From Politico:

…The Ohio Republican used a speech to the Economic Club of New York to unveil a staunchly conservative plan to offset a debt ceiling hike with spending cuts of a greater amount, putting House Republicans on a collision course with Democrats who want much more modest spending restrictions attached to the vote.

He also told a packed, well-dressed ballroom at the Hilton New York that the debt limit has no “hard date” — a sign he does not take seriously the Democrats’ dire warnings of default in a few months…

And he’s right about that. Democrats are trying to stampede a debt ceiling increase in the $2 trillion-range – enough, most likely, to ensure that no further increase in needed before January, 2013 (convenient, huh?). In service of this, Democrats are asserting that if we don’t jack it up right away, no questions asked (and no serious cuts needed), then we’ll immediately default and granny will have to eat dog food. This is utter nonsense – the merest political scare tactic. Democrats just don’t want to cut – not anything, if they can get away with it.

Default does, indeed, stare us in the face – but not on account of our failure to borrow more money. That is what the debt ceiling is about – it isn’t about taking care of current expenses and current debts, but of piling up ever more debt so that nothing of consequence in government is cut. But if we don’t cut spending, then it two or three years we will be up against the fiscal wall – either having to borrow at ruinous rates, or having to go in to default. If we don’t raise the debt ceiling a penny not only will we not default, we’ll be better off. That is the hard fact Democrats don’t want anyone to realize – if we cut spending, we can raise the debt ceiling to $20 trillion. It won’t matter – we’ll never hit it. We’ve got ’em by the short hairs here – they desperately want it and are talking themselves in to a corner where they have to have it…and so we can make them pay for it.

Boehner is playing this just right – and while he’s doing it, we GOPers and all fiscal conservatives have to stand behind him.

From NBC:

…Just a third of Americans believe the country is headed in the right direction; less than four in 10 approve of Obama’s handling of the U.S. economy; and nearly 70 percent think the economy will get worse or stay the same in the next year…

As we said, a dead bin Laden doesn’t put gas in the tank – nor goes it pay for food, rebuild your home equity, or get you a job.

So says the Arab Times:

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard is allegedly training a large number of Kuwaitis, Bahrainis and Saudis in a private training camp located in Waheera, a remote area near the borders of Venezuela and Columbia, and intends to use them to carry out terrorist activities within their respective countries and other areas across the world in case Iran is attacked militarily, Al-Seyassah daily quoted a reliable source as saying.

The trainees are first sent to Venezuelan capital Caracas or Columbian capital Bogota via Damascus and from there, they are sent to the border region in cars, one of the militants who broke away from the Iranian group told the daily.

Reportedly, the training camp is run by some Iranian intelligence officers and others affiliated to the Revolutionary Guard in cooperation with Hezbollah and Hamas. The trainees were given courses in making bombs, carrying out assassinations, kidnapping people and transporting the hostages to other locations…

The story goes on to note that the financing for this is coming from drug running – apparently with the cooperation of the Venezuelan government. Is this true? The story is thin on proof – but the problem is that it all makes entire sense. Venezuela under Chavez has ambitions for regional hegemony and a decided enmity for the United States; Chavez has spent a lot of time buddying up to Iran and other powers hostile to the United States and there is evidence that Chavez has helped the narco-terrorists in Columbia. We also know from long experience of Iran’s support for Hezbollah and Hamas. The pieces all fit.

While the story claims that the terrorists are to be used in case of an attack on Iran, the fact remains that any such terrorists could easily be transported to the United States to launch attacks for any reason Iran or Venezuela could think of. Our border is still mostly outside our control – and crossing it is controlled by drug gangs, it wouldn’t take anything more than cash on the barrel to have terrorists sent in to the United States (or, if they are running drugs, just a bit of drugs for the gangs to then sell in the United States). We are living in a fool’s paradise if we don’t recognize the threat – and the immediate need to find out for sure, and take the harshest possible measures against any such training camps (and, yes, this would include, as needed, sending special forces in to kill or capture anyone in the camps).

While our current Administration prefers not to deal with these harsh realities, the fact remains that the world is a dangerous place, chock full of people who hate us and wish to harm us. Obama did a good thing by taking out bin Laden, let’s hope he shows equal resolve here.

HAT TIP: Fausta’s Blog

Which is the best headline I can think of for this AFP story:

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, opening high-level talks Monday, said the United States does not see China’s growth as a threat and sought greater trust to work together on global problems.

“Some in our country see China’s progress as a threat to the United States; some in China worry that America seeks to constrain China’s growth. We reject both those views,” Clinton said.

“We both have much more to gain from cooperation than from conflict,” she said.

Yeah, we gain so much from our dealings with China. Let’s see: there’s the low-quality garbage in our stores. There’s the continual reduction of our manufacturing plant. There’s the full-employment for Chinese slave labor. We also get an increasingly powerful Chinese military to deal with. Oh, and then there’s also that growing worry among allies that we won’t be there if China gets aggressive. And we must not neglect the fact that the brutal, corrupt, anti-human rulers of China get rich. Yeah, no threat at all – just grow, grow, grow, China; we’ll help you every way we can, because we get so much out of it.

Of course, the Chinese bought the Clinton’s many years ago – Hillary is just dancing to the paymaster’s tune. But, my goodness, what sheer idiocy – we simply must win next year. We can’t afford four more years of this.

And some people might wonder, from time to time, why I find liberalism so nauseating – from Guernica:

…We might ask ourselves how we would be reacting if Iraqi commandos landed at George W. Bush’s compound, assassinated him, and dumped his body in the Atlantic. Uncontroversially, his crimes vastly exceed bin Laden’s, and he is not a “suspect” but uncontroversially the “decider” who gave the orders to commit the “supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole” (quoting the Nuremberg Tribunal) for which Nazi criminals were hanged: the hundreds of thousands of deaths, millions of refugees, destruction of much of the country, the bitter sectarian conflict that has now spread to the rest of the region.

There’s more to say about [Cuban airline bomber Orlando] Bosch, who just died peacefully in Florida, including reference to the “Bush doctrine” that societies that harbor terrorists are as guilty as the terrorists themselves and should be treated accordingly. No one seemed to notice that Bush was calling for invasion and destruction of the U.S. and murder of its criminal president…

And that is our liberalism, folks – divorced from reality, wallowing in unreasonable hatred. Our criminal President? You mean the guy who was elected by the people of the United States and who got Congressional authorization – on top of repeated previous authorizations not just from Congress, but from the UN? That criminal President? Yeah, not only is he no better than bin Laden, he’s worse…after all, if you read all of Chomsky’s piece, you’ll note that he’s not at all sure that bin Laden had anything to do with 9/11…just this odd, turbaned guy that we went after for no discernible reason…

Except, aha!, there as a reason…we wanted blood for oil! We hate Arabs! We hate Moslems! We hate, hate, hate…and we’re all defense contractors; those of us, at least, who aren’t working for Haliburton! And when we’re not deliberately starting wars for profit, we’re beating puppies to death with tire irons.

But the hate, really, is all inside Chomsky and his like – and it is very sad to see. Your mind has to boiling with rage in order to get that disconnected from reality – to both think that bin Laden might be innocent, and President Bush worthy of a Nuremburg tribunal.

Here is a better take on the event:

…Although he admits it is difficult to rejoice when someone is dead, Father Marciano believes that the United States’ relentless pursuit of bin Laden, who he called “the chief criminal of the world,” will send a strong message to terrorists that they will pay a price for the harm they do to others.

“It was done right, and in this case, there was no other alternative,” he said. “You can run and you can hide, but our intelligence forces are going to get you.”…

That is what comes out of a man who doesn’t hate – out of a man who merely wants justice to be done, and peace to prevail. Killing is never something we should enjoy, or even want to have happen…but some times some people by their own actions put themselves so far outside the law that there is no other answer. That was the case of bin Laden – the blood of many thousands of innocents is on his hands; not people killed as an unfortunate result of honorable war, but innocents murdered deliberately, as part of policy. There is a gigantic difference between a bin Laden and any American President – whether it be Bush who started looking for bin Laden or Obama who finally ordered the deed done. And it is a terrible pity that all too many liberals have so warped themselves that they can’t see the difference.

From Zero Hedge:

And another huge hit to future oil supply. After Goldman released a report on Friday, backtracking on its April recommendation that clients sell crude, instead warning that “critically tight supply-demand fundamentals” will likely cause oil prices to “return to or surpass the recent highs by next year”, “should Libyan oil supplies remain off the market”, which it now appears they will considering Gadaffi is winning the Libyan civil war against the West-backed rebellion, here comes a stunner out of Iraq which has just slashed its 2017 oil production estimate from 12 million barrels to just 6.5-7 million bbpd. Oddly enough, Iraq is being rational: “Baghdad believes it would not be in its interests to try to achieve the 12 million target by 2017 because boosting global supply would depress prices.” …

Maybe the Donald is right about this – perhaps we should just take their oil?

But, no; it is their oil; and as it won’t last forever, and they have absolutely nothing else we want, it is wisdom on their part to get a premium for it…our job is to ensure that we need as little of it as possible. And that means drill, baby, drill. Unless we want to keep dancing to this tune for another generation, we’re going to have to get serious about improving our own domestic supplies as we transition to a non-oil economy. Massive efforts at exploration, drilling and refining should be undertaken…not so much to make us energy independent (probably won’t happen until we really do have a viable alternative energy, and any increase in domestic production means a better economy for us), but to create so much capacity in the United States that we can counter price-hike moves (you know, oil exporter says they’ll restrict production to keep the price high, we ramp it up to drop it back down…bottom line, production will probably remain stable).

We can act like adults about this, or we can act like pie-in-the-sky, environmentalist liberals. The choice is ours – to drill, or not to drill; that is the question.

This stupid – from the Mish’s:

As proof of the misguided, counterproductive policies of Illinois, Governor Quinn hiked corporate incomes taxes to bail out a state deep in fiscal trouble, (it did not and will not work), now grants corporations hefty incentives to not move to Texas.

The Chicago Tribune reports $100 million keeps Motorola Mobility in Illinois:

Gov. Pat Quinn put up more than $100 million in financial incentives to persuade smartphone company Motorola Mobility to keep its corporate headquarters in Libertyville — the largest package he has offered a company to date and a signal of how badly the state wants to hold on to high-tech jobs…

Raise the business tax, companies start to leave…so, give them a tax break to keep them in the State. Hey, Quinn, how about not raising the tax to begin with?

This is so messed up it is unbelievable. Taxes are hiked hitting all businesses. The big boys start threatening to move out. Kowtowing to another part of the Ruling Class, the Democrats pony up tax breaks for the big boys. The small fry? Well, they get to keep paying the tax – and, of course, going out of business. Who is screwed? Everyone who is not tightly connected with the Democrat party.

It is because of things like this that our whole economy is a mess. Democrats keep playing around with it. They don’t see the economy as something we, the people live and work in, but as a means to their ends…and their ends are power and wealth for themselves. Over the past century, Democrats have imposed a Byzantine series of taxes, tax breaks, regulations and exemptions to regulations – all of which ensure that those who play political ball with the Democrats are taken care of, usually out of taxpayer dollars. Everyone else can get stuffed…or, as its actually turned out, unemployed and losing their homes.

And they’ll keep doing it until we stop them – they don’t care if the country falls apart. The only thing which worries the Democrat leadership is the prospect of losing personal wealth and power. As for what worries the rank-and-file, I really can’t say…perhaps a fear of losing welfare, perhaps just a hatred of all things non-liberals, I don’t know. But whatever else happens, we have to get these clowns out of power – out of power now, out of power for ever. America cannot survive another generation of Democrats screwing with the economy.

Very interesting – from the AP:

Some of Iowa’s top Republican campaign contributors, unhappy with their choices in the developing presidential field, are venturing to New Jersey in hopes they can persuade first-term Gov. Chris Christie to run. The entreaty is the latest sign of dissatisfaction within the GOP over the crop of candidates competing for the chance to run against President Barack Obama in 2012.

Bruce Rastetter, an Iowa energy company executive, and a half-dozen other prominent Iowa GOP donors sought the meeting with Christie, the governor’s chief political adviser, Mike DuHaime, told The Associated Press. The get-together is set for the governor’s mansion in Princeton, N.J., on May 31…

We’ll see how this plays out – Christie has been pretty firm in his “heck no” statements, but its hard to stay a wall flower when the dance is really heating up. These are serious players who can assist greatly in building the grass-roots effort he’d need to compete in Iowa…but if Christie wants to do it, he’ll have to move fairly quickly. Iowans don’t seem to like being kept waiting forever.

Christie remains one of our strongest potential candidates for 2012 – just in the fact that Obama would have to fight hard to keep New Jersey highly commends Christie (and, of course, Christie could just beat him there – and that would be close to “game over” for Obama; not as devastating as losing Pennsylvania, but close). With Christie having taken on the Ruling Class in a big way, and come out a winner, people will be enthused about him…and his no-nonsense, take-no-prisoners style will appeal to those Americans disgusted with politics as usual.

It was a New Jersey governor – Woodrow Wilson – who became President and really got the Big Government ball rolling…perhaps it will be another New Jersey governor become President who will start to undo it?

Aayan Hirsi Ali offers a stark warning:

…Unlike Al Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood has evolved and learned the hard way that the use of violence will be met with superior violence by state actors. The clever thing to do, it now turns out, was to be patient and invest in a bottom-up movement rather than a commando structure that risked being wiped out by stronger forces. Besides, the gradualist approach is far more likely to win the prize of state power. All that Khomeini did before he came to power in Iran was to preach the merits of a society based on Islamic law. He did not engage in terrorism. Yet he and his followers took over Iran – a feat far greater than bin Laden ever achieved. In Iran the violence came later.

The point is that fighting violent extremists is only part of the battle; perhaps the easier part. The bigger challenge may be to deal with those Islamists who are willing to play a longer game…

Do read the whole thing – a genuine must-read. Ms. Ali is very correct in all this. Especially now, those who wish to engage in psychotic violence to advance the Caliphate have learned that we will catch or kill them, now or later. Fighting the United States – in Iraq, now in Afghanistan and even from dispersed terrorist cells – has proven itself to be suicidal. And while suicide is used, you’ll note that the leaders never strap on the bomb vest…and neither do they relish getting double tapped by a SEAL team (for all their brave words about wanting to die for Islam, they really do prefer to live for power and wealth).

And so the slow and steady model adopted by the Moslem Brotherhood will just spread – especially if, as I suspect, they gain control of Egypt. Endure, work, organize – and wait the right moment, all the while claiming to merely want an end to corruption, to brutality and to economic injustice. It works like a charm with western liberals (always willing to give the benefit of the doubt to anyone who attacks the United States, for whatever reason), and it works even better with the Moslem masses…who really are tired of the oppression and corruption they live under.

What do we do? First off, have no illusions. Do not hail the rebels we see in the Moslem world as the successors of our Founders who fought for freedom. Some of them, no doubt, really do want freedom…but the best organized among them are Islamist of one stripe or another, and in a such a ferment, it will be those who know what they want who will wind up on top, at least initially. Secondly, let the Moslem Brotherhood know that we’re not fooled – that if they come to power, even by democratic means, we will consider them what they are: enemies to be held off, and eventually destroyed. Finally, do whatever we can to encourage the emergence of genuine freedom fighters in the Moslem world. This will work well against the corrupt regimes currently in power and will eventually work well against any Moslem Brotherhood successors, as their rigorous application of the Islamist heresy proves an utter failure.

And we should also be prepared for war – against any or all such regimes, at any given time. Just because they rise to power speaking sweet words of peace doesn’t mean they won’t resort to war. This will become especially true as the failures of Islamism are exposed and the new rulers cast about for means of keeping control and unity among their people. Even if its stupid to try, they may try war with us – and it may come quite out of the blue (though it will almost certainly start with an attack on Israel, if it comes to that).

Also, don’t get too worked up over any one individual in the Islamist leadership. It was a complete misreading of the facts when some people said we “took our eye off the ball” and didn’t get bin Laden years ago. Sure, bin Laden was a threat and taking or killing him was a worthy object – but taking or killing him does not resolve the issue. Bin Laden was a symptom – the disease is Islamism, and it’s breeding ground is the corrupt and inhuman regimes ruling the Moslem world. Until those regimes change to regimes which really are committed to liberty and pluralism, our problem will remain…and may grow more acute if the Moslem Brotherhood rises to power in several States at once.

The war goes on – and it won’t end for a while. The only way to make sure is if we did declare a war against all of Islam and conquered the whole area and forced a new settlement upon it. While this is within American capability, it is not something we’re likely to have the political will for unless and until several Islamist States go to war against us, all at once. All we can do is work with what we’ve got – and by a judicious application of power and bribes, try to sway things our way over time.

From the Washington Post:

It seemed an innocuous, catch-up phone call. Last year Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, the pseudonym for a Pakistani known to U.S. intelligence as the main courier for Osama bin Laden, took a call from an old friend.

Where have you been? inquired the friend. We’ve missed you. What’s going on in your life? And what are you doing now?

Kuwaiti’s response was vague but heavy with portent: “I’m back with the people I was with before.”…

…U.S. intelligence agencies had been searching for Kuwaiti for at least four years; the call with the friend gave them the number of the courier’s cellphone. Using a vast number of human and technical sources, they tracked Kuwaiti to the compound…

And that, liberals, was all the signals intelligence program was ever about – it wasn’t about “spying” on the American people; it was about eavesdropping on enemy communications. Had President Bush not authorized it, we may never have caught bin Laden…no one was ever interested in listening to you liberals talk over your next anti-war demonstration; no one ever cared what was passing between you. All anyone in the program ever cared about was finding the enemy so we could kill or capture them.

And yet, this was all part of your series of lies about President Bush – your nonsense claims that Bush was a dictator and shredding the Constitution. All if it – every last bit of criticism you ever launched – was based upon just this sort of lie; taking something legitimating and weaving an anti-Bush fantasy about it…and then repeating it endlessly over the ‘net and the MSM until it started to take hold in the public mind. And you did this – in the end – just so you could get Reid as Majority Leader, Pelosi and Speaker and Obama as President. You didn’t do it to serve truth or America, but just to serve the ravenous political appetites of a corrupt Ruling Class.

You should be ashamed of yourselves – and we can only pray that some day, some how, you’ll drop your talking points and start to think…and then apologize for what you did.