Blogs For Victory

Ok, so here’s the news from Market Watch:

Greece may need a new aid package worth more than 100 billion euros to stay afloat, far higher than what was expected, according to a report Saturday.

In a preview of a story to run Monday, the German magazine Der Spiegel said on its web site that the package — the equivalent of $145.2 billion — could be necessary if the economically ravaged nation continued to rely on foreign aid through 2013 and 2014. That comes on top of the 110 billion euros, or $160 billion, in bailout funds agreed to last year…

There are about 11 million Greeks. To say they need $145 billion dollars means that each Greek – man, woman and child – is to be on the hook for $13,182. Add that to the $160 billion from last year and you get a per-capita debt equal to $27,727 just for the bailouts. How in heck are the Greeks ever supposed to pay that back? Especially since in a year or two Greece will slip in to net population decline? It is just impossible! But here go the banksters and bureaucrats, pretending that this will do the trick. So great is their fear that Greece will leave the Euro…which would probably trigger a string of defaults and the loss of power and wealth for the pinheads who are cooking up this bailout. And here’s the bad news – Greece is easy compared to Portugal and Spain, and both those nations also teeter on the edge of default.

There is no other way out for Greece than to default – the bond holders are going to have to accept a loss, and they should jump on it right now because the longer this goes on, the less they’ll get (ie, as Greece piles on more debt the share for each debt holder in a default will go down). If I were a Greek, I’d be rioting on the streets, too…well, maybe not rioting, but certainly working out plans for a revolution. To be sure the Greeks, themselves, created the mess…too little work, too much government goodies…but if I were Greek I’d never agree to impoverish myself to bail out bankers.

It is time we all learned the lesson – debt is poison. It does no one any good. Now, perhaps, we understand why the Bible condemns usury and calls for a revocation of debts from time to time…and while religious writers over the past thousands of years have always found something wrong with debt. This is not to say that loaning should be banned, but its not something that should be engaged in with a light heart…certainly not for consumer spending or for government except in the most grave, life-threatening emergencies. Let it all default and then just learn the lesson and move on.

From the Daily Mail:

A Gurkha soldier who single-handedly defeated more than 30 Taliban fighters has been awarded the Conspicuous Gallantry Cross by the Queen.

Corporal Dipprasad Pun, 31, described how he was spurred on by the belief that he was going to die and so had nothing to lose in taking on the attackers who overran his checkpoint in Afghanistan.

His gallantry award is second only to the Victoria Cross – the highest honour for bravery in the face of the enemy…

You’d think that it would have been worthy of the Victoria Cross, wouldn’t you?

Tell you what – how about we just put together a mixed unit of Marines, Rangers, Special Forces and Gurkhas and just let them settle out Afghanistan as they see fit…pull out the reporters and bureaucrats and let men deal with it as men should?

Just a suggestion…

At least in housing prices:

The ailing US housing market passed a grim milestone in the first quarter of this year, posting a further deterioration that means the fall in house prices is now greater than that suffered during the Great Depression.

The brief recovery in prices in 2009, spurred by government aid to first-time buyers, has now been entirely snuffed out, and the average American home now costs 33 per cent less than it did at the peak of the housing bubble in 2007. The peak-to-trough fall in house prices in the 1930s Depression was 31 per cent – and prices took 19 years to recover after that downturn…

And it also took a baby boom and a resultant massive demand for new housing to do it. On the whole, we should work on the assumption that the 2007 housing prices will never be repeated – at least, not in a time frame which will matter to anyone 35 and older. While buying a house is a good investment, I would advise – expect in a few markets – against buying a house within the next two to three years. My feeling is that until I see a sustained year-over-year increase in housing prices, we simply have not seen the bottom. And no sweat if you don’t quite buy at the bottom…the way things are going, if you miss the bottom you’re only going to pay, at most, 1 or 2% more than you might have.

The silver lining in this cloud is that once we do hit bottom if we have, in the meantime, reformed our economy towards making, mining and growing things while at the same time instituted genuine financial reform (as regards housing, the most important thing is to forbid the sale of home mortgages between banks and other financial institutions), then the younger people out there will not only be able to buy a decent home at a reasonable price, but won’t be subjected to the temptation to view the home as a piggy bank for endless equity lines of credit.

Because in the end our problem is – yes, you guessed it – moral. We went and got quite immoral about things. We wanted our stuff now. We didn’t want to work and save and then buy…just give us the darn credit card or line of credit and let’s have the latest computer gadget today even though it will be obsolete tomorrow. A poorer but wiser America will, I believe, emerge out of this morass of fiat money, usury and bankster/bureaucrat idiocy…but we won’t be able to get started until we get rid of Obama. So, on to Task Number One.

(Yes, liberals, I know that Obama isn’t the only person responsible for this…it took a century to build up to this collapse. But we on the right learned from the left 2001-09 that each and every thing which goes wrong is entirely the fault of the President…so, turn about is fair play.)

From the Washington Times:

Crossing party lines to deliver a stunning rebuke to the commander in chief, the vast majority of the House voted Friday for resolutions telling President Obama he has broken the constitutional chain of authority by committing U.S. troops to the international military mission in Libya.

In two votes — on competing resolutions that amounted to legislative lectures of Mr. Obama — Congress escalated the brewing constitutional clash over whether he ignored the founding document’s grant of war powers by sending U.S. troops to aid in enforcing a no-fly zone and naval blockade of Libya…

The GOP resolution giving two weeks for Obama to explain fully what we are doing in Libya passed – the Democrat resolution calling for immediate withdrawal failed, but found 87 Republicans voting in favor of it, along with 61 Democrats. All in all, 91 Democrats voted for one or the other, or both. A stunning, bi-partisan rebuke to the President.

As I’ve said, the reason Obama finds himself in this fix is not because he ordered an intervention in Libya, but because he didn’t seek Congressional approval while at the same time intervening in a manner guaranteed to result in a stalemate. Had he got Congressional authorization then it would be at least a year before anyone in Congress could muster serious support for a withdrawal resolution…and had he intervened with sufficient force at the right time, it would have been over weeks ago, making resolutions for a withdrawal moot.

Our President simply does not understand politics, nor does he understand military operations. This maladroit intervention is going to hang ’round his neck like an albatross from now until the end of his term…which I hope will be January 20th, 2013. He did it all wrong, and now he’s losing support all down the line…because of his boneheaded actions, he’s now someone who is mistrusted in Congress in the use of executive authority, and that weakens him on the world stage. A terrible state of affairs for America to be in.

2012 just can’t get here fast enough.

Seems that San Francisco has a ballot measure coming up to ban circumcision – natural enough for a home of liberal fascism…a place where you can perform oral sex in public, but pretty much everything else is banned. But there is a problem, here – you see, Jews (and Moslems, for that matter) circumcise as a matter of religious practice…and, so, a ban works out as something anti-Jewish. Proponents of the initiative say it isn’t, but a bit of campaign literature put out in favor of the ban indicates otherwise:

Evil looking Jews faced with a nordic super hero. Where have we seen this before? Oh, yeah, in Der Sturmer:

Liberal anti-Semitism? We report, you decide.

(The caption in the Der Sturmer picture goes, “The sword will not be sheathed. The Stürmer stands as ever In battle for the people and the fatherland. It fights the Jews because it loves the people.)

And its an NPR poll, boys and girls – from Life News:

A new poll conducted by Thomson Reuters for NPR, coming after a Gallup survey showing Americans oppose all or most abortions, finds a majority of Americans say having an abortion is wrong.

NPR asked “do you personally believe having an abortion is wrong” and 59.3 percent of Americans polled said yes compared with just 40.7 percent who said no. The youngest age category of those polled, under 35, gave the most pro-life responses with 65.5 percent saying that having an abortion is wrong…

As Lincoln said in reference to slavery – if abortion isn’t wrong, then nothing is wrong. I think this is starting to sink in – after all, you can propagandize all you like about “choice” but the fundamental fact of abortion is that it is a final solution to a temporary problem. It is just unjust – killing an innocent child because the mother and/or the father is an idiot. Let the kid live; put him or her up for adoption…but don’t kill, for crying out loud. That seems to be the growing attitude among the American people.

And do keep in mind that it took decades of relentless education to get us here. The easy way out always seems best – and back in the 70’s the easy way out of growing un-wed pregnancy seemed to be abortion. It was quick, it was easy, it was painless…and the broad majority went along with it when the Supreme Court usurped the rights of the States and of the people to regulate the practice. And, trust me, it looked like it was done, for good – that we would never get back to a nation of Life. Well, those opposed to abortion never lost heart…despite crude propaganda directed against it, the pro-life movement patiently and lovingly kept up the fight, and now the reward is being reaped.

It is probably still the work of another 20 years to get a ban on elective abortion, but its coming that way…life is, after all, a wonderful thing and every person being born is a blessing, not a curse.

From The Hill:

In his speech to the Faith and Freedom Conference today, Jon Huntsman emphatically denounced the idea of a truce on abortion.

“I do not believe the Republican party should focus only on our economic life — to the neglect of our human life.

That is a trade we should not make.

If Republicans ignore life, the deficit we will face is one that is much more destructive. It will be a deficit of the heart and of the soul.”

Smart rhetorical move. He talks in economic terms (“deficit”) about a social issue; thereby, highlighting both…

Indeed, very clever – now let’s see where he goes with this.

Seems that Mark Levin has had enough of conservative criticism of Sarah Palin – especially that being leveled by Charles Krauthammer. The DC Caller has the story:

…”The gentleman points out that Charles Krauthammer who is extremely thoughtful and measured in his words, even-tempered and so forth is all but that when it comes to Sarah Palin and very few of his arguments are substantive.”

However, Levin asked where she is wrong on the issues.

“Maybe there is one or two, but off the top of my head, I can’t think of any significant issue where Palin is not a conservative and where I disagree with her,” Levin said. “Can you?”…

I’ve long been an admirer of Krauthammer. He is one of the most intelligent and perceptive observers we have…but he does seem to have this blind spot about Sarah Palin. And he’s not the only one – plenty of people on the right, especially in the punditry-class, make objection after objection to Sarah Palin. But I’m with Levin on this – there aren’t any substantive criticisms being offered.

The only thing they can really hang their hat on is that Palin is, supposedly, “un-electable”. Well, so was Ronald Reagan. For that matter, so was Barack Obama. Think about it. Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton? Both needed a split opposition in order to have their political carcasses dragged across the finish line. Only a relative few Presidential candidates have ever been “electable” in the sense of there being no particular objection to their election – Dwight Eisenhower, Ulysses Grant, George Washington…everyone else had to have a series of lucky breaks and a lot of opposition errors to get in there. Sarah Palin is no more un-electable than anyone else out there.

This doesn’t mean that Sarah Palin can do it – or that she’ll even try. There is a possibility that she’ll opt to be a political king-maker in 2012 and beyond. There is a lot of advantage for her in such a role – great deal of power and influence without the burdensome responsibility of actually being President. But if she tries then whether she will win or lose won’t be based on a pundit’s estimate of her “electability” but upon how well (or badly) she campaigns combined with how well (or badly) the other side does…and, of course, with a backdrop of the course of events (if we’re sitting at 15% unemployment in October of 2012, Obama is pretty much done no matter what…5% and he’s pretty much re-elected).

If you don’t want Sarah Palin to be President, then tell us why – tell us what policies she is advocating which will be detrimental to the United States. Tell us precisely why you think the voters – 17 months from now – will certainly not decide to award her 270 electoral votes. Tell us why you know she can’t win – don’t just tell us she can’t. And if you can’t build a rational argument against her, then maybe the problem isn’t with Palin, but with you?

From Detroit Free Press:

Dr. Jack Kevorkian — embraced as a compassionate crusader and reviled as a murderous crank — died early this morning.

Known as Dr. Death even before launching his fierce advocacy and practice of assisted suicides, Kevorkian, 83, died at Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, where he had been hospitalized with kidney and heart problems…

If he was in any way sincere about what he did, he would have hooked himself up to one of his own infernal machines and offed himself when it became clear there was no cure…but, no, he died in a hospital, which is where you go when you go when you want someone, some how, to keep you alive. Life being precious, after all.

Kevorkian was a serial killer who worked out a way to do his murders in broad daylight…and received plaudits from the rest of the Culture of Death for doing it. I hope a lesson has been learned here – anyone peddling death and despair is being a wicked mad man, not a hero.

Please offer prayers for the soul of our departed brother – while it may seem impossible that such a man can enter in to glory, with God all things are possible.

From Reuters:

Employers hired far fewer workers than expected in May and the jobless rate rose to 9.1 percent, raising concerns the economy might be stuck in a painful slow-growth mode…

Painful slow-growth mode? How about heading back in to recession? And that is because you can’t borrow and print your way in to real prosperity. Oh, sure, you can make the statistics look like there’s growth going on – but only for a while, and only at the cost of much worse economic times down the road. Government cannot create wealth because anything government does involves the use of wealth already created – depending on how it is used it can be a either an even exchange or a loss, but it can never be a net positive.

Unless and until we institute pro-growth policies – balanced budgets, low taxes, reduced regulations; ie, the creation of a free market in the United States – we will fundamentally get nowhere.

UPDATE: Are we already experiencing Great Depression levels of unemployment?

UPDATE II: For us to return to 2007 levels of employment we will have to create 250,000 jobs per month…until January, 2017. This can, actually, be done – if we go on a bender of making, mining and growing things. Here’s why, as long as Obama is President and liberals have power, we won’t: by “fracking” we’re finding massive, new deposits of oil to exploit in the United States. This falls under both the “mining” and “making” aspects of what we need…we’ll “mine” for the oil and then “make” oil-based products…naturally, liberals are aghast at this and are already working up complaints and lawsuits to stop “fracking”.

Until we get rid of liberalism, we’ll never get going.