Geesh, Canucks, how did you get in debt like that?

From $10 billion to $55 billion in credit card debt just since 1999? And we Americans thought we were being irresponsible. You got us beat.

Oh, there is something which comes of credit bubbles – just thought I’d warn you.

This is the natural result of any American effort to make nice with Israel’s enemies:

The discord between the United States and Israel over Jewish building in … Jerusalem deepened Tuesday with Israeli officials saying they would reject demands by Washington and expressing anger over the public upbraiding of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by the Obama administration.

On a day of scattered disturbances by [Israeli Moslems] in … Jerusalem, news emerged that Israel was moving ahead with a second building project there. A notice on the Web site of the Israel Lands Authority invited bids on construction of 309 new homes in the Jewish suburb of Neve Yaakov, in northeast Jerusalem. (emphasis added)

Naturally the goons come out to start trouble – the President of the United States is getting ready to force Israel to surrender yet more territory for “peace”. They know the drill – their part is to throw rocks and get a couple kids killed so that western liberals can condemn Israel and put even more pressure on for surrender.

For the last time: YOU CAN’T MAKE PEACE WITH EVIL. The Palestinian program, as expressed by the so-called leaders of the Palestinians is wicked. It is evil. It is wrong. It is inhuman. What is it? The destruction of the Jewish state of Israel. That has been the program since the PLO was set up in the West Bank before Israel occupied it in 1967. Got that? The PLO – Palestine Liberation Organization – wasn’t founded to “liberate” the West Bank, but to “liberate” Tel Aviv.

Until the Palestinians voluntarily give up this hateful dream of theirs, no peace is possible. At best, we can get an armed truce, but no peace. Given this, the only proper course of action is rigid defense of Israel, not taking cheap shots as Israelis building homes in neighborhoods already predominantly Jewish.

A very stupid policy we’re pursuing, and it will be paid for in blood.

If you thought Obama was all for transparency, you know by now that Obama and transparency don’t mix. If you are still holding out the belief that Obama has ushered in a new era of unprecendented transparency, a new AP analysis should put that to rest.

Federal agencies haven’t lived up to President Barack Obama’s promise of a more open government, increasing their use of legal exemptions to keep records secret during his first year in office.

An Associated Press review of Freedom of Information Act reports filed by 17 major agencies found that the use of nearly every one of the law’s nine exemptions to withhold information from the public rose in fiscal year 2009, which ended last October.

Among the most frequently used exemptions: one that lets the government hide records that detail its internal decision-making. Obama specifically directed agencies to stop using that exemption so frequently, but that directive appears to have been widely ignored.

Major agencies cited that exemption at least 70,779 times during the 2009 budget year, up from 47,395 times during President George W. Bush’s final full budget year, according to annual FOIA reports filed by federal agencies. Obama was president for nine months in the 2009 period.

Departments used the exemption more even though Obama’s Justice Department told agencies to that disclosing such records was “fully consistent with the purpose of the FOIA,” a law intended to keep government accountable to the public.

It seems to me, and anyone else paying attention, that Obama has not lived up to his end of the bargain. Be it about transparency,  or bipartisanship.  He campaigned on lies. Plain and simple. And for someone who attacked anything and everything about George W. Bush, Obama is only doing a good job making people realize how much better things were when we had a real leader in the White House.

HAT TIP: Riehl World View.

As I write this (Monday evening) it appears that the Democrats are about 10 votes shy of what they need to ram ObamaCare through the House. There are continuing polls showing the passage of this dog is a political death warrant – there is, also, continuing happy talk from Obama and the DNC to the effect of, “don’t worry, we have polls which show people like certain things which may or may not be in the bill, so vote for it!”.

In the backrooms, we can only imagine what is going on – what sorts of lies and bribes and threats are being made against those who are wavering. In the end, I expect all this to work – a lot of the “blue dog” Democrats were elected in 2006 and 2008 precisely because they could be convinced to do what they were told. If a man or woman can be convinced to run as a “moderate Democrat” without understanding they are but mere tools to secure power for ultra-liberal Democrats, then we can’t rely upon them to remain clear eyed under pressure. Some will, most won’t; and the bill passes.

Officially the word is that once this is passed, people will swing behind it – and that, plus a supposedly improving economy, will save the day for Democrats in November. And, if any one does lose, there are always Administration sinecures available. Its all one, big happy family of Democrats in this scenario – which, for all we know, Obama and Pelosi actually believe. It flies in the face of easily ascertainable facts but, then again, all liberalism does – and yet it continues.

What this all boils down to is this: Democrats are pressing this because they believe it will work. Not just long term, but short term, as well. Convinced by their own, absurd talking points that they lost in 1994 because they failed to pass HillaryCare, Democrats are bound and determined not to repeat that “mistake”. They believe it will hold their losses to a minimum in November and, of course, secure generations of power for their side as the “benefits” of health care reform spread among the people. Never underestimate the ability of a ruling class to delude itself.

Now, if it all comes out that way – if Democrats lose no more than, say, 20 House and 3 Senate seats in November, then Obama and Co will be vindicated – and still holding majorities with which they’ll be able to endlessly expand on the 2010 reform – as well as pass other, equally controversial programs (if Democrats survive in 2010, it will be an unanswerable argument against any Democrat with cold feet regarding increasing socialism in the United States). But, what if it doesn’t?

Could it be that the very concept of government health care is opposed by the American people? Could it be that the people, awakened by the events of September 2008 and beyond now realize – once and for all – that government is the problem, not the solution? Could it be that we really are on the cusp of revolutionary change?

I’m convinced we are – and as Democrats seem bound and determined to press on, we might get a genuinely decisive election this fall. An election which will decide the course of our nation for the next 50 years. If the polls are correct and the TEA Party rallies are for real, then Democrats will be crushed in November – if Obama, Pelosi and DNC talking points are correct, then Democrats will have no more than typical first-mid-term losses.

Time will tell.

Balancing our budget: a necessity, and a rather easy thing to do. Think “2004”.

China’s corrupt oligarch’s seem to be itching for a show down with the US. I like this article as its the first one I’ve seen which understands that the analogy between US/China relations 2010 is the relations between Germany/UK in 1910. It’d be a terrible thing, if China presses the issue – they’d lose, and lose rather badly, but things like this can end up as WWIII.

Planned Parenthood, Girl Scouts – doing things which should get one arrested, but in liberal-land get one a government grant.

Post-racial Obama backs racial preferences. What? You’re surprised?

Interview with Karl Rove. You know, liberals, he’s smarter than Obama, Hillary and Pelosi put together.

American heroes. Lots and lots of them.

America hates patronizing dimwits who would spend their money and push them around, thus making liberalism very unpopular.

It seems that nothing the GOP can ever do will pry away the Jewish vote from the Democrat party. Fortunately, it looks like the Obama and his Democrats might give us a hand – Roger L. Simon notes:

For all of my looooong life, the Jews have been so deep in the pocket of the Democratic Party it would make Chris Matthews blush. Maybe… just maybe… (I know old habits die hard)…. thanks to Barack Obama, that is about to end. The well-put lede from this morning’s WSJ opinion piece details the situation:

In recent weeks, the Obama Administration has endorsed “healthy relations” between Iran and Syria, mildly rebuked Syrian President Bashar Assad for accusing the U.S. of “colonialism,” and publicly apologized to Moammar Gadhafi for treating him with less than appropriate deference after the Libyan called for “a jihad” against Switzerland.

When it comes to Israel, however, the Administration has no trouble rising to a high pitch of public indignation. On a visit to Israel last week, Vice President Joe Biden condemned an announcement by a mid-level Israeli official that the government had approved a planning stage—the fourth out of seven required—for the construction of 1,600 housing units in north Jerusalem. Assuming final approval, no ground will be broken on the project for at least three years.

The Obama administration has taken the admonition to “Keep your friends close but your enemies closer” to a new level. They want to make love with their enemies while taking their friends to the woodshed and beating the living daylights out of them….

So, will this change attitudes? It should. In plain terms, the Moslem Palestinians are showing themselves either incapable or unwilling to have a real agreement with Israel – and as they are also being repressive of the Christian Palestinian minority it is, perhaps, time to start calling for “three State” solution so that Christians won’t have their places of worship desecrated by Moslems. The bottom line is that there is no deal Israel can make which would effectively end the war – it doesn’t matter what Israel does, because the enemy won’t be satisfied.

Correct policy, then, requires that steps be taken to provide for the security of Israel – and these steps should be taken without reference to the alleged feelings of Moslem Palestinians. If at some future time there arises the ability to work out mutually acceptable deals, then that’ll be fine – but as it stands right now, Moslems are still honoring people who murdered innocent Israelis…this is not a fertile ground for peace.

If a person cares about Israel – about the safety of the Jewish people, that is – then no support can be given to the Obama Administration. Its just insane what they are doing. In the end, what Obama is doing is raising the hopes among the Islamists that we’ll force Israel to surrender, again – that this is, now, just one more step in the process of driving the Israelis in to the sea.

It becomes, again, a time for choosing – choose Obama and the existential threat to Israel; or choose to reject Obama, and continue support for our one, true ally in the Middle East. It will be interesting to see how this all comes out.

They tend to get rather insane about it:

…Ms. Maddow simply does not like the fact that Bart Stupak is a defender of the fundamental human Right to Life. She is mad that he will not back down from his position rooted in the objective truth, revealed by the Natural Law and confirmed by medical science that the child in the womb is one of us. She is a supporter of what is being called the “Right to Choose”, which simply means the protection with the Police Power of the State of those who engage in the killing of children in the womb…

…Rachel Maddow called Stupak´s principled defense of the Right to life “a stunt.” In one of her more emotional rants in this horrid report – rather than address the issues which Congressman Stupak and so many others are concerned about – she simply said “he´s lying.” She ended by calling his effort a “quixotic, nonsense crusade” and in a final childish insult asserted “Bart Stupak gets to go on TV, that´s why he´s doing it.”

Rachel Maddow is not alone in her venomous hatred of Congressman Stupak. She is joined by the National Organization for Women who have accused him of being “Un- American” and of “imposing” his Catholic faith on the Nation…

Nothing new, of course. To the Church of Liberalism, abortion is a sacrament and the goal of all good liberals is to get it federally funded and on demand. Why? I wish I really knew. For crying out loud, I can’t even really understand someone thinking abortion is ok – but to think its a moral good and thus deserves taxpayer support is so entirely outside of normal human experience that I can’t grasp it. I mean, is Maddow planning on having an abortion and doesn’t have the money to cover it?

There are so many other issues liberals can fight for, but all of them – sooner or later – get subordinated to abortion. Why was Ted Kennedy able to get away with his disgraceful treatment of women? He backed abortion rights. Why was Bill Clinton given a pass on his serial adultery? He kept vetoing the partial-birth abortion ban. On and on it goes – no matter what else happens, liberals are determined above all else on expanding abortion…and getting the taxpayer to eventually pay for it.

Ah, well: I guess there’s nothing we can do about them, as they are. We’ll just have to beat them at the polls so badly that we can start to roll back abortion, step by step. Once the beastly practice is gone, these fanatics will slip away – just as the defenders of slavery and segregation eventually gave up talking about them, once they were out of our political system. In the end, by ending abortion, we’ll be doing the pro-abortion people a favor – we’ll relieve them of having to defend an inhuman practice.

This article from the Wall Street Journal details some of the insane, dangerous actions taken by US attorneys who were claiming to represent enemy combatants at Gitmo:

On the evening of Jan. 26, 2006, military guards at Guantanamo Bay made an alarming discovery during a routine cell check. Lying on the bed of a Saudi detainee was an 18-page color brochure. The cover consisted of the now famous photograph of newly-arrived detainees dressed in orange jumpsuits—masked, bound and kneeling on the ground at Camp X-Ray—just four months after 9/11. Written entirely in Arabic, it also included pictures of what appeared to be detainee operations in Iraq. Major General Jay W. Hood, then the commander of Joint Task Force-Guantanamo, concurred with the guards that this represented a serious breach of security.

Maj. Gen. Hood asked his Islamic cultural adviser to translate. The cover read: “Cruel. Inhuman. Degrades Us All: Stop Torture and Ill-Treatment in the ‘War on Terror.'” It was published by Amnesty International in the United Kingdom and portrayed America and its allies as waging a campaign of torture against Muslims around the globe.

“One thread that runs through many of the testimonies from prisons in Afghanistan and Iraq, and from Guantanamo,” the brochure read, “is that of anti-Arab, anti-Islamic, and other racist abuse.”…

…Maj. Gen. Hood’s immediate concern about the magazine’s “propaganda and misinformation” was the strong potential that it would incite detainees to act out against U.S. personnel in his facility. The Islamic cultural adviser agreed, telling Maj. Gen. Hood that “the tone of the magazine was highly inflammatory” and “would cause a negative reaction, especially amongst the more hard-core terrorist factions within the camp.”

This Amnesty International slander piece was sent to Gitmo by lawyers working for Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, a firm which was claiming to represent Gitmo detainees. Here’s the nutshell of it: these attorneys sent a document in to Gitmo which could incite acts of violence which would endanger both prisoners and guards as well as provide a blueprint for how to claim abuse where none existed. In order to make some sort of stupid, anti-American point, these lawyers endangered lives.

And now that some of these attorneys are working for the Obama Administration, there are claims that such actions are in the finest traditions of American legal practice! Dimwits who play with human blood are being congratulated for their “courage” in defending “unpopular” clients…as if their clients were actually unpopular in the social circles the attorneys lived and worked in.

This is just insane. The men in Gitmo are dedicated killers – merciless men who will kill anyone, anywhere, if they think it advances their sick cause, These aren’t people who need lawyers – they need psychiatrists. This is akin to trying to defend Charles Manson – except, worse, because Manson doesn’t have anyone on the outside to commit hideous acts in his name.

Its time we started looking at the world as it is, not through the eyes of ivory-tower, ignorant liberals. There are some people who have put themselves outside the protections of the law – they are called terrorists. When we capture them, they are to count their lucky stars if we don’t kill them – they are not to get attorneys to try and twist American law in to knots for the benefits of the enemies of all that is decent in the world.

Liberals brought us rampant drug use and global warming – now these two hallmarks of liberal progress are on a collision course:

Cocaine users were last night accused of helping to make global warming worse.

MPs on the home affairs select committee said the drug was devastating Colombian rainforests because trees are knocked down to grow coca plants.

Group chairman Keith Vaz said: “We were horrified to learn for every few lines of cocaine snorted in a London club, four square metres of rainforest is destroyed.”

Who knew that personal irresponsibility could cause problems? Some day liberals might even figure that extra-marital sex can be a tricky business, too. A whole bunch of liberalism gets called in to question here.

Unless, of course, liberals want to drop the whole global warming thing?

Ed Morrisey links to a new Ramirez cartoon sure to cause a lot of liberal heart ache.

But its just the truth.