Blogs For Victory

What is wrong with our legal system, demonstrated:

Rescue workers in Alameda, California were forced to watch as a man drowned after they realized they could not save him because they did not possess the proper certifications for water rescue required to legally do so.

Had the workers attempted a rescue without the legal certifications, they could have faced lawsuits leading to massive fines and career ending rulings.

The victim was a suicidal man who waded into the waters to take his own life. Onlookers, including police, firemen and other rescue workers were forced to watch from the water’s edge hopelessly.

In fact, because of certifications and laws, rescue workers could not even legally enter the water to retrieve the body after the man had died. The police asked an onlooker to do it for them…

Forced to watch? No, not really – but when you know there are lawyers out there just waiting to sue, it takes a great deal of moral courage to just do the right thing. These are people who watched a man die because they feared a lawsuit…and you know what may happen, now? There is probably already a lawyer out there wondering if he can sue these people for failure to rescue.

Our liberals keep insisting that we dare not provide any tort reform – that if we in any way, shape or form clip the wings of the lawyers then people will lose their rights. How about their right to be rescued when dying? Or the right of people who act in a humane manner when they see suffering? Don’t help that person you’ve found on the street – you’ll be sued! We’ve been warped – normal actions of human beings have become impossible because someone one there will try to make a buck off the tragedy.

Tort reform, now. Most important part – loser pays. I also suggest jail time to any trial lawyer who loses more than two cases a year…if he loses that much, he’s clearly filing frivolous lawsuits and that should be illegal. Really, its a matter of whether or not we’re going to keep allowing ambulance chasers to get rich, or will we have a decent, moral society?

From Rasmussen:

…The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that in a hypothetical 2012 presidential matchup, a generic Republican candidate earns support from 45% of Likely U.S. Voters, while the president attracts 43% of the vote…

The Rasmussen survey here has kind of bounced around of late – Obama a little ahead, Obama a little behind…but no matter how you slice it, Obama is right on the edge were a President can head straight for loser. All it takes is a little more bad news or another Obama screw up, and he can tip over in to “anyone but Obama” territory.

From Bloomberg:

Mark Mobius, executive chairman of Templeton Asset Management’s emerging markets group, said another financial crisis is inevitable because the causes of the previous one haven’t been resolved.

“There is definitely going to be another financial crisis around the corner because we haven’t solved any of the things that caused the previous crisis,” Mobius said at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan in Tokyo today in response to a question about price swings. “Are the derivatives regulated? No. Are you still getting growth in derivatives? Yes.”

The total value of derivatives in the world exceeds total global gross domestic product by a factor of 10, said Mobius, who oversees more than $50 billion. With that volume of bets in different directions, volatility and equity market crises will occur, he said…

You see, we really did need financial reform in the wake of the 2008 meltdown. Unfortunately, liberals are running our government so all we got is a lot of hot air about hitting the fat cats while those same fat cats (who are, often, heavy donors to liberal causes) wrote a financial reform bill which did nothing to address the underlying problems.

There is nothing wrong with buying and selling stocks and bonds. Nothing wrong with trying to work out an investment strategy to maximize returns. There is something wrong, however, in a nauseating mish-mash of government, quasi-government and private actors working together to create financial instruments of no known provenance or worth and then selling and re-selling them in a game of “greater fool” until some piece of financial chicanery called “derivatives” is worth more than all the GDP of the world. I think Mobius is right – we’re going to have another crash. I had thought it would have happened, already. I am astounded they’ve held it off as long as they have…but it will crash. It can do nothing other.

Now, what should we do? Not much we can, at present. With Obama in the White House and Reid running the Senate, genuine reform cannot be enacted. But we should come up with a plan for financial reform which we can run on in 2012…and it would tremendously useful if, come 2012, we have both “I told you so” and “here’s the fix” if the crash happens between now and November of 2012.

The most important part of the fix is to shut down the casino on Wall Street and return it to investing. You might have noted that the economic news was garbage today – and yet the Dow rose 1%. Why? Because the European Union is working out a way to screw the taxpayers and bail out the bankers over Greece’s financial crisis…this pretty much means, at the end of the day, more money printing and this, in turn, caused people to bet on stocks today in hopes of an even higher rise as this goes forward. But we need investors, not gamblers. Investors carefully weigh risks – both long and short term – and try to figure out the way to protect and grow assets. Gamblers look for a quick killing – and they can do it, for a while. Eventually they bet wrong and the whole thing falls apart.

My solution to this aspect of the problem is not to get down in the weeds and, say, ban derivatives or what not. Anyways, even if you did them some gambler would just invent something else to gamble on. The best thing, I think, we can do is to punitively attack the up-and-down, all-through-the-day buy and sell like mad aspect to the markets. Lay a punitive tax on capital gains if a financial instrument is held, say, less than 24 hours. Progressively lower the tax on capital gains the longer it is held. Essentially, you’d force people to think…force them to cease being gamblers and start being investors.

Other things would help. Don’t allow mortgages to be sold; this would force banks to actually underwrite loans because they wouldn’t be able to push the bad paper off to a “greater fool” (which, as it turns out, almost invariably winds up being Uncle Sam). Forbid interest rates greater than 20% on credit cards; this would price out “non prime” consumers…they simply wouldn’t be able to borrow money on credit cards; might piss them off a bit as they can’t buy the new TV, but in the long run it protects them and protects the rest of us. Break up investment and regular banking, as we used to. Also, break up the big banks…a little good, old fashioned Populist GOP trust-busting would be a good thing, here.

The main thing is to understand that our problem is not the free market, nor is it in the fact that some people get rich buying and selling stocks. Our problem is that people were permitted – nay, encouraged! – by government to create all sorts of economic scams which led to the 2008 crash and which are leading us right back there. In order to just pile up personal wealth, some in the financial industry and in government took us for a ride…a ride which ended up at the poor house. If we want to get out of it, then we’re going to have to think about what we want, and then demand it be done…because you can lay bets on it that the banksters and bureaucrats will never do it voluntarily.

HAT TIP: Zero Hedge

From JS Online:

State election officials on Tuesday approved recall elections against three Republican senators but put off decisions on certifying recall petitions against three Democrats.

That decision by the Government Accountability Board drew cries of partisanship from Republicans and set up the possibility that two sets of recall elections would be held a week apart, rather than all on the same day.

“This is an example of a supposedly neutral government agency acting in a blatantly partisan manner to further the objectives of a particular political party,” said Dan Hunt, who led the effort to recall Sen. Bob Wirch (D-Pleasant Prairie)…

No need to get really angry, yet – but this does seem a bit screwy. Over at Hot Air is it noted that some of the GOP petitions arrived prior to the Democrat petitions. So it is extraordinary that all three Democrat recall initiatives are a “go” while all three GOPers are in limbo. Let’s hope it is just a bizarre coincidence. But if it otherwise, then we should get ready to flood Wisconsin with protests – especially if bureaucratic shennanigans kill all three GOP recall efforts (remember, if it is three and three then, more than likely, it’ll be a wash…no change in the Senate majority; but if three GOPers are faced with a massive, all-out leftist effort with no counter-punch by the GOP against the Democrats, then that could be a political game-changer).

We know Democrats cheat. While the Government Accountability Board is supposedly non-partisan, if the majority are Democrats, then the chances of cheating rise exponentially. Since all three Democrat recall efforts have been ok’d, if even one of the GOP efforts is rule out of bounds then there had better be massive and conclusive evidence to show why this should be so. For the moment, it is just a bureaucratic oddity…but we watch and see if becomes the spark for a rising of the TEA Party like no one ever imagined.

You can see the tally here – what does this tell us?

Well, first off, 97 Democrats are absolutely certain they can survive no matter what bit of nonsense they vote for. On the other hand, 82 Democrats fear losing their seats next year and so won’t vote for anything which comes across as either Democrat or Obama policy. These are the seats we should immediately target and start fundraising for – sure, they ducked out on this bit of tax and spend liberalism, but you can bet they haven’t dodged all of it over the years.

Very importantly, every Republican voted against it – which means that we are getting through their thick skulls that deficit reduction is far more important than any manufactured, MSM-driven “crisis” which requires Republicans and conservatives to check their principles at the door. We skill have a lot of knocking them about the head and shoulders before they are thoroughly instructed on what we want, but we’re getting there. No matter what else happens in 2012, it is a worthwhile effort to back these GOPers and do everything we can to increase their numbers.

Most importantly, now both Obama and Reid know that some sort of deficit reduction package will have to be part of the budget – and this is just going to kill them. They’ll hate every minute of it. I mean, think about it: they’ve made raising the debt ceiling a priority for the sole reason that they want to borrow and spend more money…but if we get deficit reduction coupled with a debt ceiling increase, then they now they’re beaten. It won’t matter if we raise the ceiling after cuts – we’ll never hit the ceiling. It won’t be the end of Big Government, but it will be the end of the growth of Big Government (especially as they know that even if Obama gets re-elected next year, Democrats are almost certain to lose the Senate and see an even larger GOP House majority; this was their one, last chance to go on a spending binge, and they’ve lost it).

We’re winning the fight, boys and girls. Slowly but surely and in spite of numerous set backs, things are coming our way. Just keep fighting.

http://videos.mediaite.com/embed/player/?layout=&playlist_cid=&media_type=video&content=QVW38H2DT8L62BQX&read_more=1&widget_type_cid=svp

While having a Free Willy is not necessarily a concern for public policy, it can become so when the owner of the organ in question is an idiot.

Of course, we should note that if Weiner were a Republican, he would have already been forced to resign, by his fellow Republicans…but the party of John Edwards, Eliot Spitzer, Ted Kennedy and Barney Frank is ok with such things…

Barry Rubin writes a sentence to explain what Obama does not understand:

The changes in the region are producing more extremism, not more moderation.

There was a window of opportunity for us. It started when Baghdad fell in 2003 and lasted about a year. Little remembered about that time is how deathly frightened the tyrants of the Moslem world were. For the first time since World War Two the United States was engaged in forcibly liberating nations from tyranny. Afghanistan in late 2001, now Iraq in the middle of 2003. So frightened were these tyrants that Ghaddafi gave up his nuke program, Syrian began to loosen its grip on Lebanon, Pakistan shut down its nuclear arms bazaar and even the Iranian government started speaking in muted tones about the United States. We could have forced through real change – change which would have allowed non-Islamists to rise to power in the Moslem world.

But everyone reckoned without the global and especially the American left. They were even more frightened than the Islamists – they saw not the liberation of peoples but the palpable return of an American supremacy outside any global, leftist control. A damned cowboy and his bitter-clinger Christians in America were going to start doing whatever they wanted! There would be no need for the UN or for NGOs…dimwitted hicks would not seek root causes but would just go on and kill or capture evil doers! The global left could stand this – and, in America, the liberals in control of the Democrat party had an even bigger worry…that success in these efforts would lead to President Bush’s re-election. And so they went after Bush and our effort in Iraq…providing so much negative comment as to work out to pro-terrorist propaganda. And the terrorists took heart in this – certain that just as in Vietnam, the political left in the West would ensure an eventual paralysis of American might.

It didn’t work out quite as well as the left and the Islamists would have liked – they would have preferred that our effort in Iraq had completely failed. President Bush was made of sterner stuff than they figured and in spite of all attacks, he managed to secure victory. But he wasn’t able to follow up the victory with the logical, next step – taking out Iran and/or Syria. Because of this, the Islamists backed by Iran were given a new lease on life…given, that is, the ability to become more powerful and experienced and to trigger and/or take advantage of the massive popular discontent in the Moslem world. Now these Islamists, on the ropes in 2003, are poised to take over Egypt and then country after country in the Moslem world…and all of these emerging Islamist governments will either be tools or at least allies of the Islamists in Tehran.

Obama, as Rubin notes, does not understand this. He and others like him are calling this the “Arab Spring” as an echo of the Prague Spring of 1968…I guess these liberals (a) don’t realize that liberals didn’t lift a finger to help the Prague Spring and (b) that the Prague Spring was an utter failure…it resulted in even more tyrannical government throughout the Soviet bloc. These liberals think that these uprisings are going to result in a new, democratic and peaceful middle east…they would have done so, had they happened in 2004 under direct, American auspices. But they are being done increasingly at the direction of Tehran and associated Islamist groups…they are bent on an anti-democratic, anti-western, anti-Israel line. Under liberal pressure, America abandoned the field of reform in the Moslem world and Islamism stepped right in to the vaccum.

The overall situation is going to get a lot worse and a lot more dangerous before it ever gets better. The good news is that Islamist ideology is false and thus regimes founded on it will fail – just as Iran’s regime is failing even while managing to keep power by means which make Syria look a bastion of sweetness and light. Because of the coming failures of Islamism we will find ways and means we can thwart their aims and direct their people towards real liberty in the long run…but we’ll be a decade or two fixing this mess, and we won’t even be able to start fixing it while a clueless Obama is President of the United States.

And I’m real sorry about that – you see, we must keep historic memories alive, especially when it is about a horrendous, foreign conquer taking over lands which belong to others and then occupying them indefinitely. Over at PJ Tatler, they have quoted an account of the fall of Constantinople on May 29th, 1453:

Nothing will ever equal the horror of this harrowing and terrible spectacle. People frightened by the shouting ran out of their houses and were cut down by the sword before they knew what was happening. And some were massacred in their houses where they tried to hide, and some in churches where they sought refuge. The enraged Turkish soldiers . . . gave no quarter. When they had massacred and there was no longer any resistance, they were intent on pillage and roamed through the town stealing, disrobing, pillaging, killing, raping, taking captive men, women, children, old men, young men, monks, priests, people of all sorts and conditions.

Just as we must set right the “Palestinian nakba” so, too, must we correct the historic wrong done to Byzantium in 1453. I hereby declare that the Jews must give back all lands taken from the Moslems the very moment that the Moslems give back every square inch of Christian lands they occupy.

Fair is fair, right?

This is a gift that keeps on giving – DNC boss Debbie Wasserman-Schultz quoted over at Hot Air:

I think the president was clearly articulating that his position — the Democrats position — is that we need comprehensive immigration reform. We have 12 million undocumented immigrants in this country that are part of the backbone of our economy. And that is not only a reality but a necessity. And that it would be harmful if — the Republican solution that I’ve seen in the last three years is that we should just pack them all up and ship them back to their own countries, and that in fact it should be a crime and we should arrest them all. I mean that was the legislation that Jim Sensenbrenner advanced a couple of years ago.

Yeah, that is just like Republicans – mean and hateful. How dare they want to arrest undocumented immigrants! As if these people had illegally crossed the border, or something!

For sheer stupidity and blind adherence to politically correct idiocy, this is hard to beat. And I really hope the Democrats run with this point of view – please run ads against the GOP telling the American people that the GOP figures that people who illegally came here should pay a price for so doing. In fact, I’ll donate to help cover the costs of running such ads.

There is room for plenty of debate on the illegal immigration issue but there is one thing I’m absolutely certain of: a very solid majority of Americans don’t want amnesty or anything that even hints at it until the border is secure. No matter what else you want to do, until you’ve made it next to impossible to cross the border any proposal for immigration reform will fall on deaf ears. Democrats don’t get this – as the above quote indicates, they think they can scare up the most votes by using rhetoric to hide the fact that we have illegals (calling them “undocumented immigrants”, eg) while at the same time playing the race card (Republicans want to be mean to “undocumented immigrants” because they are racists). This will blow up right in their faces.

While Democrats are self-destructing on this issue, there is one pitfall we GOPers must avoid: becoming a party which blames everything on immigrants. Remember, border security is a matter of simple justice – justice to those who legally come here but also justice for those who are ruthlessly exploited by criminals when they cross the border illegally. The proper, moral, Christian response to this issue is to ensure that the laws are fairly enforced – but always remember that the illegals come here because we have essentially invited them. Illegal immigration is not the fault of the illegals – they are just taking advantage of a loop hole we opened up very wide. The blame for the problem should be laid squarely where it belongs – on a coalition of race-baiting liberals and those corporations greedy for cheap, illegal labor. Place the blame where it belongs, explain where true morality lies and we’ll crush the Democrats on this issue. And we’ll be helped each step of the way by Democrat dunderheads like Wasserman-Schultz.

The world continued to fall apart:

Anti-government protests commenced in Morocco.

Moody’s is set to downgrade Japan’s bond rating.

Greeks, increasingly worried about having to get off welfare, went on a riot.

Chinese stocks fell for the 8th straight trading day.

Yemen protests get increasingly bloody.

Gold surges towards a new high.

European retail sales drop like a rock.

The Euro Dance With Death over Greek finances continues.

All in all, a pretty lousy weekend for the world…glad I decided not to read much news until Monday night.