Blogs For Victory

By G. K. Chesterton:

It is something to have wept as we have wept,

It is something to have done as we have done,

It is something to have watched when all men slept,

And seen the stars which never see the sun.

It is something to have smelt the mystic rose,

Although it break and leave the thorny rods,

It is something to have hungered once as those

Must hunger who have ate the bread of gods.

To have seen you and your unforgotten face,

Brave as a blast of trumpets for the fray,

Pure as white lilies in a watery space,

It were something, though you went from me today.

To have known the things that from the weak are furled,

Perilous ancient passions, strange and high;

It is something to be wiser than the world,

It is something to be older than the sky.

In a time of sceptic moths and cynic rusts,

And fatted lives that of their sweetness tire,

In a world of flying loves and fading lusts,

It is something to be sure of a desire.

Lo, blessed are our ears for they have heard;

Yea, blessed are our eyes for they have seen:

Let thunder break on man and beast and bird

And the lightning. It is something to have been.

If J Street has its way, he will – from P J Tatler:

There is a great deal of speculation that in the wake of the bin Laden’s killing President Obama might try to curry Arab favor by striking out at Israel. There are some reports the President will do just that in a special Middle East address planned for delivery at the State Department on Thursday.

The reports are that the President will issue new demands upon the Jewish state to unilaterally withdraw to 1967 borders and make other concessions in the name of the peace process. This prospect was stoked by an article in the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth, which was reported yesterday in the Tatler by colleague Bryan Preston.

Now it appears pacifists in Israel and the left leaning J Street organization are anticipating such a call and pushing for it with an ad campaign that will include a full page ad in the New York Times on the eve of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Washington visit scheduled for next week. Over the years there have been numerous reports the President’s advisers have regularly briefed J Street leaders in advance on the President’s Middle East policy…

Remember that “1967 borders” means that the Golan Heights go back to Syria, and the “old city” of Jerusalem goes to the Palestinian leadership…which recently made up with the terrorists of Hamas under the auspices of a soon-to-be-Moslem-Brotherhood Egypt. Israel, back against the wall, fought a series of wars against extremely long odds and won a bit of security for herself…and she is to surrender all of this in return for a vague promise that such a capitulation will bring peace. There is a word to describe this, and it begins with “bull”.

The only thing such a move would do is whet the appetite of the Islamists for even more. The reason for all the rocket attacks, suicide bombings, having kids throw rocks at soldiers – all of the effort has been directed at just this goal: getting Israel to surrender the gains of 1967 in preparation for further attacks on Israel, proper. The Islamists don’t want Jerusalem – they want Tel Aviv. Remember, to an Islamist, once a bit of territory becomes Islamic, it remains Islamic for all time to come. This is why they still claim Spain as part of Islam – and they were forced out of that country more than 500 years ago.

I hope this is just a rumor and that Obama won’t go down this path – but he’s horrendously inexperienced in these matters and simply does not understand the mendacity and savagery at the bottom of Islamism. These are not people you can get along with – these are people you can only fight until they are so badly beaten that they’ll take peace on any terms…then you can be generous with them, but not before. A mis-step here by Obama will set a bad course for the next 20 years…I pray he doesn’t take it.

Hey, everyone, I’m going to be light on the blogging from Thursday evening until at least Saturday morning. Matt and Leo will pick up a bit of the slack, but for there might not be as much new content over the next couple days as you’ve come to expect. Sorry about this, but just have a lot to do.

By Sunday, for sure, we’ll be back to our normal blogging. Thanks for your patience.

Seems like this is a regular feature among American foreign policy elites – the latest entrant, Jim Jones, as reported at Politico:

Nearly 64 years after Harry Truman laid out the case for reconstructing Europe’s economies, in a speech that became known as the Marshall Plan, few diplomatic, economic and foreign policy accomplishments have garnered such residual feelings of goodwill and accomplishment in the United States.

Now, days ahead of President Obama’s major address on the Middle East, former national security adviser Jim Jones, a well-respected voice in foreign policy circles, is suggesting that his vision should include a new Marshall Plan for emerging democracies.

“From my perspective, it may be time to consider a bold idea which would demonstrate our welcome to the new Egypt by considering a type of Marshall Plan for emerging democratic states like Egypt and which young Egyptians are trying to form,” Jones said at the National Press Club on Monday…

This just ignores reality – a common failing among those who wish to expend taxpayer funds in grandiose plans for reform. The Marshall Plan wasn’t a model – it was a one-off thing which cannot be repeated. The reason for this is quite simple: in post-World War Two Europe, the buildings had been blown to pieces but the economic and social skills of the people remained intact.

You see, while we had blasted the German economy in to tiny, little pieces, the German worker was still there – and among the most highly skilled in the world. Furthermore, and almost never noted, is the fact that the Germans retained a great deal of their peace-time productive capacity. The machine tools they had used to make consumer goods pre-war weren’t destroyed in the war – they were carefully stored. Adding a bit of money just allowed the tools to be placed in factories, married to excellent workers and, presto!, economic “miracle”. Additionally, even though the Germans had just emerged from a 12 year Nazi nightmare, they retained the capacity to obey reasonable laws and to conduct business without rampant corruption in business and politics. All of this – the productive potential, the marketable skills, the respect for law – is absent not just in Egypt, but throughout almost the entirety of the Third World. Pouring money in to such places will just be to pour it down a black hole – they and we will get nothing from it.

The problems of the Third World (which still very much includes China; don’t buy idiot stories of their becoming globally dominant) are not intractable, but they are not amenable to rapid solution. It will be a century before they’ll obtain what Thomas Sowell calls the “human capital” to make a free market, democratic society fully functional – and that is only if they start now and work at it. And, initially, we can fully expect them to screw it up time and time again. Our job is to merely encourage those who want to get on the right path and advise those who want to go the wrong way that crossing us will eventually just give the local undertakers a bit of work.

This doesn’t mean money cannot be spent, but it should not be spent with a mind towards ushering in a golden age. If we can just moderate the fanaticism a bit; if we can just give a little leg up to reasonable people; if we can alleviate the most grinding of poverty, we’ll have done all we reasonably can. It is time for people to wake up and realize that the very concept of a government coming in and making a people well is a myth – a falsehood based upon the ultimate liberal falsehood that Man can be made perfect by the actions of men.

Yeah, that’s it – and when we’re done with that, we beat puppies to death with tire irons.

This is what we’ll contend with all through 2010 – the most nauseating lies you can imagine. Facts don’t matter – Democrats are desperate to hold on to power and if they can win by scaring people with the Big Lie, they’ll do it.

Get ready for it, and get ready to fight back.

Seems that Obama only likes lap dogs in the media – from Boston Herald:

The White House Press Office has refused to give the Boston Herald full access to President Obama’s Boston fund-raiser today, in e-mails objecting to the newspaper’s front page placement of a Mitt Romney op-ed, saying pool reporters are chosen based on whether they cover the news “fairly.”

“I tend to consider the degree to which papers have demonstrated to covering the White House regularly and fairly in determining local pool reporters,” White House spokesman Matt Lehrich wrote in response to a Herald request for full access to the presidential visit…

The rule is that if The One is coming to town, only he can have front-page treatment…

So, liberals, what say you about this chicken attitude on the part of Obama?

From Katie Pavlich at Town Hall:

An extensive new study conducted by Timothy Conley from the University of Western Ontario, Canada Economics Department and Bill Dupor of Ohio State University Economics Department, shows the trillion dollar boondoggle known as the stimulus bill, which President Obama has credited over and over again for “saving and/or creating” thousands of jobs, actually killed 1 million private sector jobs.

This paper uses variation across states to estimate the number of jobs created/saved as a result of the spending component of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). The key sources of identification are ARRA highway funding and the intensity of state sales tax usage.

We estimate the Act created/saved 450 thousand government-sector jobs and destroyed/forestalled one million private sector jobs…

The story goes on to note how State and local governments used the stimulus money to prevent layoffs of government employees – using it, that is, to plug gaps in State and local budgets caused by declining tax revenues. The problem, of course, is that government jobs don’t create wealth – they don’t, that is, create the basis for self-funding, as a private sector job does. Pretty much the whole stimulus program was worthless as far as economic growth goes…and will probably be rated as destructive because it piled on more debt in an already bankrupt nation.

Additionally, by taking money out of the private economy and funnel in it through the government rat-hole, the stimulus prevented the creation of private sector jobs. There really is only so much money to go around and every cent in government hands is a cent not in private hands. If people are putting their money in to government bonds being sold to repave an existing highway (which is all we in Nevada ever saw from the stimulus), then it isn’t being invested in a man who wants to start or expand a business. Unionized government employees continued to draw their paycheck (and pay union dues to be used for Democrat campaigns), but that doesn’t have anywhere near the economic power of someone starting a new business. You pave a road, you get a paved road – you start a business, and you might create dozens of jobs which never existed before.

Ronald Reagan said that government isn’t the solution, it is the problem – and here’s your proof.

From My Fox Boston:

A new bill on Beacon Hill would ban parents from engaging in sexual relationships within the home until their divorces are final.

Supporters say the bill is meant to prevent domestic violence and shield children while the divorce is underway.

Critics say it takes away parents rights…

Yeah, I’ll say – now just imagine if this were being proposed in Texas? Of course, no one – or, at least, no conservative – would ever propose such a thing. This is because, contrary to liberal opinion, conservatives don’t particularly care what a person does in his or her bedroom. But I guess our liberals just couldn’t stand it – here was this one area still without a government regulation on it…and, off they go. Just wait until they figure out a way to tax it!

You can only beat your head against the liberal brick wall for so long – from The Hill:

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) announced Tuesday that he would pull out of the talks with two other Republican and three Democratic colleagues.

Coburn said the talks have collapsed over the tough issue of entitlement reform.

“We can’t bridge the gulf of where we need to go on mandatory spending,” Corburn said Tuesday afternoon. “I don’t see that there’s going to be any fruition in continuing them at this time.”…

Good thing, too – these groupings of Democrats and Republicans almost invariably produce a liberal outcome. Better to just state our case while they state theirs, and let the people decide. The people are on our side, anyways, so we should enjoy this fight.

The bottom line for the budget is that it must be cut – and to cut the budget without entitlement reform is pointless. Entitlements are what is bankrupting our nation; we need to find a way to ensure benefits at a lower long-term cost. If we don’t, then we’re fiscally doomed.

I’ll never, ever buy another GM product, again (and I’ve got two of them in the driveway right now) – from PJ Tatler:

…In late 2010, General Motors agreed to sponsor a propaganda film celebrating the 90th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The CCP made film titled (translated to English) “The Birth of a Party” or “The Great Achievement of Founding the Party” is set to premiere all over the Communist nation on June 15 reported China AutoWeb last September. The auto website adds:

“According to an announcement posted on Shanghai GM’s official web site yesterday, whose title reads “joining hands with China Film Group, Cadillac whole-heartedly supports the making of the Birth of a Party…”

Tens of millions of people have been murdered by China’s communist regime. To this very day the Chinese government is horribly repressive – and corrupt, in to the bargain. Doing business in China, at all, is wrong…celebrating the spawning of the Chinese Communist Party is simply depraved.

Cut GM off – demand every cent of taxpayer money back right this instant – and I hope it forces GM in to immediate bankruptcy and liquidation. GM has dishonored itself and insulted not just the United States of America, but every American who has ever fought for freedom.

Just absolutely disgusting.