Going to the ultimate source of our economic ills:

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, in what was billed as her first public-speaking engagement outside North America, blamed the world financial crisis on government excesses and called for a new round of deregulation and tax cuts for U.S. businesses.

“We got into this mess because of government interference in the first place,” the former Republican U.S. vice presidential candidate said Wednesday at a conference sponsored by investment firm CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets. “We’re not interested in government fixes, we’re interested in freedom,” she added…

…In the wide-ranging address, Ms. Palin touched on the rising U.S. budget deficit, the debate over a proposed health-care overhaul, the war in Afghanistan and China’s role in world affairs.

She described her political philosophy as a “common-sense conservatism,” and said the free-market policies of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher should be guides for how to get out of the current economic situation. “Liberalism holds that there is no human problem that government can’t fix if only the right people are put in charge,” she said.

Other news reports are claiming that some US bankers in attendance walked out – probably due to a guilty conscience. Government made Wall Street what it is today – the play ground of the well-connected and a slush fund for the government apparatchiks who regulate Wall Street: the calls by Obama and his liberals for more government regulation are really just calls to make the bond between Wall Street and DC tighter…so that there can be more special deals for the well-connected and more “oversight” which doesn’t see.

Freedom is the answer – and freedom requires that we break up Big Government and Big Corporation….but, also, that we unfetter the American people. Get rid of those regulations which make it next to impossible to start up a new factory, or a new farm, or a new mine – get rid of the liberal NIMBYism which has prohibited us from building nuclear power plants, drilling for oil, refining gasoline and exploiting our massive coal reserves. Unleash the American economy – and allow real wealth to be built up: that is what will cure our ills.

Have at it, boys and girls.

Someone get this to President Obama:

… once war is forces upon us, there is no other alternative than to apply every available means to bring it to a swift end. War’s very object is victory, not prolonged indecision.

In war there is no substitute for victory. – Douglas MacArthur

And the soldiers need to know what they are fighting for. Krauthammer via NRO’s The Corner:

Well, I think what’s really important here are two dates. The first is August 30. That’s when the McChrystal report was sent to Washington. That is three weeks ago. Obama has had a single meeting [on that report] since then.

He says he hasn’t reached a conclusion — I suppose because he is spending all his time preparing for Letterman and speeches to schoolchildren — to focus on a war in which our soldiers are in the field getting shot at and, as the president himself is saying, without a strategy.

Now, the other date is the 27th of March, when Obama gave a speech in the White House flanked by his Secretaries of Defense and State, in which he said, and I will read you this, because it is as if it never happened, “Today I’m announcing a comprehensive new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan.”

So we for six months have been living under the new Obama strategy, of which he says today we have none. And his next sentence is, again in March, “This marks the conclusion of a careful policy review” — not the beginning, the end of the policy review.

So it has been his policy, and now he tells us we don’t have a cart and we don’t have a horse…

…You either can act on that or not. It’s not a complicated idea. Obama is not stalling because he’s studying all this. Obama is stalling because a) he doesn’t know and b) he doesn’t want to go politically against his own party.

Our soldiers have an absolute right to know that the orders which send them in to battle – which may send them in to grave wounds or death – are animated by firm plan. As it stands, Obama – by his own admission – doesn’t know what he wants the troops to do, and isn’t even close to figuring out what he wants to accomplish. The soldiers have been fighting with incredible bravery and with some success even in this deteriorating situation…their Commander in Chief has just told them that he’s got other things on his plate more important than figuring out what we’re going to do in Afghanistan.

I realize that Obama probably needed to be coached in order to know who outranks whom among his military aides; that Obama probably couldn’t tell anyone what a CIWS is; that when a soldier says “flank”, he’s not talking about a type of steak; that, in short, President Obama has zero military experience and zero knowledge of military affairs and history. That’s ok – a President doesn’t have to be a Napoleon to be an effective Commander in Chief. It helps to have a fund of knowledge in order to better correct and challenge the generals, but its not a requirement – especially when you have a first class Secretary of Defense like Gates. But Obama is the only man who can make a decision and ignorance of military affairs does not excuse him from the requirement to both make decisions, and make them swiftly when lives are at stake.

If we are to ask an American soldier to spill the blood of an enemy and risk his own life in so doing, then we must ensure that he’s got a clear mission with a decided goal. With President Obama, our soldiers have neither. My biggest fear is that Obama is simply afraid to make a decision – that he’s afraid to either risk lives or risk his political prospects, and thus remains caught in a web of indecision. But he must be made to move – pressure must be brought on Obama to force him to choose. One way or the other – in or out; fight or withdraw…no more hesitation and waffling. Choose.

The story:

Facing the increasing likelihood of losses in the 2010 midterm congressional and gubernatorial elections, President Obama and his fellow Democrats are returning to a tried-and-true campaign strategy — run against former President George W. Bush.

In speech after speech since taking office, Mr. Obama has pointed back to the problems he inherited from the Bush administration when he took office. And earlier this month, Democratic National Committee Chairman Tim Kaine catalogued a slew of perceived Bush failures to the delight of supporters.

Already, Democratic gubernatorial candidates in Virginia and New Jersey are testing the strategy — so far, however, unsuccessfully.

“It will be a failed strategy,” said Karl Rove, former senior political adviser to Mr. Bush. “They have been doing that very intentionally in New Jersey and Virginia thus far, and both their candidates are behind.”

I guess if all you ever had was “I’m not Bush”, then you keep going with it…

What is amazing here is just how much Democrats hate President Bush – and think that the American people, on the whole, hate him, too. President Bush left office one of the most unpopular Presidents in American history…but the left is wrong to think that Joe Average out there hates President Bush so much that they’ll vote for a Democrat over a Republican.

Peace, Democrats – you don’t have to hate this much.

I always said Cash-For-Clunkers was a bad idea.

Guess what? I was right!

It is a question being asked – and talked of very intelligently by Peter Wehner:

…he seems to be more of a populist and libertarian than a conservative, more of a Perotista than a Reaganite. His interest in conspiracy theories is disquieting, as is his admiration for Ron Paul and his charges of American “imperialism.” (He is now talking about pulling troops out of Afghanistan, South Korea, Germany, and elsewhere.) Some of Beck’s statements—for example, that President Obama has a “deep-seated hatred for white people”–are quite unfair and not good for the country. His argument that there is very little difference between the two parties is silly, and his contempt for parties in general is anti-Burkean (Burke himself was a great champion of political parties). And then there is his sometimes bizarre behavior, from tearing up to screaming at his callers. Beck seems to be a roiling mix of fear, resentment, and anger—the antithesis of Ronald Reagan.

I understand that a political movement is a mansion with many rooms; the people who occupy them are involved in intellectual and policy work, in politics, and in polemics. Different people take on different roles. And certainly some of the things Beck has done on his program are fine and appropriate. But the role Glenn Beck is playing is harmful in its totality. My hunch is that he is a comet blazing across the media sky right now—and will soon flame out. Whether he does or not, he isn’t the face or disposition that should represent modern-day conservatism. At a time when we should aim for intellectual depth, for tough-minded and reasoned arguments, for good cheer and calm purpose, rather than erratic behavior, he is not the kind of figure conservatives should embrace or cheer on.

Which is an arguable position – but a position I think wrong. Here’s why:

The Republican Party is not a majority party in the United States. Neither is the Democrat Party. Both parties are a minority dependent upon non-party voters to craft a governing majority. There is a theory that the GOP must moderate its tone in order to capture the votes of non-affiliated voters. These are voters who are not keen on politics, don’t pay daily attention to what is happening in politics, and are easily turned off by people coming across as too extreme. There is much to be said for this argument – but not right now.

We are in an era of political ferment; in my view, a nearly revolutionary ferment. Heck, so dissatisfied are people, on the whole, that even a large number of leftists are not liking the way Obama is governing – of course, they see it as him not being leftist enough, but the fact remains that only a very small minority are pleased with things as they are. Outside of the precincts of the left, the anger is palpable (the left calls it “hate”, but that is because the average leftist has been living in a bubble of lies for so long he can’t tell truth when it falls on him) – people are furious. Fed up. Mad as heck and not going to take it anymore.

Beck has either keyed in to it, or it has keyed in to him – regardless, he’s the representative of the fury of the people. This is not to say that Beck commands a political movement – no one commands this movement, which showed up in droves on September 12th in Washington, DC – but that he is speaking to them and for them much better than almost anyone else out there. Even such grand masters of conservative polemics like Rush and Hannity are not quite on the same plane, with the most disgruntled, as Beck is.

To speak of Beck as good or bad for conservatism is to miss entirely what is happening out there – Beck is neither good nor bad: he is what he is, and the people he speaks for and to are what they are…and we conservative Republicans had better figure out a way to court them or we’ll miss the opportunity of a lifetime to really reform our nation. The people, epitomized by Beck, are sick of the whole, rotten mess we call American government…make no mistake about it: they have no love for the GOP or the Democrat party. They share a greater affinity with the GOP than they do with the Democrats, but they aren’t an adjunct of either party, and they are open to the pleas of anyone who actually gets out there and speaks to their concerns and their demands. While a liberal Democrat would have a hard sell with this TEA Party movement, such a person would have far more luck than a conservative GOPer who shied away from the movement out of fear of being “extreme”.

These are revolutionary times – and as G. K. Chesterton once observed, if you wish to be conservative, you have to continually have revolutions. To paraphrase – if you wish to preserve a fence post, you have to keep painting it, or you’ll shortly have a rotted stump. If we wish to conserve the America we love, its going to take a revolution to do it – and you can’t have a revolution without revolutionaries. The people out there in the streets are the revolution – Beck is one of their prime spokesmen…he and they won’t always be 100% right and are bound to make mistakes as they go along. But they are the future – and it is time for we Republicans to grasp that future, and ask for their support, and pledge ourselves to a course of action which will save the America we all love.

What we’re fighting for:

Our contest is not only whether we ourselves shall be free, but whether there shall be left to mankind an asylum on earth for civil and religious liberty. – Samuel Adams

Mish’s talks it up in Strenuously Overbought, But…?

As all must know by now, I’m sure we’re in a bad way – we’re broke, massively in debt and engaged in a game of financial roulette, propelled by the Fed and other central banks just flooding the world with fiat money. This all might have worked (to an extent) if anyone was willing to go in to debt and buy stuff…but the American consumer isn’t interested. Its now a matter of saving money, first, and then spending, with care. The bonanza is over – no more massive increases in GDP courtesy of massive indebtedness. We can get rich, again – but only if we start working really hard and saving our pennies for a rainy day.

Its really all for the best, in the long run – heck, its already starting to make me a better person. Both more willing to donate to the less fortunate, and more careful in my spending. I hope it continues until I’m tithing on the one hand and have a fat savings account, on the other. Dollars to donuts most people are starting to get like this, at least to some degree. We’ll have a bit less debt-driven flash to our lives, but a lot more real wealth, where it really counts.

Michael Ledeen seems quite confident:

…a world-changing event: the death of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Khamenei and Ahmadinejad, and the rest of the evil empire in Tehran, are all dead men walking. We don’t know the schedule for the funeral yet, but Iranians know it’s on the agenda. One will get you ten at my betting window that, aside from a very thin veneer of top officials (for whom there is no hope, for they will fulfill the demand of the nightly rooftop chants), anyone who is anyone in Iran today is trying to make a deal with Mousavi and Karroubi. They are all whispering that their hearts are green, and always were green.

Khamenei & Co. certainly know this, as they know they are being betrayed by some very high-ranking people. And the exodus is under way; by the end of the week we will see some important representatives of the Islamic Republic resign their posts, for they do not wish to be associated with it any longer.

Nothing would delight me more – but I’m not as confident as Ledeen…with Obama making cooing noises to the Iranian thugs and Russia willing to back them up and the US MSM almost entirely ignoring the revolutionary ferment, it could be that the Iranian thugs might find enough people willing to go on a killing spree against the Iranian people. From what Ledeen is saying – and I don’t doubt it – a great deal of Iran’s security forces have either melted away or joined the revolution…but it only takes a few thousand determined killers to knock a revolution off its feet, unless it has armed power of its own.

And so – the question might come down to, what will the Iranian military do? If they stay out of it, then the Iranian government might survive…if they join the revolution, then the jig is up for the mullahs.