The news:

The home of a Swedish artist who once drew a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad as a dog has been hit by a suspected arson attack, police said Saturday.

Lars Vilks, who lives in Nyhamnslage in southern Sweden, was not at home during the attack late Friday night and no one was reported injured.

It was the latest in a week of attacks on the 53-year-old cartoonist, who was assaulted Tuesday by a man while he lectured at a university and saw his Web site apparently attacked by hacker on Wednesday.

Now, Mr. Vilks should not have drawn Mohammed as a dog – just as I don’t like it when someone creates a disgraceful picture of, say, the Blessed Virgin, so I don’t think that anyone should create things which are intended to cause offense to religious sensibilities. There is such a thing as good manners – and they have been far too long ignored in our society.

On the other hand, I’m not going to torch the house of an artist who makes offensive pictures about things I hold sacred. And there in lies the difference between Christians, like me, and all to many representatives of the “religion of peace” (which phrase, by the way, annoys me no end – “Islam” does not mean “peace”, it means “submission” – we have to double lie about Islam in the name of political correctness, it would seem). I get upset, forgive and pray for the offenders – Moslems tend to burn and break things, and kill people when they can.

Until we acknowledge the truth, we’re just not going to get anywhere with Islam. Part of this truth is a penchant for violence of the vilest type – there is much good in Islam and, yes, there can be Islamic democracy (once you really understand what democracy means – it doesn’t mean legalized drugs or free access to porn…it means the people are regularly consulted on what policy shall be pursued, even if you disagree with the policy). But we won’t be able to help bring out the good in Islam unless we recognize and deal with the bad.

Great website – and yet another indicator that reducing debt (and, therefor, government spending) is becoming the popular alternative to endless tax and spend schemes.

It is time we stopped borrowing the grand kids future in order to help re-elect Democrats in 2010, don’t you think?

From Investors Business Daily:

Stumbling from one gaffe to another and showing little appreciation for our Constitution, Attorney General Eric Holder has become a major embarrassment. Time to admit he’s in over his head and let him go.

We were never big fans of the AG, but like many others, we had hoped our misgivings were wrong and that he’d be successful as the nation’s top law enforcement officer. Sorry to say, he hasn’t been.

Events in recent days and weeks show that Holder has little if any understanding of our nation’s most precious asset, the Constitution, and seems oblivious to the actual requirements of his job.

Holder does not understand – or refuses to see – the nature of the Islamo-fascist threat. He refuses to enforce the law against people who intimidate voters as the polls. He slams State laws he hasn’t even read. The man is either a complete fool, or just a blinded, leftist ideologue – in other case, he isn’t fit to be Attorney General.

During the Clinton Administration we were struck with Janet Reno – she, too, was unfit to be Attorney General, but then again we never really tried to force the issue. We can’t afford another such incompetent person at the head of national law enforcement. We must insist that Holder be replaced – and if Obama won’t do it now, then we might be able to exercise increased pressure in January.

Our nation and the enforcement of our laws are too important to be left to a man as out of touch as Holder. Hopefully, Obama will soon realize that Holder is becoming a political liability and will fire him. But we can’t count on that – Obama might, for all we know, think that Holder is doing a splendid job. This is why we Republicans must press President on this matter, lest Obama go on thinking that all is well.

Of course, we all knew that – and I wish that Merkel had actually said that it wastes time and money, but you can’t always get what you want. But what she said was still pretty devastating to the whole Euro bail out concept:

A trillion-dollar package to shore up ailing eurozone economies merely buys time until the deficits of certain members of the 16-member zone are cleaned up, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Sunday.

Speaking at a conference of the Confederation of German Trade Unions, Merkel said that recent speculation against the euro “is only possible because of huge differences in the economic strengths and debt levels of member states.”

With the rescue package, “we have done nothing more than to buy time until we have brought order to these competitive differences and to the budget deficits of individual euro countries,” she said.

Brought order to the competitive differences? And just how, pray tell, does the good Chancellor propose to do that? Of course she’s talking nonsense – and I begin to suspect she knows she’s talking nonsense. More and more, I get the feeling of an eventual end to the Euro with the prospect of an end to the European Union.

There is no way to harmonize an economy like Germany and that like Greece. Other than the fact that they are both in Europe, they have pretty much nothing in common. Its good to keep in mind that Greece isn’t even two centuries out of Turkish rule – Turkish rule which kept Greece very backward. And since independence, Greece hasn’t exactly recaptured the glories of the ancient past – they’ve sort of wallowed along doing nothing of particular note. And now they’ve spent themselves in to oblivion, and the German taxpayers are supposed to bail them out?

I really don’t think that is going to happen.

The news:

CALIFORNIA Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has compared his state’s financial crisis to that of Greece and called for scrapping the state welfare system to close a $19.1 billion budget gap.

He said the US state, with an economy that ranks as the eighth largest in the world, faced the same budget deficit crisis as eurozone countries such as Greece, Spain and Ireland.

And it really is as bad as all that – and while this is a strong move by the governor, he still bears his share of blame for “papering over the cracks” in the budget for the past three years. Everyone in CA government seemed to just be hoping that the economy would turn around and thus the various scams they pulled to “balance” the budget these past few years would be ok. Turns out, it wasn’t ok – the economy hasn’t gotten better and now its crunch time.

Outside of Obama getting the Fed to magically create another trillion dollars out of thin air and then handing it to the States, there is no way around massive budget cuts. Democrats would prefer the magic money, but as November approaches it becomes ever less likely that any sort of State bail out will be forthcoming.

Even with such stark realities facing them, it is doubtful that California’s Democrats – who control the CA legislature – will agree to any such cuts. Maybe a little trim around the edges, but cutting welfare is just not something they’ll go for. And, no, its not because they care about poor people – its because if you eliminate welfare you also eliminate the bureaucrats who run it…and that means eliminating people who pay union dues, which are then used as campaign cash for Democrats.

So, California has no easy way out, and only a slight chance that even the hard way out will be chosen – which means that we might eventually see California default on its bonds. We’ll have to see how it comes out.

Brought out in an interesting Rasmussen poll on attitudes about the United State and the United Nations:

Seventy-one percent (71%) of U.S. voters say the United States is a more positive force for good in the world today than the United Nations, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.

Thirteen percent (13%) disagree and say the international organization is a more positive force for good. Sixteen percent (16%) more are undecided.

But there’s a sharp difference of opinion between Mainstream voters and the Political Class. While 79% of Mainstream voters view America as a more positive force for good in the world today than the UN, just 45% of the Political Class agree.

Only 45% of the ruling class believe the United States is a better force for good than the United Nations! That is just astounding. It shows the disconnect between the people and the powerful – and additionally demonstrates just how incredibly ignorant our power elite really is. They pride themselves on their Ivy League degrees and social pedigrees but the truth is that they don’t know anything – they just have attitudes in tune with what they are instructed is the proper view.

The people are angry at a governing class which is out of touch. Which doesn’t honor core, American values. Which acts against the best interests of the American people. Come November, this rising anger and disgust with the political system could result in the largest amount of political change in one election since the 1930’s.

UPDATE: What Arizona should do in response to the boycott.

Interesting:

The Obama Administration has “screwed up the messaging” about its support for Israel over the last 14 months, and it will take “more than one month to make up for 14 months,” White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel said Thursday to a group of rabbis called together for a meeting in the White House…

…One source said the meeting was a sign that the Administration was concerned they may “be losing the Jews.”

In the end, this will have to be seen to be believed – like African-Americans, Jewish Americans seem to be willing to put up with a lot from the Democrats. But the Jewish State is imperiled – and may soon face an existential threat in the form of an Iranian atomic bomb. Given this, it is natural that doubts have arisen given Obama’s absurd coddling of the mullahs in Tehran.

The bottom line is that no one can possibly come up with a reason for backing Obama unless Obama is writing a check out of the Treasury. Except for such direct beneficiaries, no one is getting anything worthwhile out of the Obama Administration. It is easy to see that Jewish support might slip – it should and its long overdue.

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From Powerline:

Is the United States Greece? The short answer is: not yet, but it will be if the Democrats remain in control in Washington for two more election cycles.

In the Telegraph, Edmund Conway summarizes a lengthy report by the International Monetary Fund on sovereign debt that came out today:

[T]he really interesting stuff is the detail, and what leaps out again and again is how much of a hill the US has to climb. Exhibit a is the fact that under the Obama administration’s current fiscal plans, the national debt in the US (on a gross basis) will climb to above 100pc of GDP by 2015 – a far steeper increase than almost any other country.

And that, my friends, cannot be sustained. I know our liberals can’t grasp this – this is because they’ve been told that government spending is the cure for the economy. We spent bags of money, the economy is getting better per bankster and bureaucrat statistics and soon spending will drop as people need less help and revenues will rise as the economy improves. While the GDP numbers continue to rise, there is no way to even possibly argue them out of this – but, the fact remains that government spending never cures a faltering economy.

And, so, here we are – spending money like mad and rapidly running up against the absolute limit of just how much we can owe before lenders start demanding extortionate interest rates. If we actually reach that point the resultant crash will be unimaginable – not just here, but all around the world. You really cannot put a limit to the baleful effects – up to an including a desperate Chinese government setting off WW III in order to distract the Chinese from their plight.

We still have a window of opportunity to fix this – preferably no later than 2013, but absolutely no later than 2015 we must balance our budget. And I’m not talking phony balanced as we had it in 2000 – really balanced where the absolute number of dollars leaving the federal government by any means is less than the absolute number of dollars coming in. We do this, we avoid the crash – or, to be more accurate, the really horrific crash. We’ll still have one – and a pretty bad one, at that. Think in terms of 20% unemployment, for a while.

But here’s the key – we’re in a race. The race involves this: which ever major, industrialized nation figures out that a balanced budget cures the problem, wins. And wins huge. Think about it – the problem people have is with concerns about the viability of sovereign debt…if there is a nation out there where people can be certain there won’t be a default, that is where the money will go…and not just in terms of bond purchases, but in terms of all types of investment (but why should we care about bond purchases if our budget is balanced – simple, as our bond rating becomes impervious while everyone else’s collapses, it will become almost a matter of people offering to pay us to sell them bonds…we can refinance our existing debt at a very low interest rate).

To be sure, a crash course in balancing the budget will cause a crash – the resultant withdrawal of government funding will cause lots of business activity to dry up for lack of funds. But such a crash would be temporary in nature and beneficial in long term effect – with the government not spending the money, it will become available for people to start up or expand existing, private enterprises which is a much more efficient and profitable use of capital. This will swiftly feed upon itself and restore the economy within a couple years time.

Its either do this, or face the very worst situation imaginable – absolute bankruptcy coupled with threats of war and revolution. It is our choice.