Hadn’t even thought of that – this is our first recession with the Boomers in full charge of our nation:

If anyone wished to know what the baby-boomer generation would do when, in its full maturity, it hit its first self-created, big-time recession, I think we are seeing the hysterical results. After two decades of unprecedented economic growth, rampant consumer spending, and unimaginable borrowing to satisfy our insatiable appetites, we are suddenly going into even larger debt and printing trillions of dollars in paper money to ensure that someone else after we are gone pays the debt. As if the permanent solution to a financial panic and years of spending wealth we didn’t create were a government take-over of the economy in the manner we currently witness in Spain, Italy, and Greece—or the high-tax, high-spend ethos of a bankrupt California.

The reaction to the economic panic was sort of analogous to the call to ‘charge it!’ after 9/11 (cf. Ike’s fights about the surtax to pay for Korea), or to the Iraq 2006 upsurge in violence, when suddenly our leaders declared the war lost, blamed the nebulous “they” for tricking them into voting for the war, and calling for immediate withdrawals and retreats. Ditto the Stalag-Gulag Guantanamo that, by January 19, had ruined the Constitution, shredded the Bill of Rights, and forever tarnished our reputation. Yet, on the 20th, it was suddenly complex and problematic, and required a “task force” to do a year-long inquiry into the bad and worse choices confronting us. At some point in all this serial hysteria, we are beginning to see the problem is not in the stars of the economy or of the war, but in ourselves—a weird generation that, when it finally came of age, proved to be just about what we could expect of it from what we saw in its youth.

Whom are we bailing out? In large measure, we are bailing out middle-aged Baby Boomers who have essentially been in charge of messing up the nation since about 1964. They can’t get anything right, and lacking any sense of proportion, they went on a binge of borrowing and spending and now that the bill has come due – and Mom and Dad no longer being able to bail them out – they simply want the government to cover for their error.

The reason I’m really on the “sobriety and solidarity” kick is because we do need to pay the price of our foolishness and learn our lesson well. We can’t borrow and spend our way to wealth. We can’t have a great economy if we don’t grown, mine and make things (sorry, environmentalists, but we will need to cut some things down and dig some things up – and then turn said things into products people want). Usury might be good for a short bit, but the reason God warned us off it was because its both predatory and stupid. We can’t farm out child-rearing to schools and day care centers. We can’t all live like kings. It is high time we grew up.

Our liberals are great at showing their solidarity with others – but the problem is they are just showing, they are not being. We need to be in solidarity with each other – and we need to be sober about what we do. Being in solidarity with our fellows doesn’t mean going to a demonstration or making a donation – it means actually going out there and doing for others, at no thought to the cost to ourselves and with not only no expectation of reward, but a downright insistence on not being rewarded.

75 or so years ago FDR and the liberals of the day said we can have it all – we can take time off and still be rich. All it took was fiat money, high interest rates and government spending as much as it could. For a while there, it seemed to work – but even when it was apparently working, this was the residual effect of the hard work still being done and the economic rationality still remaining from the pre-New Deal economy. We’ve been scammed – or, more accurately, we scammed ourselves. We wanted to believe that we could have it all, because believing such a thing is far easier than the difficult task of actually doing something for others. Its all come smashing down, and it won’t get genuinely better until we, as a people, take full responsibility for our errors and insist upon doing the right thing from now on.

A House GOPer takes issue with Rush:

Responding to President Obama’s recommendation to Republican congressional leaders last week that they not follow Limbaugh’s lead, the conservative talkmeister said on his show that Obama is “obviously more frightened of me than he is Mitch McConnell. He’s more frightened of me, than he is of, say, John Boehner, which doesn’t say much about our party.”

Rep. Phil Gingrey, R-Ga., did not take kindly to this assessment in an interview with Politico Tuesday.

“I think that our leadership, Mitch McConnell and John Boehner, are taking the right approach,” Gingrey said. “I mean, it’s easy if you’re Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh or even sometimes Newt Gingrich to stand back and throw bricks. You don’t have to try to do what’s best for your people and your party. You know you’re just on these talk shows and you’re living well and plus you stir up a bit of controversy and gin the base and that sort of that thing. But when it comes to true leadership, not that these people couldn’t be or wouldn’t be good leaders, they’re not in that position of John Boehner or Mitch McConnell.”

There is a great deal of truth in that – the critic does have the easier job than the guy in the trenches. On the other hand, the guy in the trenches should be working diligently to avoid criticism from his own side. Meanwhile, the job of the critic is, well, to criticize. Rush’s whole existence as a talk show host is built around offering a critique about how things are done in government. To try and say that Rush should butt out is to say that Rush shouldn’t say anything, which is absurd…though in keeping with Obama Administration policy.

It is going to be tricky for the GOP over the next six months – right now, Obama is riding high on a wave of optimism. He is, of course, sowing dragon’s teeth which will eventually cause his Administration to crash, but it isn’t for the GOP to get out in front of what will eventually be popular dismay with Obama. Obama needs to screw up badly before the GOP starts jumping on him – and we need only be patient, and Obama will screw up badly. Meanwhile, the job of the Congressional GOP is to offer warnings about the idiocies of the Obama-Pelosi-Ried Golly-Here’s-Another-Dollar-To-Spend! national bankruptcy “stimulus” bill; offer alternatives out of the core GOP economic playbook and then just wait for it all to go smash, and then argue for the prescriptions we offered earlier.

But this doesn’t mean Obama gets to coast – far from it. Out here in the blogsphere and talk radio, our job as conservative commentators is to severely and regularly hammer Obama and his Democrats, as well as buck up the GOP base during what will be a lean time. And part of this will entail some shots at the Congressional GOP, especially if we’re not seeing anything in the way of strong, principled opposition to the Obama plan. So far, the GOP critique has been muted – we need supply side, Reaganite red meat…and all we’re getting is go-along-to-get-along tofu.

So, my advice to Gingrey – grow a pair and reserve your public ire for our Democratic opponents. To Limbaugh – keep doing what you do. To Obama – keep doing what you do, as well, because that is our sure fire ticket back to power.

That is the real cost of the Obama-Pelosi-Reid Bankruptcy Now! “Stimulus” Plan:

We’re talking about the interest charges that will be required to finance the $825 billion cost of the debt bill. We learned this today in a letter that Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas W. Elmendorf sent to the senior Republican on the House Budget Committee, Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin.

Here is the relevant part:

Under CBO’s current economic assumptions and assuming that none of the direct budgetary effects of H.R. 1 are offset by future legislation, CBO estimates that the government’s interest costs would increase by $0.7 billion in fiscal year 2009 and by a total of $347 billion over the 2009-2019 period.

So when you hear politicians talk about the $825 billion ten-year cost of this legislation, keep in mind that it masks these unavoidable interest costs, bringing the total ten-year cost to at least $1,172,000,000,000.00.

The debt that gives rise to $53.6 billion in interest costs in 2019 alone, moreover, will not magically disappear in 2020 or beyond. Thus, the real cost of the debt bill will grow and compound over the years so long as that debt remains unpaid.

And do keep in mind that this is in addition to the debt we’ll pile up in the regular budget, year after year, under Obama’s plan to spend, spend, spend us into prosperity ’cause everyone knows that the way to wealth is through profligacy.

Yes, liberals, I know; we GOPers failed in this test, too…but because we failed after you failed previously that doesn’t mean we have to fail again. It is time to retrench – figure out what we can do without (Department of Energy, Environmental Protection Agency, Commerce Department and Agriculture Department immediately spring to mind…at least for me) and the axe the budget of all these un-necessary expenditures. If, after we’ve taken the butcher’s knife to spending and really, really, cut it down to bare bones (“bare bones” means we’re paying to protect ourselves and make certain no one starves/freezes to death – outside of that, its a luxury we might not be able to afford) we find that we’re still in deficit, then we’ll just have to raise taxes to cover it. Long and painful would such a process be – but we’d emerge at the end of it out of debt and with our nation founded upon fiscal sanity, once again. And, also, wiser for being chastised for our idiocy 1933-2009.

Something just occurred to me – given that theory of anthropogenic global warming is a hoax, once we’ve got a couple year cooling trend hitting its stride, leftist pinheads will start crediting Obama’s environmental policies for “curing” global warming. These idiots might actually get away with their hoax!

Via Real Clear Politics – Governor Palin has started a PAC. Its still in its infancy, but it is, as RCP points out, an indicator that Governor Palin has further national political ambitions.

Anyways, I’ve signed up…can’t get too early a start on replacing the catastrophe which will be known as the Obama Administration.

Back in February 2007,  I asked our readers to keep my then-girlfriend (now fiancee) Beth in their thoughts and prayers when she had microvascular decompression surgery for trigeminal neuralgia. a nerve condition that causes really bad facial pains. Tommorow (Wednesday) morning at 8 am ET she will be having a second MVD surgery.  We were hoping this surgery wouldn’t be necessary… the pain had gone away for some time, but unfortunately came back on the other side. So, we are hoping this surgery will take care of it.

I’d like to ask everyone to keep her in your thoughts and prayers again. You are welcome to leave a note here and I will pass it along to her. Please leave political comments out of this thread. Thanks.

Mark Hemmingway over at NRO has a rundown of the potential race between newly appointed Senator Gillibrand and possible GOP challenger, Rep. Peter King.

As noted in the article, a race between Any GOPer and Caroline Kennedy would be a race GOPers would pay to be allowed to run in – nothing more fun than taking on the clueless scion of a worthless, ultra-liberal political family long shorn of its glamor. But a race against Gillibrand, who has a conservative reputation, has a different dyanmic – if Gillibrand’s conservatism is more than just the result of not being as kook lefty as most New York Democrats.

The American Conservative Union gives King a moderately conservative 76 lifetime rating – which means as a Senator he will routinely annoy the GOP base outside of New York, but that he fits well with the politics of New York State. The ACU, on the other hand, gives Gillibrand a lifetime rating of 8. No, I didn’t forget a number – 8, as in e-i-g-h-t.

Now, there’s not much to go on so far – Gillibrand has only one House term under her belt, so she’s a stealth candidate with allegedly conservative credentials clearly picked with an eye towards the likely mid-term dynamic of 2010 which will have at least an anti-Democrat tinge to it (and a possible anti-Democrat wave) which would make most NY Democrats sure losers in a race against a moderately conservative GOPer.

I figure with Caroline we would have had a 90% chance of taking the seat – but with Gillibrand as the Democrat empty suit, I rate our chances at 60/40 against. But still well worth the effort.

But Obama’s Clintonism which is dragging Obama down, step by step, into a political morass he won’t be able to get out of – from NRO’s The Corner:

The Obama presidency is only one week old, but it has already limned its main moral outlines:

On January 20, President Obama called for the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act. He also declared his intention to give multiple rights and privileges to homosexual couples.

On January 22, he issued an order announcing his intention to close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay within one year, but admits he has not figured out how to do that. President Bush had expressed a similar wish, but could find no nations willing to take responsibility for the detainees.

On January 23, President Obama issued an order that authorizes tax dollars for abortions abroad.

From these announcements we learn that President Obama recognizes no difference between the Jewish-Christian covenant between a woman and a man (a covenant that they will have and nurture children, if they are so blessed), and a civil contract between two persons of any sex, in order to set up a household of affection and sexual favors.

This is a relapse into paganism…

…second, that this president’s guiding light in matters of national security is not a realistic assessment of the national interest but personal concern for what kind of figure he is cutting in the international eye. Good headlines first, practical thinking later.

Thirdly, we learn that the president is willing to do what a substantial bloc of U.S. taxpayers abhor, and will resist in conscience. Moreover, it is a mistake to think that people in most other nations love, honor, and respect the secularist preoccupation with abortion.

The first week did not have to begin this way. These first steps were unworthy of a great nation and unworthy of a serious leader. These decisions humiliated those who voted for President Obama because they had been assured, and assured others, that the new president would take seriously the culture of life. It is now clear that the new president was willing to allow those who risked their moral reputations to support him to feel in retrospect like liars…

In his first week in office, Bill Clinton deeply wounded the moral force of his own presidency by turning abruptly against those who regard abortion as the greatest evil of our time, as slavery was in Lincoln’s time. It is sad to see a Democratic president make that same mistake again.

The Democrats, from Obama on down, have learned nothing and forgotten nothing – bitterly stewing over President Bush, the Democrats have yet to figure out that the reason the GOP won in 1994, 2000, 2002 and 2004 was because of a very negative reaction to the moral depravity of liberalism as expressed by such things as radical homosexual rights, radical abortion rights and an unwillingness to be strong against men bent on evil in the world. The Democrats should keep in mind that the GOP did quite well against the Democrats in good economic times in 1994 and 2000 – and if we add bad economic times to these sorts of Obama policies, then 2010 could end up being a very long year for Democrats.

I doubt they’ll figure it out – they have convinced themselves that they didn’t lose over their liberalism but because we GOPers tricked the American people into voting against their own interests. Furthermore, they are now convinced that a majority is wise to these tricks of ours and thus won’t be fooled again. It could be a very rude awakening for our Democrats.

Naturally, I’ll be working very hard to make it as rude as possible.

Then you’d better have faith. Tomorrow is the Feast Day of St. Thomas Aquinas, the author of the Summa Theologica – given this happy coincidence of St. Thomas and our new President Hope-N-Change, I think it worthwhile to see what one of the great minds of human history had to say on the subject of hope:

…just as it is not lawful to hope for any good save happiness, as one’s last end, but only as something referred to final happiness, so too, it is unlawful to hope in any man, or any creature, as though it were the first cause of movement towards happiness. It is, however, lawful to hope in a man or a creature as being the secondary and instrumental agent through whom one is helped to obtain any goods that are ordained to happiness. It is in this way that we turn to the saints, and that we ask men also for certain things; and for this reason some are blamed in that they cannot be trusted to give help…

…Absolutely speaking, faith precedes hope. For the object of hope is a future good, arduous but possible to obtain. In order, therefore, that we may hope, it is necessary for the object of hope to be proposed to us as possible. Now the object of hope is, in one way, eternal happiness, and in another way, the Divine assistance… and both of these are proposed to us by faith, whereby we come to know that we are able to obtain eternal life, and that for this purpose the Divine assistance is ready for us, according to Hebrews 11:6: “He that cometh to God, must believe that He is, and is a rewarder to them that seek Him.” Therefore it is evident that faith precedes hope.

Unless you have faith – and that, dear friends, would be faith in God – then you can’t have hope. I mean, think about: what are you hoping for if not for eternal happiness? A higher standard of living? Better health care? What for? What good does wealth and health do for you if there is no hope beyond this world?

If we really are to hope for a better tomorrow, then we’d better get believing in God, today. It is belief in God – and only belief in God – which can motivate us to work hard and sacrifice ourselves in order that those who come after may have a better life. If we have not faith and what we’re hoping for is that our own lot will be made easier, then we’re just spinning our wheels quite uselessly.

Now that President Obama has semi-freed himself from Wright’s un-Christian hate-mongering, I hope (because I have faith in God and his ability to move hearts) that Obama will take some time to carefully consider the “hope” part of his hope and change mantra. What it really means, and what it really requires of us. As for me, I’m ready for some stern testing – to pay the piper, as it were, for our national irresponsibility of the past 70 years or so. I hope for a better future, but not necessarily for myself but for, in a real sense, the young people just rising and those who are soon to be born. I want them to grow up in a world freed not just from the fears we have, but from the overbearing temptations to self destruction with which we have avidly supplied ourselves.

Time will tell if hope means something to Obama – and his supporters – or whether it was just a nifty, poll-tested word for a political campaign.

And if only Obama knew what change actually entails – excellent video presentation.