Obama now says he will save or create three million jobs over the next four years.

Anyone know how Obama will calculate that a job was saved by him?

Anyone smell a new bit of liberal BS? You know – “oh, sure, we’ve only added a million new jobs since Obama took office, but he’s saved 4 million!”.

Perhaps:

The top U.S. military officer said Saturday that the Pentagon could double the number of American forces in Afghanistan by next summer to 60,000 – the largest estimate of potential reinforcements ever publicly suggested.

Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that between 20,000 and 30,000 additional U.S. troops could be sent to Afghanistan to bolster the 31,000 already there.

This year has been the deadliest for U.S. forces in Afghanistan since the 2001 invasion to oust the Taliban for hosting al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden. Suicide attacks and roadside bombs have become more dangerous, and Taliban fighters have infiltrated wide swaths of countryside and now roam in provinces on Kabul’s doorstep.

U.S. commanders have long requested an additional 20,000 troops to aid Canadian and British forces in two provinces just outside Kabul and in the south. But the high end of Mullen’s range is the largest number any top U.S. military official has said could be sent to Afghanistan.

Mullen said that increase would include combat forces but also aviation, medical and civilian affairs support troops.

“So some 20,000 to 30,000 is the window of overall increase from where we are right now,” he told a news conference at a U.S. base in Kabul. “We certainly have enough forces to be successful in combat, but we haven’t had enough forces to hold the territory that we clear.”

And that is the key – not just killing the terrorists, but demonstrating to the locals that we won’t abandon them if they help us. Its a liberal, western myth that savages like the Taliban and al Qaeda get popular support – they get support, but only out of fear for what they will do if crossed. Right now, in various areas of Afghanistan, the people are certain about what the terrorists will do, but are unsure what we will do. If we show that we’ll kill the terrorists and then protect the locals, the locals will move over to our side in the battle, and just as in the “Anbar Awakening” in Iraq, that will be the signal for the complete rout of the enemy in Afghanistan.

Obama has pledged to fight for victory in Afghanistan, and he has my whole-hearted support in whatever efforts prove necessary to secure victory. Obama has the advice of experience commanders – all he has to do is take it, and allow our magnificent armed forces to do the rest.

The recount in Minnesota has been a bizarre roller coaster, with Team Franken finding new ways to steal the election. Coleman has had a slim, but regular… yet Franken’s finagling. including mystery ballots being discovered in bizarre places.

Recent reports have Fraudulent Franken up… but it is far from over.

But major issues remain in the race, including some 5,000 withdrawn challenges that won’t be allocated to the candidates until next week. Coleman’s attorney, Tony Trimble, said those could throw the lead back to the Republican.

“We’ll let them enjoy the weekend,” Trimble said. When votes from those challenges are restored, he said, “You’ll see our ship come in.”

There’s reason for him to be optimistic. Franken withdrew more challenges before this week, leaving a larger pool of potential votes for Coleman in the next stage. There are 400 to 500 more ballots where Coleman could find votes compared with the batch available to Franken.

Al Franken is trying to steal this election… Help Coleman fend off Franken’s Fraud by donating here.

The “Deep Throat” of Watergate ill fame.

What are we to make of a man who betrays trust, leaks information to the media anonymously and then hides his identity until late in life when, seemingly, he and/or his family felt the need to cash in on his skulduggery? I can’t speak for all, of course, but speaking for myself I say this – if anyone in government believes his superior is violating the law, then it is his or her moral duty to report it to the proper authorities and be willing to state in public what they know. Failure to do this is cowardice.

(Ed. Note: We seem to be enjoying this one, so lets keep at it.)

There has been much discussion in conservative circles since the election about whether the “religious right” caused the GOP defeat. The theory is that “religious conservatives” have turned off too many people and thus McCain was unable to successfully reach out to the middle. Gay Patriot West notes the issue:

Kathleen Parker has a very good essay today in National Review where she frequently echoes my views on social conservatives and the GOP. Interestingly, she’s a little harsher on social conservatives than I am. I disagree with her suggestion that social conservatives try to “make their arguments without bringing God into it.“

They should be able to make a case for their political views through their faith. That said, I do think she’s onto something when she encourages them to make their case through logic and reason as that tactic might better resonate with voters.

Here is where I totally agree with her:

As long as the religious right is seen as controlling the Republican party, the GOP will continue to lose some percentage of voters, and that percentage likely will increase over time as younger voters shift away from traditional to more progressive values.

As I’ve written before (and this is a topic to which I’d like to devote more attention in the coming weeks and months), the GOP needs to find a way to accommodate social conservatives without being dominated by them.

Should we do that and put forward a consistent conservative message on the economy which resonates with voters, we’ll be back in 2010, if not before.(emphasis in original)

I think we should be clear – the phrases “religious right”, “social conservatives”, “religious conservatives”, etc are code words for “practicing Christians who are politically engaged”. And I worry that this bit of discussion will boil down, for some, to a question: how do we keep the Christians on-side without actually advancing their agenda? I get the strong sense – not from Gay Patriot, I should add – of contempt for Christians from conservative elites who want our votes and donations, but don’t want to be troubled with all that, well, Christian stuff. But to be conservative in the United States means to be, at bottom, a defender of Judeo-Christian civilization – you can’t, as it were, be a conservative unless you are a member of the “religious right”, at least in the sense of broadly advancing the agenda of the religious right.

If you are not conserving Judeo-Christian civilization, then what are you conserving? To me, to be a conservative without the Christian bit is to be what Chesterton considered conservatives of a hundred years ago to be – people who conserve the liberal agenda. I prefer to be a conservative who conserves our civilization – which means, in turn, that I conserve the Judeo-Christian worldview. Being a conservative can, at times, mean being someone in favor of revolutionary change. Grasping this comes once one understands that some aspects of liberalism have gone so entirely wrong (sexual revolution, eg) that only a complete uprooting of it and a restoration of the old ways will do – and even though one is attempting to restore, the overturning of what is works out to be a revolution.

In my battle for conservatism, I’m battling for freedom of worship; life; the family; individual liberty; respect for private property; local control of affairs…all of these are Judeo-Christian ideals. Unfortunately, too many conservatives have come to the conclusion that conservatism means the defense of things like capitalism (brought to us by liberalism), individualism (brought to us by liberalism – and something different from individual liberty, but that’s another post); the bastard child of individualism, a right to privacy (brought to us by liberalism), strict immigration controls (brought to us by liberalism); legally sanctioned usury (brought to us by liberalism); fiat money (brought to us by liberalism), etc, etc, etc. Liberalism has also, of course, brought us things like socialism, so a conservative battling for capitalism will find himself hotly engaged with liberals battling for socialism, but both of them are battling for liberalism, just different interpretations of it…and that they are so starkly different highlights the basic incoherence of liberalism which grows out of its fundamental flaw, the conception that mankind is perfectible by human agency. And just as conservatism is fooled or fools itself into fighting for liberal things, so is conservatism incoherent.

There is room at the table for a wide variety of opinions in conservatism. Indeed, so varied are the problems facing us that prudence dictates that we not be too rigid in our means of meeting the issues of the day. As long as core, conservative principles – properly understood – are adhered to, we’re doing ok. I am not all knowing and all seeing. I have plenty of flaws, gaps of knowledge and my own bits of pigheaded adherence to received ideas. But if we are to do a conservative thing, then let us be genuinely conservative.

And so, the problem is not how to mesh conservatism with Christianity – they are essentially one and the same – but how to mesh conservatism with a society damaged to its core by liberalism. All who adhere to conservatism have a role to play here, so let us all leave off – as Gay Patriot has wisely done – all talk of whom to purge. We need to unite on what we agree on, and battle against those who war against us all, the liberals.

In my experience, large corporations and large bureaucracies are incapable of this act:

Rather than slash jobs, FedEx Corp. announced Thursday it would institute a hiring freeze and cut salaries, including that of CEO Fred Smith.

Beginning in 2009, Smith will scale back his salary by 20 percent. Other senior executives will receive a 7.5-10 percent salary cut. U.S. salaried employees will receive a 5 percent cut.

The cuts will help FedEx save more than $200 million in the remainder of fiscal year 2009 and $600 million more in fiscal 2010, helping offset what the company projects as “weak demand” for the upcoming year. The shipping giant did add a caveat to Thursday’s announcement: Each of FedEx’s operating companies “is evaluating other measures should business conditions further deteriorate,” according to a company release.

Its getting rough out there. I was at the mall this past evening doing a bit of Christmas shopping – and on the last Friday before Christmas, I had no trouble finding a good parking spot…and in the mall I wasn’t overwhelmed with crowds of people. Walking through the mall I saw several shops with “going out of business” signs, and driving through the city I see large numbers of empty storefronts. Economists will say this and that and the economic statistics will say such and such – but in my mind we’re in recession, and its a deep one, and may last long. I don’t expect any recovery at all in 2009, though I pray it will end soon. In such times, it is necessary that we all do our part – Fed Ex is doing so. Pity that Fed Ex seems unique among large corporations.

I work for a massive financial institution – we’re jacking up interest rates for trivial past due amounts, lowering credit lines and/or closing accounts at the drop of a hat and generally spreading the misery. It doesn’t have to be like this, and if the people who run the corporation would actually sit down and think for a bit, they’d realize that they are being perfect idiots. With losses in the billions, the answer was to lay off a hundred or so people – as if that would make up the difference. Burden customers, cut loose employees who have worked hard and loyally for years – such are the actions of people who just don’t know what they are doing.

Its hard to remain angry at the incompetence on display in senior management. One actually starts to pity them, after a while – they don’t know how the company they run grew, they don’t know how it works and they are in deathly fear of losing their jobs They jump from one trendy management nostrum to another, hoping to find the magic bullet which will spare them the next round of layoffs. If everyone would just settle down and understand that (a) we all have a vested interest in the success of the company, (b) in rough times the bank which helps out the customers will earn loyalty and (c) we’re all going to get a bit poorer over the next year, so don’t get nit-picky about who makes how much.

I don’t see much of this happening any time soon – the moral sclerosis which make a CEO figure that 30.99% APR is fair is the same sclerosis which prevents said CEO from just asking his troops what they think might work best. Blindness builds upon itself, and corporate and government America have blinded themselves to all reality. Time to get back to reality – and Fed Ex, in a small way, is showing where reality resides.

Not much of a statement – essentially, “I didn’t do it and I’ll prove it, later”.

Well, if you think about it, he’s still drawing a governor’s salary and various benefits and sticking around doesn’t harm him….

Yes, allies. I know – to the left, the whole world is supposed to hate us because of President Bush, but it seems that Lithuania didn’t get the DNC memo and thus has deployed troops to fight alongside ours, and Michael Yon has things to say – and unsay – about them:

The words I wrote about Lithuanian Special Forces were meant as the highest praise. Yet I understand that those words have been widely misinterpreted in Lithuania. One Lithuanian journalist contacted me saying that normally a gigantic story in Lithuania spawns around a 100 comments on their website, but that this one about my commentary on Lithuanian Special Forces has gotten well over 400 comments.

A number of U.S. military personal have reached out to me privately in defense of Lithuanian soldiers. My long time readers realize that my reference to LithSOF being a “weaponized version of Borat” was tongue-in-cheek. I did not realize that there are so many Lithuanian readers of my work, or how some might take offense to those four words, when the rest of the story was clearly very complimentary of LithSOF. And so I am writing this apology to Lithuanian readers and to you not to take pressure off of me from you; but to take pressure off of me from American soldiers who greatly respect the Lithuanian Special Forces. Our soldiers admire the courage and competency of Lithuanian soldiers, and their willingness to kill terrorists. And so our soldiers don’t want four words from a writer to damage their relationship with your Special Forces. One key American officer contacted me this morning saying of you: “a leader and warrior any American would be proud to serve alongside under any circumstances.”

A Lithuanian journalist contacted me and I was very clear that my words were meant as highest compliments (if tongue in cheek), but apparently that interview did not percolate as widely in Lithuania, if it was printed at all.

Sir, I think the real Borat here is me. It takes special “skill” to insult an entire country with only four words. I should have realized that certain types of journalists might take those comments and run with the opportunity to spin, yet I simply had no idea that apparently huge amounts of Lithuanians are reading my work.

And to those people, I say now, America respects Lithuania. American soldiers have only one complaint about Lithuanian soldiers: There are not enough of them!

Sir, please consider me — an embarrassed American writer — to be a friend of Lithuania who will be more precise with his words in the future. If I am not careful, I’ll have to deal with American soldiers who energetically come to your defense.

Very Respectfully,

Michael Yon

Outside of the precincts of the kook left and the MSM (I know, same/same, in a lot of cases), there has been built over the past 8 years a series of relationships built on mutual respect and shared sacrifice which will continue to be a boon to America long after President Bush leaves office – but when on some future field we find Indians, Lithuanians, Iraqis, Georgians, Poles, Bulgarians and Ukranians on our side, we will have to thank President Bush for that. We might not have the French with us, but as they haven’t won a battle since 1918, that is not the largest loss in the world.

And the rest of conservative talk radio:

…some activists are trying to revive another antiquated and unnecessary system: a so-called “Fairness Doctrine” that has nothing to do with fairness or ensuring the free flow of commerce.

A senior advisor to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told one magazine last year, “Conservative radio is a huge threat and political advantage for Republicans and we have had to find a way to limit it.” Senator Chuck Schumer of New York stated on a live cable news show on Election Day his support for a new Fairness Doctrine so, as he said, we could truly be “fair and balanced” under his definition. Obama’s political confidant, Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, said, “It’s time to reinstitute the Fairness Doctrine.”

And just this week, Representative Anna Eshoo (D-CA), a prominent member of the House Subcommittee that may take up the Fairness Doctrine next year, said that she wanted to bring it back. “I still believe in it,” Eshoo told the Daily Post in Palo Alto.

Why do they say it’s needed? They claim the federal government must ensure local stations fully cover local news and topics of the day. However, those promoting the new Fairness Doctrine come from the politically correct left, which is incensed that conservative-minded talk show hosts have large ratings, large audiences, and big paychecks.

Liberal activists want the federal government to determine if a station is balanced and providing politically correct programming in our neighborhoods. Just imagine, if you will, a federal bureaucrat hops on a plane and travels from Washington to a local rural radio station. That bureaucrat then walks in to tell a station manager what to put on the air.

Yes, Virginia, they would be coming from the government and they would only be there to help. Or so the activists promoting the Fairness Doctrine want you to believe.

Conservative talk radio really gets under the skin of the left – its clearly something which arises from the people, its entirely outside the control of the left, its deadly effective at exposing the left for the corrupt and hate-filled thing that it is, and the left – try as it might – just can’t find anyone to compete with it because the people don’t like leftwing views (and that is what really chaps their hide – they know they are held in contempt by people they consider to be hick morons). Rush Limbaugh, as the flagship of conservative talk radio, still bears the brunt of leftwing ire and they would dearly love to force him off the air – but they want all of it gone. When lefties work out a corrupt deal and pass a bill in the middle of the night for Obama to sign without fanfare, they don’t want Rush and Co telling everyone about it.

Fortunately, we have conservative talk radio, so the left’s attempts to destroy it will not go unchallenged. And, indeed, if the left really tries to push this – and I do believe they are dumb enough to do so – it will give us a very strong issue to fight on right on through the 2010 midterms. Who the gods would destroy, they first make mad – and I’ve been calling these people the lunatic left for a while.

Ah, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive:

President-elect Barack Obama’s incoming chief of staff Rahm Emanuel had a deeper involvement in pressing for a U.S. Senate seat appointment than previously reported, the Sun-Times has learned. Emanuel had direct discussions about the seat with Gov. Blagojevich, who is is accused of trying to auction it to the highest bidder.

Emanuel talked with the governor in the days following the Nov. 4 election and pressed early on for the appointment of Valerie Jarrett to the post, sources with knowledge of the conversations told the Sun-Times. There was no indication from sources that Emanuel brokered a deal, however.

A source with the Obama camp strongly denied Emanuel spoke with the governor directly about the seat, saying Emanuel only spoke with Blagojevich once recently to say he was taking the chief of staff post.

But sources with knowledge of the investigation said Blagojevich told his aides about the calls with Emanuel and sometimes gave them directions afterward. Sources said that early on, Emanuel pushed for the appointment of Jarrett to the governor and his staff and asked that it be done by a certain date.

At least some of the conversations between Emanuel and Blagojevich were likely caught on tape, sources said.

After Jarrett took herself out of the running in mid-November, Emanuel submitted a list of suitable names to the governor’s camp that didn’t include her name.

Emanuel, who has refused to comment on the issue, is not accused of wrongdoing.

“Not accused of wrongdoing” is MSM-speak for “a Democrat is in trouble, let’s save him, if we can”.

Its pretty clear that both Obama and Emanuel have been dishonest in the matter of Blagojevich’s attempts to sell Obama’s Senate seat. This doesn’t mean that either of them did anything actually illegal, but it puts a stain on Obama which will become progressively harder to scrape off the longer Obama stonewalls on what he and his staff may have had to say to governor Blagojevich. After all these many years and oh, so many scandals in both Democrat and Republican Administrations, you’d think that eventually everyone would figure out that your best defense against scandal is to go on offense – get out there and admit to as much as you can, but then change the subject to what you’ll call the nation’s more pressing issues…doesn’t matter if “pressing issue” turns out to be selecting the pattern for the White House china. The key here is to be forthright and then get out of the thing as swiftly as possible.

But it seems that Obama and Team are monumentally ignorant, or just so arrogantly self confident that they don’t realize how bad this already looks, and how much more damaging it can become.