This is just plain weird:

Just one day after the author behind a popular Syrian lesbian blog admitted to being a married, American man named Tom MacMaster, the editor of the lesbian news site Lez Get Real, with the tag­line “A Gay Girl’s View on the World,” acknowledged that he is also a man.

“Paula Brooks,” editor of Lez Get Real since its founding in 2008, is actually Bill Graber, 58, a retired Ohio military man and construction worker who said he had adopted his wife’s identity online. Graber said she was unaware he had been using her name on his site…

It is a strange world we live in, to be sure – and while the internet has been tremendously helpful in a lot of ways, it also has its very dark side. One of the darker aspects of it is the ability it provides to pretend you are other than you are. We’ve seen it here on Blogs for Victory – people coming back under different names and presenting different biographies, all designed to lend credence to a series of opinions. The man in question here states that he wouldn’t be taken seriously as an advocate for gay issues unless he was perceived as gay. This, then, is also an example of what happens when the liberal “divide and conquer” strategy is implemented over the long term: many people really do feel that only a gay person can represent gays, just as some hold that only a black man can represent blacks, etc.

I can understand a desire to hide behind a different name on the ‘net – I decided when I first started commenting on line that I would always use my real name. This has been a cause for regret at times – I have been stalked and not only is dirt dug up on me and spread around, but it has also harmed other people named “Mark Noonan” as dirt has been dug up and spread around on them, as well, in an attempt to get at me. Some times I do wish that I had picked a “nom de poste” and never let anyone know who I am or anything about me. On the other hand, I do believe there is a worth in having people perceive a real person behind the words.

To me this all just exemplifies the way that lies, hatred and fear have been deeply ingrained in our society. At the end of the day, we’d better throw ourselves at the feet of God and beg forgiveness – we will not forever be permitted to go on as we are…we’d better start telling the truth.

The prediction is being made David Rosenberg over at Bloomberg, quoted by Mish:

Bloomberg: How Certain are you that we may be headed for a recession

Rosenberg: I think that by 2012, I would give it a 99% chance. I say that because as an economist, you have to be part historian. When you have a manufacturing inventory cycle recession, they are usually separated 5 years apart. But when you have a balance sheet recession, credit contraction, asset deflation (for example residential real estate), the downturn tends to be separated every 2 to 2.5 years. … Economists call this a soft patch. It’s not like this is a soft patch. Basically, when all the stimulus is gone, you get to see what the emperor looks like disrobed. It’s not a pretty picture.

The reason why you’ve seen a switch over from “everything’s going swell” to “gee, things are starting to get rocky” in the MSM and Administration statements (I know, same/same) is because they know this is true. They know once stimulus and money printing ends, the alleged recovery ends with it. Not wanting a recession as we head in to 2012, Obama and the Banksters have decided to stampede us all in to agreeing to increased debt (thus the push for a debt ceiling increase) and another round of “quantitative easing” (money printing). They figure if we get frightened enough that things will get worse, we’ll go along with them…alternately, if we hold firm then Obama and his allies will blame us for the renewed recession – “those darn Republicans: we had everything fixed but then they wouldn’t let us go further in to debt!”.

My advice is do get ready for the renewed recession but don’t buy the BS that it was anything other than tax and spend liberalism which caused it. We’re in for a rough time but the good news is that it will happen at just about the perfect moment – it will help us greatly in ejecting liberalism from power. Whether or not this will lead to GOP leaders who have a clue remains to be seen.

Excellent and timely point by Peter Hitchens in the Mail:

Why is it so bad to draw a line between the deserving and the undeserving poor? I have searched the Sermon on the Mount for the words ‘Blessed are the Spongers’ and I cannot find them – or anything remotely like them.

So why does the Archbishop of Canterbury speak as if it was obvious that we should treat people who can work, but won’t, in the same way as we treat those who are truly in need?…

We do see this quite a lot. Naturally from our liberals, but a bit more surprisingly from our religious leaders – including some of my fellow Catholics. It has become almost an article of faith among some that the justness of a society is to be judged by the amount of money expended on the poor. What this had brought us is a bloated welfare State which allows millions of people to live idly when they could be doing something productive.

To make it clear, if a person cannot work to support himself, I believe we have a moral duty to ensure that person a decent standard of living – adequate food, clothing, housing and medical care. No one should suffer lack of necessities through no fault of their own. We are certainly, even in our current financial bind, wealthy enough for that. But we’ve gone way past that – we’ve set up a system which is more about dodging work and responsibility than helping the poor.

We need to differentiate between those who are really helpless and those who are just looking for a free ride. We can’t just pass out the cash to anyone who shows up. First off because we can’t afford it, but more importantly because a culture of dependency is poison for a free society. The more people get on welfare the less likely they are to think about the future of the nation – all such people tend to care about, over the long term, is who promises to provide the most benefits. But the nation cannot live if the work doesn’t get done – and anyone who can work must work…and if they won’t do it while they are at all capable of working, then they should get nothing from the public treasury.

Yes, this is a hard thing – but an act of love is not always a mushy act. Some times love is quite hard; and it is those whom we truly love that we won’t allow to wallow in indolence. Think about it – what parent is really showing love: the parent who prods the child to get a job and get out on his own, or the parent who allows a 30-something layabout to continue sponging off mom and dad? Charity is a moral requirement, but no where are we commanded to be suckers.

From Gateway Pundit:

In 2008 The LA Times withheld a video that contained footage of Barack Obama celebrating with a group of Palestinians who were openly hostile towards Israel. Barack Obama reportedly even gave a toast to a former PLO operative, Rashid Khalidi, at this celebration. This was something the LA Times hid from the American public before the election. The media refused to release the video…

…The Los Angeles Times released 24,000 Sarah Palin emails today.

The MSM – a mere arm of the DNC. This is what they do – they support liberal Democrats all the time and everywhere. They will only report negative news about them when it is absolutely required and even then will try to splice it with stories of GOP failures. And, of course, any GOPer out there who in any way, shape or form can possibly threaten the electoral success will have the MSM digging deep in to their background and, as necessary, the reporting of what is found will be malicious.

As 2012 comes in, we can expect this to rise to absurd levels – we can fully expect that flat out, bald faced lies about the Republicans will be retailed as fact by the MSM. There is nothing we can do to stop this – but we can use the New Media to counter it. So, get ready.

(Ed. Note: I promised this to Spook and others for “after Church” on Sunday – I do apologize for not getting to it sooner but the Mrs needed me to sand down this used coffee table she wants to refinish and then there was a bit of swimming in the pool, beer drinking and carne asada eating to do…but, anyways, here it is, now: a thread to discuss the overall economic situation and how we get out of our current mess).

First off, a bit of gloom and doom noted over at Zero Hedge:

Just under a year ago, we got the tax fraud, and the only remaining member of Obama’s economic Titanic, praising the US recovery. His timing top ticked the economy, preceded the Hindenburg Omen by 10 days, and ushered in QE2. Now, we get his sidekick, long since departed after totally failing (we use the more polite F-form of the word) up at his job, writing the follow up, from the cushy confines of academia, warning America that unless there is a major fiscal stimulus (because presumably the monetary stimulus which everyone praised in the form of QE2 has now been proven to only be a boost to the stock market and a bailout of European banks), this once great country which once exhibited the world’s reserve currency is on its way to another “lost decade.” We wish Summers well: perhaps 3 of those who read the following drivel will take him seriously. Two of them are Krugman and Koo. We are taking bets as to who the third one will be…

So says those who believe in the current system. Don’t get too angry with them. After all, they were raised up in a Keynesian world. Their education was in accordance with it. Their life experience has indicated the necessity of it. They simply don’t know of an alternative – they don’t know, that is, that there can be a world in which money is of fixed value, inflation is non-existent, deflation is a good thing and investment is for the long term. They – and we – are living in an income taxed, usury-based, debt-financed economy. It was called in to being back in 1913 (when we created the Federal Reserve and enacted the income tax) and it has become just the way things are.

But must it always be so? Hasn’t it proven itself a success – isn’t the apparent lack of success over the past two years just an aberration and thus calls for even more of the same? More money printing and more borrowing? Not at all . In fact, the economic system we have has never worked – it failed from day one. No economy based upon money losing its value and where debt is just a part of life can work in the long run. To be sure, you might get some short term “growth” out of such things, but you get it by dooming yourself to eventual bankruptcy. That is where we are now – just a few years away from having more debt than we can ever hope to repay. In other words, just a few years away from default. And we might get a bout of hyper-inflation thrown in, just for fun, because money of no intrinsic value has, guess what?, no intrinsic value…it is worthless and only accepted as long as people figure they can exchange it swiftly for things which do have value. Come a time when people figure they can’t do it and our money will become wallpaper.

We had a bit of debate here at Blogs for Victory on the subject of whether or not tax cuts help the economy. Liberals, of course, say they don’t – they just allow filthy rich people to get even richer while spreading poverty because there are insufficient funds available to help the poor rise. Conservatives take the view that if you free up money for private enterprise, you’ll get a net gain in wealth and thus an increase in the wealth of even the poorest. Liberals are flat wrong, but conservatives only half right. To be sure, if we were to cut taxes right now it would help – but it would not fix the fundamental problem we have: fake money and lots of debt.

Fake money and debt allow for people to get rich by making rather stupid investment choices. For instance, a US hedge fund manager might pour his fake money in to industrial schemes in China – and he’ll get a good return on his fake money and get a big bonus. But he’s sawing off the branch he’s sitting on. Unless the US economy is growing in productivity – ie, in the making, mining and growing of things – then what underpins the hedge fund manager’s life is being eaten away. And that fat bonus check won’t amount to much if the United States crashes headlong in to Great Depression territory. The reason we haven’t hit the wall just yet is because while we’ve been using the fake money, we have been able to borrow enough to make it appear that we’re doing ok. This is not just government borrowing – it is the people borrowing as well. As long as we could keep borrowing money to buy the goods being made by the hedge fund manager’s investment in China, everything was great…but eventually you do have to actually pay back the debt and if that time arrives when you have drastically reduced your ability to produce wealth, you’re screwed. And we, dear fellow Americans, are pretty badly screwed, at the moment.

The most important things we can do for our economy, at the moment, is to revert to a hard currency and to reduce our debt. A hard currency has traditionally been a gold-backed currency, but it can be backed in other ways. The main thing is to have something of fixed value – something which ensures that a dollar in 2011 is worth the same as a dollar in 2061. This removes the need for 8-12% returns which require banks and investors to make risky, speculative financial bets rather than careful investments.

The second thing to do is eliminate any tax or regulation which inhibits people from entering the marketplace whenever they choose. There are, in any society, a certain number of people who just delight in making things happen – we’ve been ham stringing them for a couple generations, especially with environmental regulations and anti-business taxes. Remove those and the natural, creative energy within the American population will get to work – and we’ll start building up the wealth necessary to discharge the debts we’ve piled up, public and private.

The final thing to do is to make it impossible for government to pile up debt and very difficult for average Americans to do so. Debt is poison – it allows governments and people to kick the can down the road. It allows people to be idiots – and greedy idiots, at that – right now while putting off indefinitely the day of reckoning. Indefinitely, but not forever. The day, as I’ve said, has now arrived…and our debt will utterly crush us. So, let’s get rid of it. For government, it means a balanced budget amendment – for the people, it means establishing strict underwriting requirements in order to obtain debt. The requirements should be so high that it is next to impossible to get unsecured debt (credit cards) and difficult to get secured debt (home loans). Only the most sober and thrifty should be able to obtain credit – and that is how it used to be (though, of course, loan sharks have always been available for the profligate…we call them “payday loans” now).

The over-arching consideration must be that only via hard work, saving and careful investment can we economically advance. There is no short cut; there is no easy way to riches (at least, for most of us – you can luck out with the rich uncle or the winning lottery ticket, but 99.9% of us simply won’t have that – and our policy should be based upon the reality for the 99.9%). Unless and until we set in place policies which reflect these truths, we’ll not only not get anywhere, but we’ll ensure a worse collapse when it comes. It is time for us to grow up and start acting like Americans, again – start, that is, to act like people who are realistic about themselves and the world.

Now, what do you think?

From the Financial Times:

Vietnam has called on the US and other nations to help resolve the escalating territorial disputes in the resource-rich South China Sea, in a move likely to anger Beijing, which opposes what it sees as outside interference.

Tensions between China and Vietnam continued to rise over the weekend, ahead of live-fire drills planned by Vietnam’s navy on Monday on an islet around 20 miles from the coast of central Vietnam, which Hanoi described as “routine”…

At issue is various territorial and economic claims in the South China Sea. Ultimately, given our overwhelming naval superiority, we should be the arbiter of who gets to use what – and we should take care to ensure that the United States profits greatly off whatever resolution is finally made (but what of the claims of others? All are ultimately nonsense…the claims are to things in the middle of the ocean…sea power, alone, can ultimately determine who gets what…if you wish to challenge America, then start building a blue water navy and get back to us in 30 years). Additionally, while the United States should have as little to do with tyrannical regimes, the fact that the Vietnamese tyranny is squaring off against the Chinese tyranny means that the decision becomes one of “what is best for us?”. In this case, curbing China’s impertinent pretensions is fully in accordance with the best American policy…and thus backing Vietnam becomes the best thing to do.

So, back Vietnam – make it a major American foreign policy effort. Whenever China’s claims conflict with Vietnam’s, we should assert the Vietnamese claim. Get the Dragon to back down and secure the good will of Vietnam – thus ensuring that if China decides to try conclusions with us, a large number of Chinese troops will have to be tied down on the Vietnamese border. China’s military continually identifies the United States as the prime enemy and various factions in China are pushing for a confrontation…now is the time to start building an anti-Chinese coalition. This dispute between Vietnam and China offers us an excellent opportunity – we should seize it with both hands.

Salim Mansur opines:

Only the politically correct, and they are the majority in the contemporary West, remain surprised of how quickly the so-called “Arab spring” has turned into an “Arab frenzy” and is headed into an “Arab inferno.”…

…The problem is culture. Arab culture, despite tremendous changes that have occurred elsewhere in the world, remains resilient in adhering to traditional values of patriarchy and the tribal order of father (leader) knows what is best for his tribe or nation…

… For democracy to work, the prerequisite is a culture in which the people recognizes the “other” — irrespective of how the “other” is defined in terms of ethnicity or religion or gender — as equal, and their interests and aspirations as legitimate…

There is a lot of truth in that but I think it misses a large point: over the ages a series of lies have been deeply implanted it to Arab society. The misogyny, anti-Semitism, etc of the Arab/Moslem world didn’t just happen…it was fostered by people who stood to gain, personally, if the lies were believed. When lies comes to be accepted then it becomes routine for decisions to be made in accordance with those lies. Such decisions will invariably turn out badly because they are based upon falsehood. But until such lies are demonstrated as false to the society in question, they will never go away. The Arab world acts irrationally, as it were, because it is trying to make reality bend to a series of lies.

Leaving aside the theological lies (though these are what ultimately permits the easy implanting of other lies), the lies are many – that Islam has a glorious past built up by Islamic people (the truth is they took over a very wealthy and technologically advanced society and lived off it for a few centuries, until their misrule enervated the whole place and used up all the stored wealth); that Islam as practiced by Mohammed requires the seclusion of women (this is actually a pagan, Persian import in to Islam); that outside influences created the poverty and oppression of the Arab world (they did it entirely to themselves); etc, etc, etc. The biggest lie, of course, is that Israel is an alien entity set up by “Crusader” imperialists who want to destroy Islam…this lie works as an umbrella lie. It justifies war, oppression and terrorism all at once. With such a vile stew of untruth it becomes very difficult to set up a rational, free society…even those who are fairly decent and want to do the right thing routinely get hung up defending one or more of the lies because they feel they have to in order to gain popular support.

Unless and until truth starts to outweigh lies in the Arab/Moslem world, it will prove itself an intractable problem. Iraq has shown that movement can be made in the right direction…but as that case showed it took a large, sustained and very bloody military effort, it is hardly likely to commend itself…to anyone, but especially to the Arabs, themselves. Outsiders, unless they want to engage in an Iraq-style campaign, can only work around the edges – but we can have a large influence, none the less. Primarily if we will refuse to lend credence to even the slightest lie used to sustain the current system, secondly if we generously support (morally, monetarily and, at times, militarily) those people of the Arab world who are striving for something decent. It is a matter of just telling, for instance, the Palestinians that they’ll never “return” to Israel while at the same time finding someone, anyone among them who will be willing to make peace on these terms…and then backing them up to and including killing the current leadership which refuses to make peace.

To be sure, a long and very difficult process it will be to fix this. And no surprise – it took centuries for this to develope and it won’t be undone in a day. But we can’t even get started until we both recognize the lies which sustain the Arab/Moslem system and our duty to oppose those lies at every turn, no matter who gets offended. The truth does set you free – and once we’ve managed to allow truth to surface in the Arab/Moslem world, that is when democracy will start to flourish.

With an uber-liberal governor and an uber-liberal Legislature, the normal course of events would be to just hike taxes to cover the budget shortfall…but California requires a 2/3 vote in the Legislature to raise taxes…and the liberals are just shy of that sort of majority:

California’s Senate Republicans blocked Governor Jerry Brown’s plan to erase a $10 billion deficit as closed-door talks remain snagged on his demand for higher taxes as a deadline to pass a budget looms.

Republicans oppose the governor’s proposal because it would extend tax and fee increases set to end June 30. The so-called bridge tax would preserve the revenue measures pending the outcome of a voter referendum, planned for September or later, to keep them for five years. Republicans said the extensions would harm California’s economy. Brown said he doesn’t want to raise taxes without voter support.

“The Democrats have moved the goal post,” Senator Bob Huff, the Budget Committee’s Republican vice chairman, said in a telephone interview. “Now they are saying they need the taxes and then they will let the voters decide. But if the voters say ‘no,’ they still get stuck with another nine months of taxes.”…

Recent polling shows that Californians are not willing to raise taxes on themselves via ballot initiative…so, the Democrats will just have to find $10 billion more to cut. Naturally, they’ll say that this means junior will starve and granny will be kicked out on the street…but the reality is that California’s bloated, over-paid bureaucracy will just have to be slashed. The funny thing about this is that the Republicans are doing things which will allow Jerry Brown to be a successful governor…if he agrees to the GOP plan (which is not just for no new taxes, but also various pension and regulatory reform) then California will start to get back on track. Employment will increase, revenues will flow in to the government and everything will work out well…and Jerry Brown will be hailed as a genius for it.

Ah, well, we can’t have everything. It was GOP policies which rescued Clinton in the 90’s but the nation did benefit from it, even though we got stuck with Clinton for an extra four years. The good news here is that Brown is already 73 – perhaps he won’t run again in 2014…

For us conservatives, of course, the weakness is to try and wrap ourselves in the flag when we’ve screwed up…that doesn’t work for liberals quite so well. And, so, Weiner is now “ill” and needs “treatment – from the New York Post:

Weiner’s pulling out — for a little while, at least.

Serial-sexting Congressman Anthony Weiner headed off to rehab and will seek a leave of absence, as Nancy Pelosi and other Dems demanded he quit following his admission to sending private Twitter messages to a 17-year-old girl.

Weiner’s office said the randy rep left this morning for “professional treatment,” and will take a leave of absence from the House as he tries to become a better family man…

What a crock. And what a sad spectacle. The poor man is twisting in the wind and doesn’t seem to realize that he’s just making it worse.

I know that Weiner is not Catholic, so he cannot avail himself of Reconciliation (what you out there know of as “Confession”), but the basics of it can be done, even if not as a sacrament. What Weiner needs to do is confess not to “errors of judgment” or of “bringing pain to my wife” or “disappointing my constituents” but to being a sinner. It goes like this – “I confess to Almighty God and to you, my brothers and sisters, that I have sinned through my own fault, in my thoughts and in my words, in what I have done and in what I have failed to do”. That goes on a bit more but it gets pretty Catholic after that point…but, you get the picture.

We all screw up – I’ve got a whole list of reprehensible things I’ve done that I wish I had never done and pray God I never do again. But the longer you go without saying “I did wrong” without any excuse-making, the worse it gets. Confess the sin and beg forgiveness and even though it remains a badge of shame while you live in this world, it doesn’t pile up…it becomes a lesson, not a stepping stone to perdition. I understand Weiner’s point of view – he’s done wrong but doesn’t want to surrender all he’s built because of it. Too bad – and, in fact, it is better for him to surrender it. He can build it back – not exactly as he hoped, but perhaps better than he ever dreamed…if he gives up the defense of his sins and just gets rid of them.

I’ve been saying lately that I might have to start drawing pictures to get liberals to understand – fortunately, someone else did. From Investors Business Daily:

You see, liberals, it doesn’t work. This is pretty much “black and white” – as government spending has shot through the roof we should have seen big gains in employment. That is what, according to liberal, Keynesian economics is supposed to happen. It is what Obama and all the liberals and all the kept financial “experts” said would result from the spending. As you can see, it hasn’t happened…at best it kept employment from dropping even further, but even that comes at the cost of galloping inflation and a fast-approaching risk of debt-induced financial meltdown.

You cannot borrow and spend your way in to prosperity. You can only get prosperous by hard work, thrift and sobriety. Those very old fashioned notions were true before, they are true now and they will always remain true. If anyone says there is some other way to do it they are either fools or liars.

We can get out of this. We can rebuild America in to absolute economic supremacy in the world. We retain the un-tapped wealth and we still have the skills necessary to exploit the un-tapped wealth. All we have to do is get to work – but to do that we’ll need to balance the budget, cut taxes and get rid of all those liberal regulations which make it impossible to build wealth. Once we do that, we’ll get rolling again – if we never do it, we’ll not only never get better, but we’ll continually get worse.