toe the line. So, this isn’t about freedom – in fact, by bringing in aid, you are probably solidifying the control of Hamas.

So, why is this flotilla going forward? Because the Big Lie works. Remember what the Big Lie is – the people will often not fall for a little lie, but if you tell a really gigantic whopper and just keep repeating it, people will come to believe.

The Big Lie in Gaza is that the Jews of Israel are the source of the trouble. This lie has been repeated endlessly and it has wormed its way in to the Western world. It took a good, long while – Israel, when it started out (and believe it or not) was considered heroic on the left. Jews had suffered from discrimination culminating in the Holocaust; the Jews or Israel were mostly of some socialist ideology; they were fighting against tyrannical regimes. What wasn’t to love? But after the 1967 and 1973 wars, a subtle line of propaganda began to be advanced that some how, some way, the people who had triumphed against the worst sort of enemies had done something wrong…that Israel owed redress to the defeated who had started unjust war. It took decades of advancing this before it started to become respectable, but now there are plenty of people who subscribe to it whole heartedly…even to the point of becoming the most rancid sorts of anti-Semites in their words and actions.

The end result of this is that a large collection of Americans and Europeans will spend a great deal of money and time on what they, themselves, will view as an heroic attempt to fight the oppressor. They simply will not see that what they are doing is helping an oppressor to attack a small, heroic nation of free men and women who want nothing more than to be left alone to live their lives. People who will, if they can get any kind of assurance against attack, will give land back to the enemies who tried to destroy them. People who will gladly help the people of Gaza raise their living standards. The topsy-turveydom of this effort is astounding – it is as if a group of people were trying to liberate Nazi-occupied France by sending weapons to the Germans.

Presumptively, the IDF has set afoot more efficient means of thwarting these fools so if push comes to shove they can be easily arrested – without any harm being done. But just imagine if you were an Israeli in 2011 who has been rocketed a dozen times by the Hamas thugs in Gaza…you’re at risk of death at any moment but the people who are coming to your land don’t want to help you; they want to help the people who are firing upon you! A hundred years from now people will look back in shock at this time and wonder just how we got ourselves so immersed in lies that murderers are eagerly assisted in murdering their victims…

From Reuters:

The International Monetary Fund cut its forecast for U.S. economic growth on Friday and warned Washington and debt-ridden European countries that they are “playing with fire” unless they take immediate steps to reduce their budget deficits.

The IMF, in its regular assessment of global economic prospects, said bigger threats to growth had emerged since its previous report in April, citing the euro zone debt crisis and signs of overheating in emerging market economies…

Gee, ya think? You mean that massive money printing to give China 10% “growth” and gigantic debt in the United States and Europe can cause a problem? Who would have thunk it?

Well, I did. So did anyone observing this who isn’t some sort of mindless drone or Ruling Class scam artist. There is nothing at all surprising, at this late a date, in the fact that fake money and high debt cause problems…one way or the other the debt has to come down. And it can only come down by spending cuts. Don’t fall for the siren song of higher taxes and expectations of higher growth – that is a dead end. The higher taxes will crush any higher growth you can expect. Only cuts will do it.

Our fundamental problem in this is that we’ve got President Obama. As long as he is President we simply will not get the policies necessary to fix the problem. Its not a matter of him being hostile to good policies – he lacks the knowledge and experience to even realize that there are different policies to be pursued. If you tried to bring up the things we need to do you’d probably get a blank stare…it is outside his experience; he’ll have no frame of reference to judge the policies.

So, just hang one. Get out of debt, save your money…hunker down and hope it doesn’t get too bad. If in January of 2013 we’ve got a new President and a GOP Congress, then we can set to work to fix things…until then we can only hope to hold the line.

Like the bits about Jindal – almost like he’s pre-selecting a VP. Perry/Jindal? It could work.

Anyways, the most important bit is the call to stop trying to make nice with liberals. While we must not hate them, we must recognize that they do hate us – and hate us with a white-hot passion. Nothing we ever do will change their views. We will always be racist, sexist, homophobic, bigoted bitter-clingers…so, don’t worry about what they think. Fight them, beat them…but don’t worry about what they’re saying or thinking except as it allows us to destroy them.