If you haven’t been paying attention to this scandal, you should. Bob Owens over at Pajamas Media has an excellent run-down of the issue:

…On December 14, 2010, a special unit of the U.S. Border Patrol came across a group of heavily armed suspects near Rio Rico, Arizona. The Border Patrol team identified themselves as law enforcement officers, at which point the armed men open fire. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was hit in the pelvis by a single bullet and died the next morning. One of the suspects was captured, and two AK-pattern semiautomatic rifles recovered at the scene were identified by serial number as weapons that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) — acting in concert with and with the blessing of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) — allowed weapons smugglers to purchase at U.S. gun shops. The weapons were just two of more than 2,000 firearms that ATF supervisors and the highest levels of DOJ management allowed to be “walked” across the border to narco-terrorist drug cartels in Mexico, in a scandal that promises to be more damning and deadly than Iran-Contra.

The ATF named their operation Fast and Furious, but it will go down in history by its more descriptive title: “Gunwalker.”…

The official story is that the plan was that the weapons would be traceable when used for a crime. I have some doubts about that. Naturally, most of the crimes would be committed in Mexico and the people committing the crimes would be low-level foot soldiers for the cartels. In other words, being able to identify which weapon did which crime would be pointless – we couldn’t prosecute and even if the Mexicans could, all they’d catch are the troops, not the leaders. My guess is that while the “trace” thing was in there, a more likely explanation is either to be found in rank corruption (someone bought by the cartels to provide a means of arms) or a back door way to justify gun control (and I do recall the allegations by the Mexicans and the Administration that the cartel’s guns were coming from American gun dealers).

No matter how you slice it, this is about the most stupid and criminal action a government can take. To provide weapons to criminals – for whatever reason – is to be guilty of accessory to murder. The Mexican drug cartels are the most brutal and inhuman criminal gangs imaginable. Al Qaeda is a collection of pansies compared to these beasts. They are murdering not just people who cross them, but just in order to intimidate anyone who might at some point even think about crossing them. Men, women and children are being butchered – and raped, beaten and robbed, in to the bargain. The proper answer to the drug lords is to send special forces out to kill them…not work out come cockamamie plan to provide them traceable arms.

This scandal is still in its infancy and, naturally, the Obama Administration is refusing to cooperate fully with the investigation. We can rely upon it that Holder’s “Justice” Department won’t make a move unless compelled to do so…and that means further hearings and more publicity for this horrid scandal. We really can’t let this one go; there is something very dirty going on here.

From The Hill:

Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) on Thursday said the Obama administration failed to answer all his questions about the U.S. mission in Libya and raised the possibility that the House would move to cut off funding for the operation.

In response to demands from the House, the administration released a 32-page report arguing that the Libya mission does not need congressional authorization because the U.S. military engagement there doesn’t amount to “hostilities.”

Boehner said that explanation doesn’t fly with him…

Got that right – the explanation is that even though we’ve got military forces engaged, we’re not at war because it is hard for the Libyans to hit us doesn’t come across as a valid argument. You can bet your bottom dollar that if President McCain had done this then Senator Obama wouldn’t buy it. Only the most egregious of partisans could possibly swallow the Presidential sophistry on Libya.

I am still in favor of intervening in Libya provided we go for victory – I see no evidence that we are, but I am willing to give Preisdent Obama more time. Perhaps there are back-stage things going on which are moving us towards success. Time will tell on that, but Obama clearly doesn’t have an endless amount of it. While it would be a bad thing to cut off funds for the effort, it would be worse to continue the effort indefinitely – with no goal; no pursuit of victory. Better to bug out than just meander along pointlessly.

It is to be hoped that Obama will bring Congress in to his confidence and let the leaders know fully what the goal is and then have a vote on the floor of Congress to decide if it will be done. If Obama does approach Boehner and explains carefully what we are doing and asks for a vote, I have no doubt that Beohner’s response would be that of a patriot – to secure authorization for a victorious campaign. But it is up to Obama – and if he doesn’t move swiftly, then things will go entirely out of his hands and he’ll find a bi-partisan Congressional majority lining up against further actions in Libya.

Jay Cost lays it out:

…The president can visit as many green companies as he likes. His team can put out as many strategy videos as it likes. It can organize its ground game in Virginia all day and all night. None of this is going to change the fundamentals of this upcoming election, which are:

1. The economy is substantially weaker for Obama than for other previous presidents who won reelection.

2. The deficit is now substantially higher than before.

3. His major domestic reform–Obamacare–is substantially more unpopular.

4. The American people are substantially more pessimistic.

That’s the state of the nation at this point. Nothing the Obama campaign can do at this point will affect any of these fundamentals–the hope is that its efforts will alter the public’s perceptions of these fundamentals, but it won’t. If we’ve learned anything in the last 50 years of the modern campaign, it’s that the billion dollar efforts of campaign technocrats, who now dominate our politics, cannot convince people that the sun rises in the west…

Which is all very true – and there is not much Obama can do to alter any of these fundamentals, nor much chance that events will correct one or more of them. Obama is pretty much in the fix he’s going to be in all through 2012. And so his plan it to raise a billion dollars, smear the GOP and hope that he can sucker people in to narrowly re-electing him (quite honestly, Obama and Co will take the narrowest of electoral college victories if that is all that can be done…the whole effort will be at securing 270 electoral votes). Cost, in his article, goes on to assert that if the fundamentals don’t change, Obama will lose – normally, I’d agree with that, but 2012 may be different.

I remember the 2002 California gubernatorial contest when the Democrats were carrying an unpopular governor who had a lousy economy as his record…and yet the Democrats managed to win. If ever there was an election the GOP should have won in a walk-over, it was the 2002 California election. What finally decided the contest was not the Democrat’s record, but the fact that the Democrats demonized the GOP candidate so savagely that they dispirited the GOP base while at the same time so turning Independents off that they stayed home. Democrat ground game plus voter registration advantage did the rest. To be sure, that governor – Gray Davis – was subsequently booted via recall, but for the Democrats the lesson was learned – just be as nasty as you can. Facts, logic and basic decency don’t matter…if you’ve got an unpopular incumbent who can’t run on his record, then just throw a political hand grenade and hope that out of the wreckage your man will come out on top. This, from what I can perceive, is the Obama re-election strategy.

The joker in the deck for Obama is the TEA Party movement – which despises him and lives for the day when he is defeated. He has to divide and/or otherwise deflate that movement. I don’t know if he can do it – if he can’t, then it won’t matter: if the economy is still bad and the TEA Party is still on fire, then Obama’s job in 2013 will be memoir writing. But Obama will try – and the entirety of the Ruling Class will be going to bat for him, including at least some of the Republican part of it (even if only in the form of snidely attacking a TEA Party-backed GOP nominee). For the Ruling Class the 2012 election isn’t about Obama – it is about ensuring that no one acceptable to the TEA Party becomes President. They fear that such a person will actually attack the system which causes our problems…thus throwing the Ruling Class out of their place at the trough.

I don’t know how 2012 will come out – I hope for the sake of the United States that Obama is defeated and, furthermore, that liberalism suffers a crushing loss nationally. I believe we can do this – but only if we fight very, very hard. Complete dedication of effort will be required – plus a unity between the center and right which has never been seen before. It is ok to attack GOPers – especially if they get off the Constitutional ranch – but always remember who we’re really fighting…save your hottest fire for Obama and the liberals. As for me, I’m happy and geared up and ready to go…

They just never give up – from JS Online:

One day after the Wisconsin Supreme Court ordered the reinstatement of collective-bargaining legislation that potentially affects thousands of public-sector employees, a coalition of unions filed suit in federal court seeking to block it.

The Wisconsin State AFL-CIO on Wednesday joined a number of other unions seeking to halt Gov. Scott Walker’s controversial collective bargaining legislation…

…The case was assigned to Federal Judge William M. Conley. Conley is an appointee of President Barack Obama…

That last bit is important – elections have consequences; keep that in mind the next time the GOP nominee isn’t perfect. They are likely to get, at the least, a friendly hearing from the judge…though the outcome remains to be seen, and it is highly likely that if it goes all the way, the Supreme Court will uphold the law.

Outside of that, let this be an object lesson for us – never let the guard down, never stop fighting. They don’t. They just keep going – the only thing which can finally stop them is if they are utterly defeated at the polls. We have to beat them so badly that they simply lack the ability to interfere in any meaningful way – it isn’t good enough, in the end, for us to just beat Obama and take back the Senate…in the long run there has to be a solid conservative/libertarian majority in Congress…and this means the combination of liberals and RINOs has to be at 39 or less in the Senate. A tall order, but it is the only way we’ll finally be rid of liberalism. And only then will we no longer have groups willing to destroy America just to advance their own special interest.

From NRO’s The Corner, taking note of Rep. King’s hearings on the radicalization of Islam in America:

…King quickly made his case as the packed committee room looked on. “A number of cases since 9/11 have involved terrorists who converted to Islam or were radicalized to Islamism in American prisons, then subsequently attempted to launch terror strikes here in the U.S. upon their release from custody,” he said. “Dozens of ex-cons who became radicalized Muslims inside U.S. prisons have gone to Yemen to join an al-Qaeda group run by a fellow American, Anwar al-Awlaki, whose terrorists have attacked the U.S. homeland several times since 2008, and generally acknowledged to be al-Qaeda’s most dangerous affiliate.”

King’s pursuit, however, was not warmly embraced by Democrats on the committee. Rep. Bennie Thompson (D., Miss.), the ranking member, and Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D., Texas), among others, expressed concerns, asserting that the hearing was too narrow in its focus and should have broadly considered a wide array of extremist groups.

Jackson Lee, for her part, urged King to also investigate “Christian militants” and the “Aryan brotherhood.”…

This is both infuriating and depressing. Infuriating that liberal efforts at political correctness leave us vulnerable, depressing because it betrays a complete disconnect from reality. There is no terrorist threat from the “Aryan brotherhood”. That group is just a run-of-the-mill organized crime gang – it does not threaten the United States in a general sense as Islamists do. The only reason to look in to Aryan Brotherhood is to see if they are being paid by the Islamists to facilitate Islamist recruitment and terrorism within the United States. But, we can’t just go after Moslems, right? Have to have someone other than a Moslem in the mix or we’re all Islamophobes…this would be akin to giving the American Nazi Party the same scrutiny we gave the Communist Party during the Cold War – which would have been a stupid waste of resources.

But stupidly wasting resources, for our liberals, is worth it as long as we are adhering to the liberal world view. People can die, but we daren’t start acting in a rational manner…because to do so would show liberalism up to be the idiocy that it is.

Thank goodness for Rep. King – he’s doing the work which needs to be done and all of us who care about America must sustain him. You can rely on it that come next year he will be heavily attacked and the race card will be played from the bottom of the deck against him.

Pass a budget – from Reuters:

Libya’s government approved a $31.4 billion budget for the rest of 2011, the official news agency said on Wednesday, a move apparently aimed at showing it was functioning as normal despite air strikes and sanctions…

The natural reaction to this is to surmise that if we started bombing runs on Harry Reid, we might get action on a budget. Perhaps you have to be very, very stern with a government in order to get it to do it’s job? I’m open to other ideas, but I can’t see anything working better than this…

From The Hill:

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) saw her net worth rise 62 percent last year, cementing her status as one of the wealthiest members of Congress.

Pelosi was worth at least $35.2 million in the 2010 calendar year, according to a financial disclosure report released Wednesday. She reported a minimum of $43.4 million in assets and about $8.2 milion in liabilities.

For 2009, Pelosi reported a minimum net worth of $21.7 million…

So, you see, Obamunism does work – you can make a fabulous amount of money. All you have to be is (a) rich to begin with and (b) incredibly juiced-in with the Ruling Class…

Small wonder that our liberals want more money printing and borrowing – they are making out like bandits, aren’t they? Of course, it would be nice if they would put on a mask and shout “stick ’em up” at us, rather than pretend they are doing it out of altruism. I can take being mugged, but I don’t like being mugged by the sanctimonious. I’d much rather my hard earned money go to support a crack habit than go to make Nancy Pelosi even richer – this means, you know, that her children and grand-children will have the financial muscle to annoy the nation for a century or more after Nancy is gone.

And, so, my solution: let’s have a real tax on the rich – a wealth tax. We should hit everyone with more than $20 million with a 10% annual tax on their net wealth. Nancy wouldn’t mind, would she? I mean, after all, she does claim that the millionaires and billionaires have to pay their fair share…now it is time to get her to pony up.

You might have been reading and seeing the stories out of Greece – riots and demonstrations and bail out proposals and motions of no-confidence in the government. A huge mess as the entire European Union tries to prevent a default – a default which almost certainly cannot be prevented. In contrast to this, there is what the people of Iceland did when the financial crisis hit – from the Globe and Mail:

Iceland’s method of coping with the financial crisis had a brutal charm about it. In essence, the country hoisted its middle finger to the owners of bank bonds, and a few other people it owed money to, and walked away.

Iceland’s method of coping with the financial crisis had a brutal charm about it. In essence, the country hoisted its middle finger to the owners of bank bonds, and a few other people it owed money to, and walked away…

…It worked. For evidence, note that Iceland made a triumphant return to the international bond markets late last week, and that its tiny economy is growing at a fair clip, both remarkable achievements when you consider its punishing economic and banking collapse in late 2008…

It is true that the people of Iceland were complicit in the problem – like just about everyone in the western world, the people of Iceland figured they could get a free ride. That they could borrow and spend endlessly and never have to pay the piper. As punishment for this bit of foolishness, they have paid the price of a gigantic, asset-destroying financial collapse. The difference is that in Iceland – unlike everywhere else – the people didn’t add to the idiocy by figuring they had to bail out the banks which were even more responsible for the crash than the people were.

The responsibility of a bank is to wisely manage money. At bottom, that is all there is – take in money and carefully manage it so that, primarily, no money is lost and, secondarily, that the value of the money grows over time. There are lots of ways to do this and while no financial transaction is without risk, there are things which are wise risks and things which are akin to giving a case of whiskey and car keys to a pack of teen aged boys. The banks went hard and heavy in to whiskey distribution…and then wanted the taxpayers to bail them out.

Having more wisdom and courage than the rest of us, the people of Iceland did hoist that middle finger and they walked away…and they paid for it, but now that it’s over it is, indeed, over. Iceland still lives. The people still work and build wealth. And banks will still lend them money – now with a bit of wisdom attached. The rest of us have lacked this wisdom and courage and so we’re still stuck – in a kind of financial suspended animation, just hanging over the abyss of economic collapse, unable to climb back out while being unwilling to fall all the way down. But as we do this the problems just fester and grow…making whatever does finally happen worse than it would have been earlier.

When you’re broke, you’re broke. When you’ve borrowed more money than you can possibly repay, you can’t repay it. It will be lousy for you the borrower, but shed no tears for the lender – the lender is a bank and the bank is supposed to be staffed with hard nosed financial experts who would never be so idiotic as to loan more money than someone can repay. As the banks have not been filled with such people, they’re going to have to take a bath with the rest of us.

The United States is still some years away from being in Iceland’s position a few years ago, or Greece’s position right now. But plenty of other nations are right there – most notably Japan, Italy, Spain and Portugal (and probably a good number of other nations which simply haven’t made the headlines). The key for these nations is to just default – have done with it; you can’t repay the full debt, so don’t even bother trying. The bankers will just have to take their lumps and hopefully the survivors will have more sense. Yes, this means global recession – yes it means that trillions in paper assets will likely be wiped out. It will be lousy for a couple years…but once it’s over, it’s over. We’ll know where we stand, and we can all start to rebuild wealth.

HAT TIP: Mish’s

Got this in the e mail today:

I’ve set aside time for four supporters like you to join me for dinner.

Most campaigns fill their dinner guest lists primarily with Washington lobbyists and special interests.

We didn’t get here doing that, and we’re not going to start now. We’re running a different kind of campaign. We don’t take money from Washington lobbyists or special-interest PACs — we never have, and we never will (Ed. Note: that’s good – I was worried the $994,000 he got from people at Goldman Sachs, the $695,000 from JP Morgan and the $514,000 from Morgan Stanley were “special interests”…glad to know they are just regular folks, like me…wonder if they have to pay $5 for dinner with the Prez?).

We rely on everyday Americans giving whatever they can afford — and I want to spend time with a few of you.

So if you make a donation today, you’ll be automatically entered for a chance to be one of the four supporters to sit down with me for dinner. Please donate $5 or more today…

…Hope to see you soon,

Barack

$5 for dinner with the President? I don’t know, guys; what do you think? I mean, he is the President of the United States, but $5 is a bit of money, ya know? Think he’d be ok with $3, instead?

Interesting bit of news:

The World Energy Council has determined that about 30 miles southwest of Jerusalem, in the Shfela Basin, there are oil shale deposits with the potential to yield 250 billion barrels of oil. This represents the world’s third-largest quantity of oil shale behind the US and China…

Nothing would make me laugh more than to think that we could stop importing oil from Saudi Arabia and start importing it from Israel. Life is always full of interesting twists and turns and I doubt that any of us foresaw this particular development…and what it will mean not just for Israeli and US economics and security, but how these things blow a hole right through gloom-and-doom “peak oil”, we’re-running-out-of-everything stories…