It went as far as it could. Two stories:

From Reuters:

The sentencing of a blogger to jail for criticizing Egypt’s army has drawn a chorus of objections from rights groups, who say the country’s ruling military council is drawing red lines around free speech.

Maikel Nabil, 26, was taken from his home in Cairo by five military officers early on March 28 and charged with insulting the military establishment and “spreading false information,” New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) said.

Nabil’s lawyers were told the judge would rule on Tuesday but discovered he had already been sentenced in their absence on Sunday, HRW cited defense lawyer Adel Ramadan as saying…

From AFP:

Syrian security forces in at least two towns prevented medics from reaching wounded protesters when clashes erupted at anti-government demonstrations last week, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said.

The New York based rights group said the “inhumane” and “illegal” blocking of access to medical treatment occurred in the southern town of Daraa, the centre of a wave of protests against President Bashar al-Assad, and Harasta near Damascus…

So, what we’ve got is the end of free speech in Egypt coupled with the successful suppression of rebellion in Syria. Add in the stalemate in Libya and iron fist coming down in places like Bahrain and you have an end to it all. The people, frustrated by years of oppression and general misrule, rose up. The powers that be were forced back on their heels but then managed to gather their forces and counter-attack…now it is becoming clear that the rebels are being forced in to a box and will soon all be suppressed (or, in the case of places like Syria, dead). What happened?

An abject failure on the part of the United States to immediately cut loose from the tyrannical regimes and pledge our support to any genuinely democratic successor regimes. We dithered back and forth and made high-sounding statements and went 1/3 to war in Libya and then quit after a couple weeks. Now, other than Obama incompetence, why did we do this?

Back on March 16th I wrote that I was starting to smell a rat in Libya – a rat called “stability”; I think that rat is pretty much out in the open, now. The leadership of the world stood back appalled at what they saw…regular people demanding to rule themselves; and the leadership of the world became determined that this should not happen. After all, much easier to deal with tyrants. I don’t really blame Obama for this – he lacks any knowledge or experience of foreign affairs and thus was almost certainly led in to this by the bureaucracy at State and Defense. These are two organizations dedicated to preserving the global status quo for no other reason than they don’t like the messy business of people running their own affairs (do keep in mind that including Defense in the mix doesn’t imply a slur on our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines…they are ok with messy business….but the bureaucrats – some of whom do have stars on their shoulders – don’t like it).

Maybe I’m wrong – perhaps the rebellion will re-ignite (and as food and fuel costs continue to rise this year, they might). But it seems pretty clear to me that neither the American nor any other government has any interest or desire to see a fundamental change. Curiously enough, in recent American history there have only been two men in charge of affairs who have wanted to shake things up – Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. Both were slandered relentlessly and called morons and cowboys for their efforts…Reagan has long been proved right; in the fullness of time, Bush will, be proven right, too.

And you bet he does – because now he’s on the opposite side and would prefer we all forget what he said back then about raising the debt ceiling. Fortunately, his words back then are not as hard to find as his birth certificate is today – from NRO’s The Corner:

The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies. … Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that ‘the buck stops here. Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.

Mr. President, you betcha! In fact, I couldn’t have said it better, myself. Now, we know you were just saying that because a Republican was President at the time. We know, further, that you were just kidding – how on earth could a liberal Democrat ever be against shoving us further in to debt? We know, ultimately, that you are a dishonest man who’s only goal in life is to advance himself by whatever means necessary. But, that doesn’t change the fact that raising the debt ceiling is, indeed, a failure of leadership – and that America deserves better.

The real pity is that we don’t know if our GOP leadership is really up to this fight – this is the perfect opportunity, vastly better than the recent budget fight, to really force some change. Essentially, we’ve got Big Government over a barrel. We should firmly hold to the principal that we refuse an increase until structural changes are made to the budget. The best such change would be a balanced budget amendment which requires, as necessary, the shut-down of all government departments save Defense, Veterans, Justice, State and Social Security/Medicare any time the budget is out of balance – and they stay shut down until it is. And if we don’t get it, we just refuse to raise the limit and let Obama try to figure out how to keep things moving without the ability to pile on more debt.

We can finesse this issue to the point where we’re the one’s fighting for fiscal sanity without any risk to those things most vital to America and to American citizens. Let the Democrats go to the mat trying to defend the Departments of Commerce and Labor…let the Democrats, in short, try to prove to the American people that all the nonsense in Big Government is so important that we must go ever further in to debt to fund it. That is a battle I’d love to have. But, will the GOP leadership do it? So far, some firm noises are being made…time will tell if that is all just talk, or real courage.

Its a good announcement – positive, hopeful…but no specifics; no plans for what he would do. While the “vision thing” is important, if Romney really wants to get the GOP nomination, he’s going to have to lay out a specific plan of action; what he intends to do. And it had better be chock full of TEA Party principals or he’ll never get the sort of broad-based, enthusiastic backing he’ll need first to win the nomination, and then to beat Obama.

From the AP:

Japan’s nuclear regulators raised the severity level of the crisis at a stricken nuclear plant Tuesday to rank it on par with the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, citing the amount of radiation released in the accident.

The regulators said the rating was being raised from 5 to 7 — the highest level on an international scale overseen by the International Atomic Energy Agency. However, there was no sign of any significant change at the tsunami-stricken Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant…

I think we’ve been getting a lot of “remain calm, all is well” out of the Japanese government and I think we should stop buying that line. Clearly, this is a major problem which will have wide and deep consequences – for the health of the Japanese, most importantly, but also for the Japanese and global economy. Nothing more foolish than a government trying to down play an issue…it always comes back to bite. Hopefully, now they’ll be completely forthright and give everyone the worst so that realistic plans can be made.

Going to ever new levels of absurdity – from My Northwest.com:

…Jessica, 16, told KIRO Radio’s Dori Monson Show that a week before spring break, the students commit to a week-long community service project. She decided to volunteer in a third grade class at a public school, which she would like to remain nameless.

“At the end of the week I had an idea to fill little plastic eggs with treats and jelly beans and other candy, but I was kind of unsure how the teacher would feel about that,” Jessica said.

She was concerned how the teacher might react to the eggs after of a meeting earlier in the week where she learned about “their abstract behavior rules.”

“I went to the teacher to get her approval and she wanted to ask the administration to see if it was okay,” Jessica explained. “She said that I could do it as long as I called this treat ‘spring spheres.’ I couldn’t call them Easter eggs.”…

You know, guys, the only reason anyone takes off or does anything special is because of Easter. If it wasn’t for the fact that Our Lord rose from dead, there wouldn’t be anything to note this time of year. So, either celebrate that or don’t celebrate anything, at all. Just pack it in – no “Spring break” and no “Spring spheres”. Either use “Easter break” and “Easter eggs”, or don’t even bother. Stop trying to de-Christianize western civilization…it won’t work; if you did manage it, you’d just kill the civilization, completely.

And, no, I don’t care if someone gets offended. Anyone who gets offended at the use of the word “Easter” is either a complete ass, or a monumentally wicked person. Anyone who complains about it should be ignored or, if that proves impossible, laughed at. If you’re going to be stupidly absurd, then you should be willing to deal with the normal reaction to such action.

For crying out loud, enough already!

HAT TIP: American Thinker

From Rasmussen:

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Monday shows that 19% of the nation’s voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as president. Thirty-nine percent (39%) Strongly Disapprove, giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -20.

Today’s numbers reflect the lowest level of Strong Approval yet recorded for this president. There has been a sharp decline in enthusiasm among liberal voters…

Liberals don’t like it when their leaders cut spending, even a little bit. So, why agree to a cut? Very likely because polling also showed that a government shut down would be even more destructive of Obama/Democrat approval. We really do have them on the ropes – all we need do is keep pressing them on the spending issue, come up with some new ideas on how to attack and then just carry it on in to 2012.

Demand destruction starts to kick in – from Fund My Mutual Fund:

It looks like the demand destruction has begun in the U.S. gasoline market despite the 2% payroll tax which gave every worker an immediate raise on Jan 1. This is also a bit concerning from the aspect we are in tax season, and in a note I read two weeks ago, Americans are expected to get back $300B – which in and of itself is a massive stimulus. Hence, if there is anytime these higher prices can be shouldered it is now … yet Mastercard is reporting the 5th consecutive week of lower gasoline sales…

The prices continue to rise as demand continues to drop – saw $3.93 at my local gas station this morning, up 4 cents from a couple days ago. The thing here is that this is impossible – you can’t have rising prices with declining demand. But, never fear, in Obamunism, all is possible – especially given that Bernanke has printed up trillions in an effort to keep stock prices high.

This is going to get really bad – as more and more money is being absorbed by the basics (food and energy), less and less will be available for everything else. Probably the only thing that is keeping us barely afloat right now is that payroll tax cut…but if gasoline really does go to $5 a gallon, any positive economic effect of that tax cut will exceeded by the negative effect of higher fuel prices. I don’t see an easy way out of this…

Have to say I missed this, entirely – but the Las Vegas Democrat Examiner didn’t:

…Included in the deal were guarantees by Senator Reid that he would allow a vote in the Senate to deny funding to President Obama’s signature health care reforms, The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, aka “Obamacare”, which was signed into Law on March 23, 2009…

Do keep in mind that this is just an agreement to allow a vote – and it would take 60 votes to ensure a de-funding of ObamaCare and even then a veto would be a certainty. But, still, it does look like a vote will be held, and that is a victory for the GOP. ObamaCare is horrendously unpopular and with the Democrats having 23 seats to defend next year (and 8 of them highly vulnerable), there will be intense pressure on a lot of Democrats to vote to de-fund. We could very easily get a majority vote in favor…and all those Democrats who are arm-twisted in to voting against de-funding will have a nice, political target on their backs for 2012.

One thing certain, the more we look at this deal, the better it is for us.

From the Wall Street Journal:

…In a speech Wednesday, Mr. Obama will propose cuts to entitlement programs, including Medicare and Medicaid, and changes to Social Security, a discussion he has largely left to Democrats and Republicans in Congress. He also will call for tax increases for people making over $250,000 a year, a proposal contained in his 2012 budget, and changing parts of the tax code he thinks benefit the wealthy…

The story goes on to note that the President’s proposals have caught Congressional Democrats off guard…which indicates to me that this is a trial balloon. All of this, of course, is geared towards positioning Obama for his 2012 re-election effort. It is pretty much a certainty that no major reforms will take place right now – everyone is just going for position.

We Republicans have to be careful here – the fact that entitlement reforms are even being so much as mentioned is a good thing. The plain fact of the matter is that without entitlement reform, no budget plan will really solve our problem – at best, any other reforms will just put off the day of reckoning, and likely make it worse when it finally gets here. We need to tackle this – and if Obama is going to start talking about it, so much the better. But keep in mind that he won’t be serious about it…he’ll just want to talk about it, hoping that we GOPers will then trip ourselves up and he can present himself as both a deficit hawk and a savior of Social Security. In the matter of Social Security and other entitlements, our tactic should be to smoke out the President…don’t let him get away with platitudes about reform; force him to actually put something concrete on the table…something we can either incorporate in to real reform, or ridicule as damaging.

In this, our best tactic is to lay out generalities of our own but not commit ourselves to any specific action plan on entitlements until we at least have something solid from the President. As he is dishonest and only interested in getting re-elected, this will be difficult. He will put things off, make mealy-mouthed statements and, in general, do everything he can to vote “present” on the most important fiscal issue facing us. Naturally, he’ll want to put us in a bad light and, even more naturally, take credit for any worthwhile ideas and legislation which comes out of it. Caution, caution and more caution is necessary for us in the debate over entitlements.

On the other hand, we should get out in front of the President on taxes – and we can’t do that by just automatically condemning a tax increase proposal. We all know that a tax increase on incomes over $250,000 is not a tax on “the rich” – we know, that is, that such a tax is a tax on the most productive and economically worthwhile Americans. But as Obama will cast it as “the rich” and the MSM will endlessly say it is “the rich”, we have to live with the public perception that “the rich” are the only people being taxed…most people don’t make more than $250,000 a year and so in a lot of public minds, “the rich” will become “Bill Gates”, rather than the real target: the local plumbing contractor who grosses $800,000 a year and employs half a dozen people. We have to answer this, and “no new taxes” is not the best way to go.

Showing our willingness to compromise and our understanding that all must make sacrifices in order to get us out of this fiscal mess, we should make our rejoinder – we know that we need more revenues, and thus we are proposing a tax on wealth. Temporary; sunsetted after 3 years, but a tax none the less. It would be a 10% annual tax on wealth (cash, government bonds, commodities, property; but not stocks or private sector bonds) in excess of $5 million dollars. You have a fortune of, say, $1 billion? We’re taking $30 million of it. Sorry – but, please note, if it is in stocks, we won’t…if its just sitting around earning you money off taxpayer dollars (which is what government bonds do) or locked up in your mansion or just sitting in a cash account, then we’re grabbing it. Put it to work in the private economy, and it is safe. Now, why would I want this? I mean, other than having a law which pretty much forces investment in the private economy as opposed to parking it in government bonds or gold?

Because it allows us to play the class-warfare card against the Democrats as well as gets us off the hook for being perceived as pro-rich. You want to tax the rich? Fine – but we’re going to really tax the genuinely rich. Not the hard working small business owner, but the bazillionaire…and, most especially, the bazillionaire who is bankrolling a lot of leftist causes. The dirty, little secret of the super rich is that when they are not indifferent to politics, they mostly tilt to the left. Only a very few of the Forbes 400 can be classed in any way as conservative. Democrats have been playing class warfare on the cheap – protecting the super-rich who provide so much funding to liberal causes while hammering productive people with taxes…and all the while pretending they are fighting against the rich and their GOP protectors. This will turn the tables on them…imagine the phone call Obama will get from Soros when this is floated! Imagine Republicans being able to get out there on the stump arguing that, yes, the rich do need to pay their fair share…and here is our proposal to do it, and it is in marked contrast to Obama’s plan which would tax people of modest wealth while leaving the very rich alone.

By doing this we would put the Democrats out of their reckoning – they would be hard pressed to come up with a logical reason to oppose it (especially as this would come out after Obama announced his plan to increase income taxes on people making more than $250,000 a year), but their super-rich money-bags will be demanding that this be stopped in its tracks. We’ll be throwing a hand grenade in to their ranks while at the same time cultivating a populist and reasonable profile for ourselves. Keep in mind that liberal rank-and-file types really think that when Obama says “tax the rich” he means the genuinely rich; making such a proposal would sow confusion in liberal ranks as they try to digest the fact that we will tax the super-rich while Obama won’t…and, may, indeed, fight hard against it. And, remember, most of this is about positioning for 2012 – it is, once again, highly unlikely that anything resembling a permanent fix will come out of the upcoming budget debates.

Democrats are working their plan – unite the liberal base, divide the GOP base; Obama figures that a proposed tax hike combined with some rhetoric about entitlement reform will peel off some RINOs and create a rift in the GOP. By answering him back with a tax on wealth while holding fire on entitlement reforms, we’ll be splitting them…and as we would wrap our plans up with a pretty bow of budget cuts to useless spending (and there are bags of that in the government, as we all know), we’ll be uniting our base at the same time.

Anyway, that is my idea – whatever does come out of the leadership, it had better be something smashing and unique. We can’t play by Obama’s rules – we have to make a new set of rules and force him to play on our field. That is the only way we beat him, and beat liberalism in general. Winning in 2012 calls for boldness – for getting out of the political rut; thinking anew and acting anew. Obama is the weakest President in our history; liberalism is a dead ideology – we have to bury it. I’ve presented my shovel to dig the grave of Obamunism – if you’ve got a better, then let’s hear it.

Delighted to find that at least one nation has figured it out – from the Wall Street Journal:

Voters in Iceland have rejected a government-approved deal to repay Britain and the Netherlands $5 billion for their citizens’ deposits in the failed online bank Icesave, referendum results showed Sunday.

With about 90% of the votes counted, the “no” side had 59.1% of the votes and the “yes” side 40.9%. The result reflects Icelanders’ anger at having to pay for the excesses of their bankers, and complicates the country’s recovery from its 2008 economic collapse…

The story goes on to note what happened – during an easy money boom in Iceland, a lot of Brits and Dutch invested money in a high-yield Icelandic bank. These yields were only possible in a massively over-heated economic atmosphere and could only continue as long as a “greater fool” was around to keep buying over priced financial investments. Eventually, the last fool appeared and there was no one in line after him, and Iceland’s economy completely collapsed. So, everyone is out their money – except, of course, for the fact that the United Kingdom and Netherlands used public funds to cover the losses of British and Dutch investors…and now the Brits and the Dutch want the people of Iceland to agree to tax themselves to cover the losses to the investors. The people of Iceland gave an answer to this idea – the first word in their answer begins with “F”, the second word is a possessive pronoun.

It is the same answer we should have given when we were told we needed to bail out the “too big to fail” banks. Or to bail out GM and Chrysler. Or, indeed, to fix up anyone who loses money in an investment. An investment is by its very nature a risk – you are looking to increase your money supply without having to do actual work and so you invest it in this, that or the other enterprise and hope that it gives you a nice return…but there is always the chance that you’ve invested your money with idiots and you’re going to take it in the shorts. If you do, then there’s no use whining about it. You deal with it, and move on. As is so often said – and so often ignored – if its too good to be true, it probably is.

If someone says “hey, invest with me and I’ll get you a 15% return”, he’s either a con artist, or an idiot, or a combination of the two. He’s playing upon your greed…your wisdom tells you that 6 or 7% is a more than reasonable return and, hey, history shows that you should get that kind of return in a wise investment…shooting for more than that is the equivalent of shooting dice. Which, by the way, is a fine thing to do – as long as you realize that its a gamble (and, additionally, as long as you do it here in Vegas…and, man, we’re hurting out there, so if you’ve got a few bucks…or a couple billion, actually…to blow, come on down!). Essentially, what the banksters did towards the end of the boom is offer us absurd returns on our money and we (or, at least, a lot of us) fell for it. And when it all went belly up, we should have just told the banksters to take their lumps like the rest of us.

Iceland has done this, and I admire them for it. Sure, things will be tight for them…and no one is going to want to lend them a lot of money any time soon. But, who cares? All this means is that Iceland will have to some how struggle through life debt free and have to earn its living by hard work. Hardly a sentence to the salt mines, you know? If only we had that level of courage and wisdom.

HAT TIP: Mish’s