Seems like this is a regular feature among American foreign policy elites – the latest entrant, Jim Jones, as reported at Politico:

Nearly 64 years after Harry Truman laid out the case for reconstructing Europe’s economies, in a speech that became known as the Marshall Plan, few diplomatic, economic and foreign policy accomplishments have garnered such residual feelings of goodwill and accomplishment in the United States.

Now, days ahead of President Obama’s major address on the Middle East, former national security adviser Jim Jones, a well-respected voice in foreign policy circles, is suggesting that his vision should include a new Marshall Plan for emerging democracies.

“From my perspective, it may be time to consider a bold idea which would demonstrate our welcome to the new Egypt by considering a type of Marshall Plan for emerging democratic states like Egypt and which young Egyptians are trying to form,” Jones said at the National Press Club on Monday…

This just ignores reality – a common failing among those who wish to expend taxpayer funds in grandiose plans for reform. The Marshall Plan wasn’t a model – it was a one-off thing which cannot be repeated. The reason for this is quite simple: in post-World War Two Europe, the buildings had been blown to pieces but the economic and social skills of the people remained intact.

You see, while we had blasted the German economy in to tiny, little pieces, the German worker was still there – and among the most highly skilled in the world. Furthermore, and almost never noted, is the fact that the Germans retained a great deal of their peace-time productive capacity. The machine tools they had used to make consumer goods pre-war weren’t destroyed in the war – they were carefully stored. Adding a bit of money just allowed the tools to be placed in factories, married to excellent workers and, presto!, economic “miracle”. Additionally, even though the Germans had just emerged from a 12 year Nazi nightmare, they retained the capacity to obey reasonable laws and to conduct business without rampant corruption in business and politics. All of this – the productive potential, the marketable skills, the respect for law – is absent not just in Egypt, but throughout almost the entirety of the Third World. Pouring money in to such places will just be to pour it down a black hole – they and we will get nothing from it.

The problems of the Third World (which still very much includes China; don’t buy idiot stories of their becoming globally dominant) are not intractable, but they are not amenable to rapid solution. It will be a century before they’ll obtain what Thomas Sowell calls the “human capital” to make a free market, democratic society fully functional – and that is only if they start now and work at it. And, initially, we can fully expect them to screw it up time and time again. Our job is to merely encourage those who want to get on the right path and advise those who want to go the wrong way that crossing us will eventually just give the local undertakers a bit of work.

This doesn’t mean money cannot be spent, but it should not be spent with a mind towards ushering in a golden age. If we can just moderate the fanaticism a bit; if we can just give a little leg up to reasonable people; if we can alleviate the most grinding of poverty, we’ll have done all we reasonably can. It is time for people to wake up and realize that the very concept of a government coming in and making a people well is a myth – a falsehood based upon the ultimate liberal falsehood that Man can be made perfect by the actions of men.

Yeah, that’s it – and when we’re done with that, we beat puppies to death with tire irons.

This is what we’ll contend with all through 2010 – the most nauseating lies you can imagine. Facts don’t matter – Democrats are desperate to hold on to power and if they can win by scaring people with the Big Lie, they’ll do it.

Get ready for it, and get ready to fight back.

Seems that Obama only likes lap dogs in the media – from Boston Herald:

The White House Press Office has refused to give the Boston Herald full access to President Obama’s Boston fund-raiser today, in e-mails objecting to the newspaper’s front page placement of a Mitt Romney op-ed, saying pool reporters are chosen based on whether they cover the news “fairly.”

“I tend to consider the degree to which papers have demonstrated to covering the White House regularly and fairly in determining local pool reporters,” White House spokesman Matt Lehrich wrote in response to a Herald request for full access to the presidential visit…

The rule is that if The One is coming to town, only he can have front-page treatment…

So, liberals, what say you about this chicken attitude on the part of Obama?

From Katie Pavlich at Town Hall:

An extensive new study conducted by Timothy Conley from the University of Western Ontario, Canada Economics Department and Bill Dupor of Ohio State University Economics Department, shows the trillion dollar boondoggle known as the stimulus bill, which President Obama has credited over and over again for “saving and/or creating” thousands of jobs, actually killed 1 million private sector jobs.

This paper uses variation across states to estimate the number of jobs created/saved as a result of the spending component of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). The key sources of identification are ARRA highway funding and the intensity of state sales tax usage.

We estimate the Act created/saved 450 thousand government-sector jobs and destroyed/forestalled one million private sector jobs…

The story goes on to note how State and local governments used the stimulus money to prevent layoffs of government employees – using it, that is, to plug gaps in State and local budgets caused by declining tax revenues. The problem, of course, is that government jobs don’t create wealth – they don’t, that is, create the basis for self-funding, as a private sector job does. Pretty much the whole stimulus program was worthless as far as economic growth goes…and will probably be rated as destructive because it piled on more debt in an already bankrupt nation.

Additionally, by taking money out of the private economy and funnel in it through the government rat-hole, the stimulus prevented the creation of private sector jobs. There really is only so much money to go around and every cent in government hands is a cent not in private hands. If people are putting their money in to government bonds being sold to repave an existing highway (which is all we in Nevada ever saw from the stimulus), then it isn’t being invested in a man who wants to start or expand a business. Unionized government employees continued to draw their paycheck (and pay union dues to be used for Democrat campaigns), but that doesn’t have anywhere near the economic power of someone starting a new business. You pave a road, you get a paved road – you start a business, and you might create dozens of jobs which never existed before.

Ronald Reagan said that government isn’t the solution, it is the problem – and here’s your proof.

From My Fox Boston:

A new bill on Beacon Hill would ban parents from engaging in sexual relationships within the home until their divorces are final.

Supporters say the bill is meant to prevent domestic violence and shield children while the divorce is underway.

Critics say it takes away parents rights…

Yeah, I’ll say – now just imagine if this were being proposed in Texas? Of course, no one – or, at least, no conservative – would ever propose such a thing. This is because, contrary to liberal opinion, conservatives don’t particularly care what a person does in his or her bedroom. But I guess our liberals just couldn’t stand it – here was this one area still without a government regulation on it…and, off they go. Just wait until they figure out a way to tax it!

You can only beat your head against the liberal brick wall for so long – from The Hill:

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) announced Tuesday that he would pull out of the talks with two other Republican and three Democratic colleagues.

Coburn said the talks have collapsed over the tough issue of entitlement reform.

“We can’t bridge the gulf of where we need to go on mandatory spending,” Corburn said Tuesday afternoon. “I don’t see that there’s going to be any fruition in continuing them at this time.”…

Good thing, too – these groupings of Democrats and Republicans almost invariably produce a liberal outcome. Better to just state our case while they state theirs, and let the people decide. The people are on our side, anyways, so we should enjoy this fight.

The bottom line for the budget is that it must be cut – and to cut the budget without entitlement reform is pointless. Entitlements are what is bankrupting our nation; we need to find a way to ensure benefits at a lower long-term cost. If we don’t, then we’re fiscally doomed.

I’ll never, ever buy another GM product, again (and I’ve got two of them in the driveway right now) – from PJ Tatler:

…In late 2010, General Motors agreed to sponsor a propaganda film celebrating the 90th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The CCP made film titled (translated to English) “The Birth of a Party” or “The Great Achievement of Founding the Party” is set to premiere all over the Communist nation on June 15 reported China AutoWeb last September. The auto website adds:

“According to an announcement posted on Shanghai GM’s official web site yesterday, whose title reads “joining hands with China Film Group, Cadillac whole-heartedly supports the making of the Birth of a Party…”

Tens of millions of people have been murdered by China’s communist regime. To this very day the Chinese government is horribly repressive – and corrupt, in to the bargain. Doing business in China, at all, is wrong…celebrating the spawning of the Chinese Communist Party is simply depraved.

Cut GM off – demand every cent of taxpayer money back right this instant – and I hope it forces GM in to immediate bankruptcy and liquidation. GM has dishonored itself and insulted not just the United States of America, but every American who has ever fought for freedom.

Just absolutely disgusting.

From Gallup:

Underemployment, a measure that combines the percentage of unemployed with the percentage working part time but wanting full-time work, was at 19.1% in mid-May — down from 19.3% at the end of April. Underemployment remains as high as it was in mid-May 2010.

While Gallup’s not seasonally adjusted U.S. unemployment rate suggests little improvement (0.2 percentage points) compared with the same time in 2010, the government’s unadjusted results show a year-over-year decline of 0.8 points.

Interestingly, Gallup’s monthly measures tracked closely to those the government reported in early 2010 but the two trends have diverged since January 2011…

Which, to me, is another indicator that someone is putting a rosy glow on the government numbers. Today’s reports that housing starts and capacity utilization “unexpectedly” declined (likely, in my view, due to rising energy costs coupled with supply train problems coming out of Japan) demonstrates that things are not going at all well with the economy. We’re also coming to the end of “QE2” – the Fed’s money-printing program which has allowed stocks and commodities to rise so high. Supposedly, QE2 ends in June…and, then what?

Some say we’ll slip right back in to recession, others say the Fed will figure out a different way to print money…anything to keep the asset bubble from bursting. That is what I think will happen – no one at the Fed (or in the Obama Administration), wants a resumption of the recession at this point (it’ll be ok if it starts in November, 2012, or even October as long as it isn’t noticeable in the election polling component of Obamunism! GDP estimates). The bad news is that you can only keep an asset bubble pumped up for so long – eventually, things must be priced to their real value (take a look at your home value for evidence of this). We can delay the crash, we can’t stop it.

Get out of debt and save as much money as you can – and hold on to your hat.

HAT TIP: Mish’s

So, Stephen Hawking says that heaven is a fairy tale for ‘fraidy-cats and there is no need for God to have started the grand pageant we call the Universe. This has caused some griping comment and that is a bit astounding – while this argument has not been settled in the sense of everyone coming to an agreement, it is an argument which we’ve pretty much gone over from start to finish.

To me, the denial of a belief in God – either as a mere First Cause or as a personal God who takes a hand in His creation – is an arrogant presumption of impossible knowledge. You can’t know that God doesn’t exist – you can’t know that something isn’t there unless you can go where it is and ascertain its non-existence. As God is not “in” our Universe in the sense of being bound by it there is no place to look to make the determination of non-existence…you’d have to go outside the Universe, you see?

Smart people like Hawking – and he is clearly a brilliant man – routinely fall in to this error. It is a failure to think things all the way through – a failure not of intellect, but of imagination. As the Universe does exist, it must have come in to existence at some point – whatever power caused this start to existence is God; and anything capable of setting the Universe in motion is fully capable of taking a personal interest in it, and ordering its life towards a desired goal. This is just common sense – and it takes years of narrow-minded concentration to ignore such a thing. Hawking seems to have finally achieved this (earlier works by Hawking left a place for God; I guess that is out the window, now).

The really sad part about this is that Hawking seems to be wanting to show courage – suffering greatly from disease and probably not too long for this world, there is a desire to appear indifferent to it all. Hawking’s mistake lies in fact that he wants a full and complete explanation – no mystery out there unresolved. And so his vision has narrowed – “if I must die, then so bet it: but that will be the end of it all, because there is nothing but this universe, which started itself, and there will be nothing of me once my heart stops beating”. This has the quality of being a complete view, but it leaves out the most important thing – and the one thing which Hawking cannot know: if there really is nothing but the universe we can see and measure?

If Hawking – and those like him – could just step outside of themselves for a moment and acknowledge that there is one Fact they’ll never get to the bottom of, they’d be able to understand everything else. Not for nothing does Christianity urge humility upon us. Bend the knee to that one thing, and the rest becomes remarkably understandable…even if all the particular details are not fully known. I hope for the day when Hawking is walking, again…in full command not just of a revived body of this world, but in the glorified body of the life of the world to come. Freed finally from all perils and able to fully use the reason God gave him…what an astounding thing that will be. If he’s there…if he’s there; but he has to ask to go…and he can’t ask until he broadens his mind to include his own inadequacy.

From the DC Caller:

Of the 204 new Obamacare waivers President Barack Obama’s administration approved in April, 38 are for fancy eateries, hip nightclubs and decadent hotels in House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s Northern California district.

That’s in addition to the 27 new waivers for health care or drug companies and the 31 new union waivers Obama’s Department of Health and Human Services approved.

Pelosi’s district secured almost 20 percent of the latest issuance of waivers nationwide…

For you liberals out there, is this doesn’t finally convince you that (a) Nancy Pelosi is hopelessly corrupt and (b) that ObamaCare is nothing more than a vehicle for increased Ruling Class power and wealth, then nothing will. This is all it was ever about – working out new ways to add special privileges and penalties to the system so that people like Nancy Pelosi can enhance their power and wealth by controlling who gets what.

Wake up, already…go ahead and be liberal. Demand massive social spending – do all the things that liberals do…but for goodness sake realize that your leaders, from Obama on down, are corrupt.