Blogs For Victory

Secession is the Answer Update

September 4, 2013Mark Noonan2 Comments

Yet another move to bring rationality to American politics:

The Siskiyou County Board of Supervisors voted 4-1 this afternoon to pursue seceding from California.

More than 100 people packed the supervisors’ chambers late this morning for a discussion on whether the county should issue a declaration that it wants to secede from the state. Nearly all those in attendance appeared to be for the move…

Siskiyou County is a rural county in northern California which has zero effective representation in both the California legislature and the United States Senate…both places merely representing coastal/urban California with no thought to the rest of the State. The country is burdened by taxes and regulations written by the coastal/urban areas which bear little relation to the needs and aspirations of the people of Siskiyou. The only way these people can get representation is to have their own State and send their own Senators to DC.

More and more of this is what we need.

It is Time for a Conservative Anti-War Movement

September 3, 2013Mark Noonan38 Comments

As the Ruling Class circles the wagons around Obama and determines upon war in Syria to pull Obama’s bacon out of the fire, the question becomes: what can we do? My answer: start an anti-war movement.

To be sure, the anti-war movement in the United States has heretofore been the province of leftists – and very often the most kooky of leftists. The left’s anti-war activity has tended towards being anti-American in effect – and more commonly anti-GOP, because we see how invisible it is now that a liberal Democrat is proposing war. But just because leftists kooks have been anti-war that doesn’t mean that being anti-war is wrong, provided your being anti-war for sensible reasons.

War is a terrible, cruel and nasty business and should be avoided if at all possible. Some times it is, however, necessary. War will come when it comes – and there may even come times when it is necessary for us to start the war. But what we have here in Syria is a war that isn’t coming to us and which we have no need to start. The United States is not threatened. US allies are not threatened. The two sides in the Syrian civil war are equally bad – think of it like the Spanish civil war of the 1930’s where communists and fascists battled it out. What possible good would US intervention have done back then – we’d have either midwifed a communist or fascist dictatorship. In Syria, we can back Assad’s hideous regime, or back the al-Qaeda-like rebels. No good.

The problem we have today started a long time ago – when Truman criminally hurled us in to the Korean War without obtaining Congressional approval. That is when the war-making powers of Congress first began to atrophy. These days, we have plenty of people – including some who are not at all dumb – saying that the President has authority to launch military action in Syria based upon his powers as Commander in Chief. That is an absurd reading of the Constitution – but it is entirely in line with practice over the past 63 years. A conservative anti-war movement must have as its goal the reform of this pernicious doctrine – we must return war-declaring power to the Congress.

While getting 100,000 people in to DC by Monday next might short-circuit this war in Syria, I doubt much that such a crowd can be gathered on such short notice. Looking for the longer term, we should be seeking a law which will specifically prohibit the expenditure of defense funds on offensive actions not authorized by Congress (it is the power of the purse which gives Congress its actual power). No money can be drawn from the Treasury without Congressional authorization, so all military expenditures would be covered by a law which says that the money can’t be used for offensive operations until Congress declares war (and it is preferred that it be an actual declaration of war – not an authorization to use force). This would still allow the President to use military force to defend – to defend the United States and our allies. But it would not allow the Syrian strike (nor would it have allowed the Libyan war…and for you liberals out there if you want a piece of this, it would have prevented Panama in 1989 and Grenada in 1983) unless Obama obtains a declaration of war against Syria, first.

This all fits in with the broader, conservative desire to reform government by re-limiting its powers as intended by the Founders. Only a limited government is a free government – and if we don’t stop this sort of thing, we will find ourselves living in an unfree nation very shortly.

Obama Tosses Syria Ball to Congress – Congress Should Vote it Down

August 31, 2013September 3, 2013Mark Noonan24 Comments

Obama found out this last week that just setting a foreign policy isn’t the same as carrying it out. Obama long ago said that use of chemical weapons by Syria would be a “red line” – and then he did precisely nothing to garner domestic and international support for a course of action should Syria cross that red line. When it became alleged that the Syrian government had used chemical weapons (something I’m not at all convinced about – though, of course, the rat bastards who govern Syria are fully capable of such savagery), Obama found himself all alone. After blustering a bit about how we can go it alone and he doesn’t need Congressional authorization, Obama backed down – and passed the buck to Congress.

On the left this is being lauded as a brilliant move – it puts the onus, so it is claimed, on Congress. The idea is that Congress must authorize action – thus getting Obama off the hook for taking an ill-advised action – or bear the blame for refusing to act while Syria’s government murders children with poison gas (amazing how our liberals will still say its all “for the children” while they continue to back abortion which kills millions of children). In the liberal mind, either way this works out for Obama – we’ll either get the military action and Obama is a hero, or the Congress will look like heartless bastards, and the Democrats will put full blame on the GOP for being the leading heartless bastards. I don’t see it that way.

What Obama is asking for is permission to pointlessly lob a few missiles at sites which will be long-since cleared out of valuable targets by the time we act. Such strikes will not alter the course of the Syrian civil war, they will not stop the Syrian government from using chemical weapons and, indeed, will probably encourage further use (nothing encourages aggressors more than a weak response to aggression) and such strikes will do nothing to convince the world that America is a power to be feared. I’d rather take the alleged heat for being a heartless bastard for not acting than bear the odium of participating in a perfectly useless action. The Congressional GOP should vote this down.

If we vote for anything it should be an act which instructs the President to seek an international coalition for dealing with the Syrian crisis with a mind towards thwarting Iranian and al-Qaeda aims in Syria. In short, pass a resolution which calls for a rational foreign policy. In this resolution should be a general authority to use force in defense of the United States and our allies. Throw the ball right back in Obama’s court – he’s the one who made this foreign policy failure, and he should be stuck with trying to clean it up.

UPDATE: The case for war is made here – astonishingly at First Things, usually a place where first-rate thinking is displayed. You can read it, if you like, but the nutshell is that we’d better get a-killing Syrians lest President Obama be shown to be completely ineffectual. Heretofore, I had always rated The War of Jenkin’s Ear to be the most misbegotten war in human history, but this would displace it: we’re to go to war to make the world safe for poltroonery. Because Obama is afraid to lead and at his wit’s end (its a short walk, under the best of circumstances), we’re to send our best and bravest out to kill Syrians in an effort which is to be geared merely to avoid global mockery of Obama.

Sorry, ain’t buying – a great power can survive idiots being in charge, but we can’t survive going to war to cover up for an idiot.

Tell Us Something We Didn’t Already Know!

August 28, 2013August 31, 2013tiredoflibbs10 Comments

Another proggy myth disproven! Of course, the proggy politicians already knew this.

Really all you had to do was look where gun control was in place and see the crime statistics!

Gun Control Reduces Violent Crimes

The proggy drones will be out in force regurgitating the mindless talking points. (Since this posting, they have not – I guess they did not get their marching orders).

In short, as we defenders of the 2nd Amendment have long known, the observable facts simply will not support the strictly emotional arguments of the aping gun grabbers regarding both violent crime and suicide. Interestingly, the study also relates a survey of incarcerated felons that confirms that a criminal’s greatest fear is that his victim may be armed. That certainly makesthe case for a well-armed citizenry regardless of the definition of militia. The fact that the most recent acts of gun violence were conducted in gun free zones (by mentally troubled individuals who should have been in an institution – another leftist barrier), also shows the folly of the left’s mindless arguments.

Regarding “Hate” Crimes

August 27, 2013Leo Pusateri113 Comments

I don’t believe in the concept of “hate crimes.”

There are precious few crimes, especially murders, that are “love criimes.”

In my opinion, the psychological intent or the mind state of the person committing the murder is already summed up in degrees (first degree, second degree, manslaughter, etc).

The reasons for premeditation are immaterial. If the person intended with forethought to visit bodily harm resulting in the death of an innocent person for reasons not related to self defense, that perpetrator committed murder. Period. It is immaterial whether the perp is a racist or whether the perp is Mother Teresa.

To assign an instance of the wanton deprivation of another’s life as more or less severe simply because the perp was a racist or did it out of racial spite is superfluous. Premeditated murder is premeditated murder.

When society assigns the gravity of premeditated murder as dependent on the mind state of the perpetrator, you are now jumping into the realm of THOUGHT CRIMES.

Do we really want to go there?

Unfortunately, there are many on the left who do.

As the George Zimmerman-Trayvon Martin case clearly illustrated, those on the left are more than happy to fall all over themselves in immediately assigning motives of racism and “hate crime” (read: THOUGHT CRIME) status when a fellow-traveller is on the receiving end and a white person (even a ginned-up “White Hispanic” person) is on the giving end.

When one or more of their own is on the giving end, however, not so much. Rare indeed is the case when black on white violence ends up being prosecuted as a “hate crime.”

Which leads me to believe that to a critical mass of our population (not at all exclusively black, mind you, but exclusively “progressive” at any rate), the whole concept of “hate crime” is not borne out of a thirst for blind justice; rather, the concept of “hate crime” seems to serve as a tool to exact revenge on those progressives identify as enemies of their ideology at worst, or as tools to advance their sense of ideology and/or personal political agendae at best.

It looks as though the thugs who murdered Delbert Belton will not be charged with a hate crime.

I’m sure there was nothing but bored love in their hearts as they beat him senseless and took his life.

The Petro Currency System

August 27, 2013August 27, 2013Cluster23 Comments

The reserve currency issue is an issue that should transcend partisan politics, as leaders of both parties have ignored this issue over the years to our country’s possible peril. I want everyone to really think about this issue, because the financial storm that would ensue following the end of our reserve currency status and the eventual collapse of the dollar would make the 2008 housing crisis look like a spring shower. Here’s an excerpt from a 2011 article from CNBC warning of the prospects of losing reserve currency status:

“I think you could see a 25 percent reduction in the standard of living in this country if the US dollar was no longer the world’s reserve currency. That’s how valuable it is.”

That was a comment made back in 2011, and since then we have added a few more trillion dollars of debt, and printed a few more trillion dollars of QE (quantitative easing), “stimulus” money. For those of you unfamiliar with QE – this is a policy that started in 2009 wherein the federal reserve is literally printing and pumping into the economy approximately $80 billion a month, and the mere mention from Bernanke that he was going to slow down the printing presses made the DOW tumble a few hundred points. He quickly backed off that statement. QE is not only used to prime the DOW but it is also used to keep inflation and interest rates in check. In the article, it is mentioned that if the CPI were adjusted for actual economic realities, we would see 5% – 7% inflation on food and energy prices.

Fast forward to 2013. Recent international economic signals do not bode well for the continuance of our reserve currency status:

– China’s subtle dumping of the dollar — using bilateral trade agreements with other developing nations and, more recently, major economic powers like Germany and Japan

– The massive gold-buying spree undertaken by China and Russia — even in the face of extreme market manipulation by JPMorgan Chase and Co. and CME Group Inc.

– The dumping of long-term U.S. Treasuries by foreign creditors in exchange for short-term Treasuries that can be liquidated at a moment’s notice.

– The fact that bonds now are supported almost entirely by Fed stimulus. When the stimulus ends, America’s ability to honor foreign debts will end and faith in the dollar will crumble.

– Blatant statements by the International Monetary Fund calling for the end of the dollar’s world reserve status and the institution of special drawing rights (SDRs) as a replacement.

These bullet points were taken from another excellent article on this issue found here, (hat tip to Spook for sending me this article) and it is a must read. Why the loss of faith in the US dollar? The fact that our government spends approx. $1 trillion more than it brings in, the fact that our government does not work within a defined budget and funds the government from continuing resolution to continuing resolution (CR’s), the fact that our debt to GDP ratio is now 101%, and the fact that there are no imminent signs of financial discipline or restraint by our federal government. This year our federal government is expected to bring in approx. $2.5 trillion in revenue, which would equal an historical high, yet they are spending $3.6 trillion and they say they need more. So the next time you hear a politician say that we need more money for education, and/or more “investment” in infrastructure, know that they are pushing us closer to the brink of financial collapse.

In spite of all of this, I remain the eternal optimist. We can avoid the loss of reserve currency status and the eventual collapse of the dollar but it will require that our elected officials define our nations priorities, put in place a budget that reflects those priorities and operate within it. It will also require that we aggressively act upon the impending economic boom of the 21^st century and that is – energy. We must tap into our domestic crude oil and natural gas reserves to not only fuel our current society, but also to become a net exporter of these resources. That will generate the money necessary to put our country back on sound financial footing, but will also fuel the eventual transition to a new, greener, more sustainable energy platform.

Should We Go to War in Syria?

August 24, 2013August 24, 2013Mark Noonan25 Comments

As the Obama Administration lets on that it is planning US military action against Syria and our forces move in to position we do have to ask, is such a war necessary?

First and foremost, is there any vital US interest at state in Syria? To a certain extent, yes. Syria’s government has long been allied with Iran and has fostered the terrorist group Hezbollah. Destroying the Syrian regime, though, would only be useful if the potential successor regime would no longer be allied with Iran or any other US enemy and/or if such a regime would cease supporting terrorism…given the grab-bag collection of Islamists who make up the bulk of the Syrian opposition, it is almost certain that if they gain power they will continue to support terrorism and if not allied with Iran, would ally with some other enemy country, or countries. Indeed, a successor regime run by the Islamist opposition might even re-ignite Syria’s war with Israel (which has never officially ended).

Secondly, is there a moral demand that we act – some times a nation must go to war even without a vital, national interest at stake simply because there is a vital, moral issue at stake. Given the very nasty brutality of the Syrian regime, there is a moral case to be made for war. Though if we were to move on this, it would smack a bit of hypocrisy because the Syrian government isn’t doing anything it hasn’t been doing for decades, accompanied by a resounding silence on our part. Additionally, the Islamist opposition to the Syrian regime has been engaging in routine brutality of its own – especially, it appears, against Syria’s Christian minority. Given their nature, we can expect an Islamist regime to crack down even harder on Christians, and on any Muslims who don’t live up to the Islamist ideal. Morally, there is no problem with targeting the Syrian regime, but the result of knocking off the Syrian regime is almost certain to be a regime even more horrific.

Overall, the result of a successful military operation against the Syrian regime appears to be something worse than we have now. That Assad is a brute and his regime inhuman is beyond doubt, but given the nature of the opposition, a successor regime would be at least as bad and, perhaps, more destabilizing to the overall region. A tenet of the Just War Doctrine is that the war must not cause a worse situation than currently exists – given the strong arguments against a good result (ie, getting something better than we have now), an argument can be made that a war against Syria does not meet the Just War criteria.

I tend to come down on that side – in Syria, we can’t make a result better than the current state of affairs and our efforts will, indeed, very likely make a worse result. We should, therefor, stay out of Syria. Our goal in this mess should be, instead, to work against overall enemy forces – which include both the Syrian regime and those fighting it. Right now, with Syria wracked by civil war, proper American policy should be to leverage Syria completely out of Lebanon and by so doing also get Hezbollah out. We cannot fix the whole world, but we can take advantage of this situation to help fix a small part of it – Lebanon has been a stomping ground for Syrian imperialists and Islamist terrorists for decades. It has become a standing threat to Israel and the non-Islamist population of Lebanon suffers grave injustice from the Syrians and the terrorist groups. Getting Syria and the terrorists out of Lebanon won’t usher in global peace, but it will help out the Lebanese and the Israelis as well as strengthening the overall US position in the area. We should be doing what we can – directly and indirectly, to clear out Lebanon while sealing off, as far as possible, the Syrian civil war. Once a winner emerges, then steps can be taken depending upon the circumstances.

Welfare Must End

August 21, 2013August 21, 2013Mark Noonan40 Comments

Two things about welfare – first off, a Cato study which shows that in some States you can “earn” more being on welfare than by working a full time, minimum wage job. Then a sensible, liberal critique of Cato pointing out that if Cato gets its way, low wage jobs will go to hordes of immigrants, thus depressing wages even more, in turn making welfare even more appealing. The sensible liberal – Mickey Kaus – also points out that a huge problem of getting people to get off welfare and start working is that, well, working requires work. A lot of our senseless liberals will claim that no one wants to be on welfare – which is complete twaddle because for a lot of people it makes no sense to bust one’s hump working when you can get as much, or a little more, by doing nothing…and even if you get a little less, there’s still the compensating factor of not having to get up in the morning and go to work. I think I can speak for everyone when I say that even those of us who wouldn’t dream of using welfare except in a crisis still wake up, from time to time, and say “good grief; do I really have to go to work today?”. Work isn’t always fun – which is why its called work, rather than play.

The risk we have is that we’re building up a dependent class which has been on welfare so long that they lose all inclination to work and start to build up a sense of entitlement to welfare. A nation can carry on with 10% of the population freeloading, but once you start towards 20 and 30% or more doing it, collapse stares you in the face…and I’m talking civil war, end of the country sort of collapse…because those who do work will increasingly resent having to support those who don’t. We’re at that point – and its time to get off the welfare treadmill to destruction.

The receipt of any aid for a working-age, physically fit person must be dependent upon working, period. We can make it so that for the first month after losing the job or suffering other catastrophic financial loss is covered without having to put back in, but once we get past that first month, the recipient better have a job, or that person will have to be put to work on something in order go give back for what is obtained. I don’t care if its picking up trash around the city or scrubbing graffiti off of walls – something must be done by every able-bodied person. Not full time – we do want them to have the time to seek education, training and new employment – but at least 15-20 hours a week doing the grunt work of society in return for benefits. This is only fair; those who are paying the welfare bills will see that work is being doing and those who are getting the benefits will have the sense of pride which comes with contributing to the overall benefit of society. And those who have to do such work will have a vested interest in getting off such work and in to something which works out better in the long run. We make a deal – if you are in a financial crisis we’ll see to it you don’t starve, you keep a roof over your head, you are clothed and have essential medical care; you’re job is to stop needing such assistance as soon as possible or, lacking that, putting your back in to it a bit for what we give.

And just in case any of you liberals out there think I’m being un-Christian, I direct your attention to 2 Thessalonians 3:10:

In fact, when we were with you, we instructed you that if anyone was unwilling to work, neither should that one eat.

Remember, it is “unwilling” to work – not “can’t find a job”; not “I’m disabled”. You only get stuck in the “neither should that one eat” if you can work and refuse to work. The basic concept here it to return to the truth of the matter: living requires working. No one gets a free ride.

Secession is the Answer

August 20, 2013Mark Noonan27 Comments

From the Washington Times:

You’ve got North Carolina and North Dakota, so why not Northern Colorado?

Voters in several rural Colorado counties will be asked whether they want to form a new state tentatively named Northern Colorado the November election, a reaction to the Democrat-controlled state legislature’s “war on rural Colorado.”

The Weld County Commissioners voted unanimously at Monday’s meeting to place a measure on the Nov. 5 ballot asking voters whether they want the county to join other rural counties in forming another state.

“The concerns of rural Coloradans have been ignored for years,” William Garcia, chairman of the Weld County Commissioners, said in a statement. “The last session was the straw that broke the camel’s back for many people. They want change. They want to be heard.”

Three other rural counties — Cheyenne, Sedgwick and Yuma — also plan to place the 51st state referendum on the fall ballot. At least three more counties plan to consider the proposal this week at their commission meetings, said Jeffrey Hare, spokesman for the 51st State Initiative…

I’ve long argued in favor of this – you see, the government is just not responsive to the people, on the federal or State level. This is especially true in the Western States where the States were created, willy-nilly, when they had tiny populations. Gigantic geographic areas, mostly empty at the time of Statehood, were pushed within State boundaries and since that time, with population growth and economic development, the interests of the various regions of the States have often diverged. More extreme than the Colorado example is the example of California.

There were fewer than 100,000 people living in California in 1850 when it became a State. Most of the State, of course, was completely empty of people. Over the past 163 years, the population has increased to more than 38 million and these people are spread out over the vast territory of the State and have developed lives of their own. California isn’t a unified entity with a strong community of interests – it is a cobbled together grouping of several different communities which, however, are politically dominated by the two largest concentrations of people in the Los Angeles and San Francisco areas. Now, there’s nothing wrong with LA and SF – they are people with a full right to decide for themselves how they want to live…the trouble is that by being in the same State as Victorville and Palmdale, which have vastly different ideas than SF and LA, the people of LA and SF get to dictate to the smaller populations of Victorville and Palmdale. That just isn’t fair – doesn’t matter how Palmdale votes, they will always get a government which adheres to the wishes of San Francisco and Los Angeles. California is not one State – it is four States (at least) forced to live under the domination of one State (the coastal area of California running from Long Beach up to San Francisco).

By breaking up the States along lines of interest, we can have States which reflect the will of their people, broadly speaking, and which take care to protect the interests of the State (no more will northern California’s logging interests be at the mercy of anti-logging San Francisco, for instance). Additionally, by breaking up the States we ensure that representation in the United States Senate more accurately reflects all of the people – right now, both of California’s Senators are from San Francisco and while they heartily and ably represent the interests of San Francisco (and Los Angeles), they aren’t really putting before the United States Senate the interests of the other States currently contained within California’s borders. This break up of the States should also be coupled with increasing the size of the House to at least 601 members – thus making our House representatives more representative of the people.

The one thing I can’t stand is domination of one party by another. People in their localities should pretty much do it as they want, limited only by the strictures of the Constitution. It is way past time that we completely reformed American government to ensure that the local people rule their own lives. Secession is the answer to the problem – by making government smaller and closer to the people, it will be less corrupt and oppressive.