This is what happens when liberals are left in charge for too long:

Swift and severe changes are coming to Detroit Public Schools.

State education officials have ordered Robert Bobb to immediately implement a financial restructuring plan that balances the district’s books by closing half of its schools, swelling high school class sizes to 60 students and consolidating operations…

Detroit, it must be remembered, was once upon a time the richest city in America – perhaps the richest city in the world. It was a first class city where the job got done…and then liberals took over. After decades of taxing and regulating business out of the city and buying votes with welfare of various types, the city is now a hollowed-out shell of itself. A place where there are serious proposals to consign a third of the city to criminal gangs…and now, closing half the schools.

Liberalism is entirely destructive because it refuses to understand that the family is the center of our civilization – unless your policies are geared towards preserving the family, all you do will end up badly. And preserving the family is not just a social matter, it is also a matter of what sort of taxes and regulations you place upon business…because for a family to live, it must have a place to work.

Getting rid of liberalism will be a liberation akin to winning the Civil War.

Well, because if we win there, the left loses everywhere – from Politico:

…If Walker, who is trying to curb collective-bargaining rights, and Christie, who is attempting to overhaul teacher tenure, manage to succeed, they’ll only embolden their counterparts elsewhere — and potentially do grave damage to what is one of the Democrats’ most important financial and grass-roots constituencies. Florida Gov. Rick Scott and Ohio Gov. John Kasich, among other Republicans, are watching carefully, bracing for similar showdowns.

Much of the attention in Wisconsin is devoted to Walker’s proposal to strip state employees of the right to bargain collectively for anything besides their pay and to make them pay more for their health care and pensions.

Yet another element of the legislation could have even greater political consequences. The Republican would end the automatic deduction from their workers paychecks and make the unions collect the dues themselves, a move that would almost surely result in less cash flowing into labor coffers. It would block unions from collecting money from consenting wokers’ paychecks for political operations, and it would force annual elections on whether state workers even want a union, a lethal threat to public-sector labor…

And that, my friends, is what this is really about for the left – raw, political power. Remember, if this law is not passed, 10 to 12,000 public sector employees could be laid off. Wisconsin kids are losing many days of education. The unions are suffering a public relations catastrophe over this. So, why are they keeping it up? Because if the public sector unions lose their ability to game the political system, the jig is up for Democrat party and the larger political left – there will be, at that point, no large, powerful interest group determined to defend Big Government…the whole reason for existence for the Democrat party would evaporate, and the political left would have few means remaining to insert leftist dogma in to America via back room deals and regulatory fiat.

They will fight this tooth and nail – if they fail in Wisconsin, they’ll just carry it on elsewhere. They’ll force Obama to defend them. They just won’t quit, because they can’t. This is the Ruling Class at bay, and they won’t go quietly.

Of course this is also our grand opportunity – our chance, and maybe our only chance, to really kick out the support for Big Government. This is our chance to change the dynamic from an endlessly expanding government to a continually shrinking government. The future, as far as I can see it, looks good right now.

UPDATE: And when I say they’re mad, I mean they are really mad. Unfortunately, they are stupid, too…as these dimwitted yet angry posters show.

And so this story really got me interested – from Zero Hedge:

We thank Sean Corrigan of Diapason Securities for bringing our attention to the MIT Billion Price real time inflation Index (first reported here) who points out that based on the ongoing surge in prices, which have increased by 1.25% in the last 45 days (December 31, 2010: 101.085, February 14, 2011: 102.353), a simple annualization indicates a 10.6% increase in prices in 2011!…

As I was pumping that gas – which worked out to $10 for three gallons – I wondered if anyone in government is paying attention? I mean, seriously, does Bernanke or Obama not realize it is happening? Or is it that they don’t care that it is happening? If gasoline prices, alone, keep rising as they are then we’ll be at $4 a gallon long before summer…and that will crush our economy as bad as a similar price spike did in 2007. And keep in mind that the really bad effects of such a jump won’t hit for months…in other words, won’t hit until the 2012 election campaign is heating up. You’d think that this sort of knowledge would concentrate their minds a bit.

It could be, of course, that pretty much our whole Ruling Class is out to lunch on this – haven’t seen a lot of GOPers harping on the issue, you know? But for those of us who have had a net decline in purchasing power over the past couple years, such a price rise is devastating…and the lower you go down the economic scale, the bigger the hit. Ruling Class types who have had either stable or increasing pay just might now be seeing it…especially as so many of them probably don’t even fill their own tanks up (but we do – a friend of mine was “fired” by his wife from grocery shopping because he was spending too much money….we’re all now just waiting for her first trip to the store in years and bracing for the results of sticker shock; all sorts of my favorite foods remain unbought by me these days unless they are on special).

Catastrophe is creeping up on us – and I bet it will be “unexpected” in the headlines and economic “experts” will say that the crash came out of nowhere and that no one could see it coming…

From Bloomberg:

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s party suffered its worst defeat since World War II in Germany’s richest state, losing control of Hamburg in the first of seven state elections this year that threaten to limit her scope to tackle Europe’s debt crisis.

The result in Hamburg, the city-state of Merkel’s birth, underscores the challenge she faces trying to balance public opposition to bailouts for debt-wracked states against pressure from investors and fellow euro countries to lead the way in stemming the debt contagion. She faces three more state ballots next month on either side of a March 24-25 European Union summit called to form a comprehensive plan for the crisis…

Keep in mind that the German economy is doing pretty well right now – Merkel, unlike our President, decided that spending a bazillion dollars on “stimulus” wasn’t the way to go…so, Germany is completely out of recession. Furthermore, in the overall good German economy, Hamburg is experiencing a boom – and the people of Hamburg really have no one but Merkel’s Christian Democrats to thank for this happy state of affairs…and yet the Christian Democrats were buried 21.6% to 48.5% by the leftist Social Democrat Party. Its the worst showing by the CDU in Hamburg since 1946.

Germans, I guess, are tired of having their hard work, careful savings and rational banking system being used as a piggy bank for their profligate neighbors in the European Union. And, in the end, why should Germans vote to tax themselves to bail out people who were just living fat without doing the work? This is a bit of a watershed for post-war Europe – since WWII, the Germans have been extremely eager to prove that the past is over and Germans are good Europeans. In large measure, they have succeeded at this…Germany is an integral part of the world community. But it has come at a price – and that price is proving too high financially for the German people.

The problem is that without free flowing cash from Germany, the whole scheme of bail outs in the European Union is entirely unworkable. Of course, it never was workable to begin with…but with the Germans all in with their stellar credit rating, it seemed like bail outs might work. If the Germans are to back away from more bankster bail outs then no one out there is going to believe that France can be a pillar of financial propriety. We’ll see how this plays out, but this could spell ultimate doom for the European Union as a financial entity.

From the Guardian:

Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi will fight attempts to unseat him until “the last man standing,” one of his sons said on Sunday after days of protests reached the capital.

At least 233 people have now been killed since unrest started last week, Human Rights Watch said, making Libya’s uprising one of the bloodiest to have erupted in the Arab world over the past two months…

From what I can gather from the news, a civil war is shaping up in Libya, with the eastern part of the country effectively out of the control of Gaddafi’s regime. Violence is breaking out everywhere and Gaddafi’s hired goons seem to be using extreme force where ever they can.

I have to say, nothing would give me more satisfaction than to see Gaddafi’s regime go down – and him face the justice of his long-oppressed people. For most of my life, I’ve seen the Gaddafi regime just go from bad to worse. Justice is some times slow, but it always arrives in the by and by…and this may be Gaddafi’s last stand.

UPDATE: Good news! Our State Department is “gravely concerned“. Only 6 more steps before they get to “worried”!

UPDATE II: A liberal friend of mine got a bright idea – contact the State Department and urge them to work against Gaddafi getting asylum anywhere…probably a quixotic effort, but some times you just have to lay down the marker no matter what comes of it.

From the AP:

Jittery Chinese authorities wary of any domestic dissent staged a concerted show of force Sunday to squelch a mysterious online call for a “Jasmine Revolution” apparently modeled after pro-democracy demonstrations sweeping the Middle East.

Authorities detained activists, increased the number of police on the streets, disconnected some mobile phone text messaging services and censored Internet postings about the call to stage protests at 2 p.m. in Beijing, Shanghai and 11 other major cities…

Rebellion won’t, at the moment, get anywhere in China – the Chinese government is still too strong and has too much experience in oppressing the Chinese people. But as China gets further and further in to acute economic crisis – and rising food prices – tensions will rise and all bets will be off. Whether this will take days or months to develope remains to be seen…but China is about to enter a period of crisis.

Fundamentally, an unfree nation cannot have long-term economic success. It just isn’t possible to free up an economy while leaving a people unfree. China has had what looks like success in this effort, but all that has really happened in a select group of people have been allowed to rake off enormous profits on the backs of the overwhelming majority of the Chinese people. The Chinese economy isn’t so much free as it is gangsterized…everyone who pays protection to the Chinese government gets to rip off everyone else (including us in America, as it turns out). The inconsistencies of the Chinese economy are now starting to rip it to shreds and only genuine economic and political liberty can fix what is going wrong…but that would mean the end of China’s current ruling class.

And they didn’t do anything about it – from Oregon Live:

Three days before the Nov. 2 election, U.S. Rep. David Wu’s most loyal and senior staffers were so alarmed by his erratic behavior that they demanded he enter a hospital for psychiatric treatment.

Their concern had been spiking for weeks in tandem with the Oregon Democrat’s increasingly unpredictable performance on the campaign trail and in private. He was loud and sometimes angry, some of them told The Oregonian. He said kooky things to staff and — more worrisome with a tough election fast approaching — around potential voters and donors…

It is clear when you read the rest of the article that Mr. Wu is suffering some rather severe mental problems – he needs, and needed, counseling of varied types…probably psychiatric, certainly spiritual. But here’s the thing – as Mr. Wu went ever more clearly ’round the bend, his Democrat staffers never thought to inform the voters that the man they were preparing to re-elect was not fit to hold the job of Representative! In other words, winning the race and keeping power for Democrats was rated more important than the people of Mr. Wu’s district or the health of Mr. Wu!

Nothing has better illustrated the Democrats’ lust for power and willingness to set aside everything – even basic, human decency – in the pursuit of it. From what I can tell, none of this leaked to the press pre-election – not so much as a whisper, and towards the end when Mr. Wu became very erratic, they just took him off the campaign trail and apparently crossed their fingers and hoped the Democrat advantage in the district would carry them through (which, in the end, it did). This is disgusting on a lot of levels.

But it is also what we have to deal with: people who are absolutely power mad. People who will do just about anything to stay at the public trough. Keep that in mind as we head in to 2012.

Ann Althouse got this:

The doctor is admitting that he’s giving out medical excuse notes regardless of whether a person is actually sick – he should lose his license, any teacher or other government employee who used the notes should be fired. We can’t have this sort of thing – it is never, ever justified to lie in the course of official business.

UPDATE: Herman Cain at the TEA Party rally

I like this guy; he’s really good.

From Zero Hedge:

A recently released report by the World Bank’s Food Price Watch confirms that rising agricultural products are sharply pushing up global food prices in lower-income nations (see “World food price uncertainty presents social risks,” in AsiaNews, 4 February 2011), especially among the poorest (where the poverty line is defined as US$ 1.25 per person per day).

The WB’s global food price (GFP) index increased by 15 per cent between October 2010 and January 2011, 29 per cent above its level a year earlier. The global prices of wheat, maize, sugar and edible oils especially saw sharp increases. According to the WB estimates, an additional 44 million people fell into poverty…

This is caused by governments around the world printing money like mad – not just in the United States, but almost everywhere. All of this money printing was done to sustain a global financial system which collapsed in to complete bankruptcy in 2008…and which is just as bankrupt now as it was then. The financial system will stay afloat just as long as the free money keeps flowing form central banks – but as long as that money keeps flowing, the poorest of the poor will suffer.

And, in the end, it won’t work. Eventually, all the attempts to sustain the financial system will fail because the problem is just too much debt – the global credit card isn’t maxed out, it is massively over limit. The debt cannot be repaid – not in any time frame which makes it reasonable. The only way to get out of the mess is by default – and the resultant economic depression which will allow all assets to sink in price to their actual value. This will be painful no matter how we do it – but it will be more painful the longer we put it off by printing money…and those who are in the worst condition (ie, some poor man trying to live on $1.25 a day – you just go ahead and try that!) will feel it first, deepest and for the longest time.

This is the end of a fiat-money based, usury-driven economic model – a model which wise people warned about more than a century ago. This is not some deep, dark secret – anyone with a bit of knowledge understands – and has always understood – that you can’t borrow your way to wealth; that money printed up by central banks without any hard backing is destructive; that only hard work, savings and careful investment can build long term, sustained growth.

The latest from Bahrain, where it looks like the government blinked after an attempt at bloody suppression – from Al Arabiya:

Anti-government protesters in Bahrain swarmed back into a symbolic square on Saturday, putting riot police to flight in a striking victory for their cause and confidently setting up camp for a protracted stay.

Crowds had approached Pearl Square in Manama from different directions, creating a standoff with riot police who had moved in earlier to replace troops withdrawn on royal orders. Suddenly police raced to their buses, which drove away mounting kerbs in their haste to escape…

Meanwhile, there is a report that Libyan security forces have killed many in Benghazi; more worries about continued instability in Egypt; demonstrations in Syria and Djibouti; anti-government protesters shot in Yemen…the lid has definitely been torn off in the Moslem world. What will come next?

Impossible to say, but I doubt it will be a lot of good things. Fortunately our crackerjack State Department is on the job…oh, wait…

UPDATE: What do the Moslem Brotherhood types want? Ayaan Hirsi Ali explains:

‘Allah is our objective; the Prophet is our leader; the Quran is our law; Jihad is our way; dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.” So goes the motto of the Muslim Brotherhood.

What’s extraordinary about this maxim is the succinct way that it captures the political dimension of Islam. Even more extraordinary is the capacity of these five pillars of faith to attract true believers. But the most remarkable thing of all is the way the Brotherhood’s motto seduces Western liberals…