Blogs For Victory

Very interesting – from the AP:

Some of Iowa’s top Republican campaign contributors, unhappy with their choices in the developing presidential field, are venturing to New Jersey in hopes they can persuade first-term Gov. Chris Christie to run. The entreaty is the latest sign of dissatisfaction within the GOP over the crop of candidates competing for the chance to run against President Barack Obama in 2012.

Bruce Rastetter, an Iowa energy company executive, and a half-dozen other prominent Iowa GOP donors sought the meeting with Christie, the governor’s chief political adviser, Mike DuHaime, told The Associated Press. The get-together is set for the governor’s mansion in Princeton, N.J., on May 31…

We’ll see how this plays out – Christie has been pretty firm in his “heck no” statements, but its hard to stay a wall flower when the dance is really heating up. These are serious players who can assist greatly in building the grass-roots effort he’d need to compete in Iowa…but if Christie wants to do it, he’ll have to move fairly quickly. Iowans don’t seem to like being kept waiting forever.

Christie remains one of our strongest potential candidates for 2012 – just in the fact that Obama would have to fight hard to keep New Jersey highly commends Christie (and, of course, Christie could just beat him there – and that would be close to “game over” for Obama; not as devastating as losing Pennsylvania, but close). With Christie having taken on the Ruling Class in a big way, and come out a winner, people will be enthused about him…and his no-nonsense, take-no-prisoners style will appeal to those Americans disgusted with politics as usual.

It was a New Jersey governor – Woodrow Wilson – who became President and really got the Big Government ball rolling…perhaps it will be another New Jersey governor become President who will start to undo it?

Aayan Hirsi Ali offers a stark warning:

…Unlike Al Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood has evolved and learned the hard way that the use of violence will be met with superior violence by state actors. The clever thing to do, it now turns out, was to be patient and invest in a bottom-up movement rather than a commando structure that risked being wiped out by stronger forces. Besides, the gradualist approach is far more likely to win the prize of state power. All that Khomeini did before he came to power in Iran was to preach the merits of a society based on Islamic law. He did not engage in terrorism. Yet he and his followers took over Iran – a feat far greater than bin Laden ever achieved. In Iran the violence came later.

The point is that fighting violent extremists is only part of the battle; perhaps the easier part. The bigger challenge may be to deal with those Islamists who are willing to play a longer game…

Do read the whole thing – a genuine must-read. Ms. Ali is very correct in all this. Especially now, those who wish to engage in psychotic violence to advance the Caliphate have learned that we will catch or kill them, now or later. Fighting the United States – in Iraq, now in Afghanistan and even from dispersed terrorist cells – has proven itself to be suicidal. And while suicide is used, you’ll note that the leaders never strap on the bomb vest…and neither do they relish getting double tapped by a SEAL team (for all their brave words about wanting to die for Islam, they really do prefer to live for power and wealth).

And so the slow and steady model adopted by the Moslem Brotherhood will just spread – especially if, as I suspect, they gain control of Egypt. Endure, work, organize – and wait the right moment, all the while claiming to merely want an end to corruption, to brutality and to economic injustice. It works like a charm with western liberals (always willing to give the benefit of the doubt to anyone who attacks the United States, for whatever reason), and it works even better with the Moslem masses…who really are tired of the oppression and corruption they live under.

What do we do? First off, have no illusions. Do not hail the rebels we see in the Moslem world as the successors of our Founders who fought for freedom. Some of them, no doubt, really do want freedom…but the best organized among them are Islamist of one stripe or another, and in a such a ferment, it will be those who know what they want who will wind up on top, at least initially. Secondly, let the Moslem Brotherhood know that we’re not fooled – that if they come to power, even by democratic means, we will consider them what they are: enemies to be held off, and eventually destroyed. Finally, do whatever we can to encourage the emergence of genuine freedom fighters in the Moslem world. This will work well against the corrupt regimes currently in power and will eventually work well against any Moslem Brotherhood successors, as their rigorous application of the Islamist heresy proves an utter failure.

And we should also be prepared for war – against any or all such regimes, at any given time. Just because they rise to power speaking sweet words of peace doesn’t mean they won’t resort to war. This will become especially true as the failures of Islamism are exposed and the new rulers cast about for means of keeping control and unity among their people. Even if its stupid to try, they may try war with us – and it may come quite out of the blue (though it will almost certainly start with an attack on Israel, if it comes to that).

Also, don’t get too worked up over any one individual in the Islamist leadership. It was a complete misreading of the facts when some people said we “took our eye off the ball” and didn’t get bin Laden years ago. Sure, bin Laden was a threat and taking or killing him was a worthy object – but taking or killing him does not resolve the issue. Bin Laden was a symptom – the disease is Islamism, and it’s breeding ground is the corrupt and inhuman regimes ruling the Moslem world. Until those regimes change to regimes which really are committed to liberty and pluralism, our problem will remain…and may grow more acute if the Moslem Brotherhood rises to power in several States at once.

The war goes on – and it won’t end for a while. The only way to make sure is if we did declare a war against all of Islam and conquered the whole area and forced a new settlement upon it. While this is within American capability, it is not something we’re likely to have the political will for unless and until several Islamist States go to war against us, all at once. All we can do is work with what we’ve got – and by a judicious application of power and bribes, try to sway things our way over time.

From the Washington Post:

It seemed an innocuous, catch-up phone call. Last year Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, the pseudonym for a Pakistani known to U.S. intelligence as the main courier for Osama bin Laden, took a call from an old friend.

Where have you been? inquired the friend. We’ve missed you. What’s going on in your life? And what are you doing now?

Kuwaiti’s response was vague but heavy with portent: “I’m back with the people I was with before.”…

…U.S. intelligence agencies had been searching for Kuwaiti for at least four years; the call with the friend gave them the number of the courier’s cellphone. Using a vast number of human and technical sources, they tracked Kuwaiti to the compound…

And that, liberals, was all the signals intelligence program was ever about – it wasn’t about “spying” on the American people; it was about eavesdropping on enemy communications. Had President Bush not authorized it, we may never have caught bin Laden…no one was ever interested in listening to you liberals talk over your next anti-war demonstration; no one ever cared what was passing between you. All anyone in the program ever cared about was finding the enemy so we could kill or capture them.

And yet, this was all part of your series of lies about President Bush – your nonsense claims that Bush was a dictator and shredding the Constitution. All if it – every last bit of criticism you ever launched – was based upon just this sort of lie; taking something legitimating and weaving an anti-Bush fantasy about it…and then repeating it endlessly over the ‘net and the MSM until it started to take hold in the public mind. And you did this – in the end – just so you could get Reid as Majority Leader, Pelosi and Speaker and Obama as President. You didn’t do it to serve truth or America, but just to serve the ravenous political appetites of a corrupt Ruling Class.

You should be ashamed of yourselves – and we can only pray that some day, some how, you’ll drop your talking points and start to think…and then apologize for what you did.

It is at the end of the video – and it is really sad. The poor girl is clearly as distressed as she is ignorant. My guess is that she’s either carrying around the guilt of an abortion, or she has just been so heavily propagandized by the Culture of Death that she can’t think straight.

This is what evil does – it lies and tries to pretend it is part of the light. In order to mask the despicable end, it clothes itself in the means of justice and mercy…and if there is no thought, or a deep shame for wicked actions, then it can produce that sort of outburst. Our best bet is to pray for the poor girl and hope she comes to understand – that if it is guilt, it can be forgiven, if it is just believing a series of lies, then the truth will set her free.

HAT TIP: Creative Minority Report

Gordon Chang explains why we should cut the ties with Pakistan:

…Abbottabad, about 30 miles from the country’s capital, was heavily patrolled by the Army and the country’s security services. At the time of the American raid, there were no guards in the compound, indicating bin Laden knew he had nothing to fear from the Pakistani military. Chez bin Laden was just down the road from Pakistan’s West Point.

And that’s the point: The Pakistani government, our “partner” in counter-terrorism, shielded bin Laden and others for years. After 9/11, Washington told Islamabad to make a choice between America and the terrorists. Islamabad, however, sided with both…

And in a lot of ways, this is understandable. Pakistan is caught in whirlwind of conflicts, internal and external, which make setting a particular course and sticking to it very difficult. Remember why the nation got started – because when the Brits pulled out of India, the Moslems didn’t want to live in a nation ruled by Hindus (why? the Moslems rolled over and took it from the Brits for 190 years…why not from the Hindus?). Any nation started because the people there hate another people is not off on the right foot – and things have tended to go downhill from there. Perhaps a time will come when civilization takes firm enough hold to allow for rationality in Pakistan – but that time isn’t now, or any time soon. And so, the United States should have nothing to do with it any longer.

And we should embrace India. India is rising towards Great Power status. India is already vastly more powerful than Pakistan and in any future, global conflict it will be crucial to be friends with India, irrelevant if we’re friends with Pakistan. India is also a democracy – not a perfect one (and they do need, especially, to better protect the growing Christian community in India), but a democracy none the less. India has rationality in its government; it has laws which are respectable and respected. While it does have its serious ethnic and religious clashes, they are no where near on the level of Pakistan and there does seem to be a sincere desire there to ameliorate rather than aggravate inter-group differences.

President Bush understood this and India found that in President Bush there was a solid friend. Obama, not so much – turns out the policy of kowtowing to Islamists and insulting friends and allies has produced a chill in New Delhi. I know, who could have figured that? But India is worth a grand effort on our part – worth, that is, to subordinate some of our policy goals in favor of backing India in her’s. India very much wants Pakistan curbed – especially Pakistan’s nuclear force and Pakistan’s support for terrorism in Indian Kashmir. And India needs support against an increasingly aggressive China. We are, in a sense, natural allies…and we should act accordingly.

Pity we haven’t a government with the wit to see this, but we hope to make a change next year.

From Mish:

…Digging deeper into the Household Survey, we see some more interesting data. In the last year, the civilian population rose by 1,817,000. Yet the labor force dropped by 1,099,000. Those not in the labor force rose by 2,916,000.

In January alone, a whopping 319,000 people dropped out of the workforce. In February another 87,000 people dropped out of the labor force. In March 11,000 people dropped out of the labor force. In April, 131,000 dropped out of the labor force. The 4-month total for 2011 is 548,000 people dropped out of the labor force…

Mish goes on to note that if people weren’t leaving the labor force at this pace, unemployment would be well over 11% – in other words, at Depression level. During a recovery, the labor force participation rate should be going up, not down – as usual, I go with my theory of ignoring what people say and referring to what they are doing. The Obama Administration and the talking heads on TV can say whatever they want, but what people are doing indicates a continued recession.

I also take note of the huge drop in labor force participation in April – after becoming small in February and negligible in March, the April number skyrocketed. Conveniently, just as we started to note rising new claims for unemployment. Is it number fudging? I don’t know – it could just be bureaucratic inertia. From what I understand, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has this statistical gizmo which calculates how many jobs should have been created as this or that point, presumptively based on past experience. As we are officially in recovery, my guess is that the gizmo says “at this month of recovery, history shows an average of X jobs being created”; presto, we get 244,000…but not a single person on earth can really tell you if that many jobs were created. Fundamentally, it is a guess and it will be many months before we know if the guess was right (though for the past couple years the guess has been fairly consistently wrong – with much fewer jobs being created than the original headline asserted).

Be that as it may, the bottom line is that our “recovery” is anemic, at best…and my view is that we’re heading straight back in to recession; led there by higher gas prices (and, yes, the collapse in oil prices will help, but I believe the damage has already been done).

From Worldcrunch:

…China’s labor age group of the 15-64 years old will reach its peak in 2013, and then start to decrease. Changes to the 19-22 years old age group are key to a country’s demographic health, because they are the most active part of the population and what business needs most. In 2009, this age group attained an historical high of 100 million but will rapidly decrease to 58 million by 2019, a drop of 43% over just 10 years.

This could result in serious labor shortages, the withdrawal of foreign companies, and a drop in university candidates. In 2009, the number of university applicants had already decreased by 400,000. In 2010, it decreased by 700,000. Numerous universities could be forced into bankruptcy. In terms of national defense, the percentage of the eligible male population drafted into the army could rise to 19% from 10% at present…

Here’s something to keep in mind as we discuss various ways forward: if your plan works out to an anti-human policy of both restrictions on child birth as well as rapacious, amoral economic greed, you’re not going to have a good outcome.

All the stories of China’s rise to global dominance are false. Given the fact that we can’t even get straight answers out of China about their inflation rate, we can’t even be sure that China’s economy – in dollar terms – exceeds the value of Japan’s. And when you take in to consideration that China is going to start rapidly running out of young people because they butcher their children in the womb, the real future of China looks increasingly bleak.

Life is the right answer; always and everywhere. It is always better to work and to build and engage in the hope which is called family. For all the trouble it can bring, it is still better than marrying Death, as China has.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32545640

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As Allahpundit puts it, there is no series of re-hashes of Iraq which will convince the other side…but Rice pretty much chews O’Donnell up, spits him out and demonstrates that the liberal critique of Iraq is sheer political idiocy.

He’s new, he’s direct, he’s a fighter…just as in the Trump phenomena, Cain is tapping in to two things:

1. Our frustration with where we are.

2. Our burning, patriotic desire to see America be as great as she can be.

Will Cain be the GOP nominee? Probably not – but only “probably”; not “no way”. But I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: we are in a revolutionary political period and anyone can sweep in and take it all…and my view is that the man or woman who shows the most fight against Obama and the most positive vision for America’s future will be the next President.

Zombie has that picture and a series of others – the normalization of communism on the left is complete in the United States as the rally included members of the SEIU who, at the least, have no problem with marching with the communists. Other pictures show images of Lenin (responsible for at least 5 million murders) and Guevera (Castro’s executioner) being proudly carried. More than likely, of course, the people carrying the banners don’t even know – communist crimes are not taught in our schools while the legend of the “good Lenin/bad Stalin” persists, as does the concept of Guevera as a revolutionary romantic.

It is both astounding and sad that such an evil lie can persist here in 2011. Socialism – of whatever stripe – is based upon the fundamental lie that mankind can be perfected by the actions of Man. That we don’t need a savior, we can save ourselves – and create the Kingdom of God without God. But the fact remains that even if we all agreed to work hard and diligently – without a single backslider – and share out the goods produced equally among all, it still would not work because (a) we die and (b) even with the best will in the world there never be enough to satisfy all desires. To put it in small, easily understood terms – in the Great Socialist Paradise, who gets to live in the houses with the great view of the beach? There is only a limited amount of beachfront view property and there is certain to be more people who want it than there is supply – and, so, someone is going to have to have their heart’s desire refused; and who gets to decide that, and by what criteria?

Because of this fundamental flaw, violence and murder is inherent in socialism. It can’t be otherwise – if the theory is that we’re all equal (meaning, in socialist ideology, that we’re all exactly the same) and should all have the same but, in practice, this can never be then those holding the levers of power will have to find some means of suppressing those who come up losers in the socialist crap shoot. This is not to say that a capitalist system gets it perfect – by no means; but in the free sale and purchase of property and labor the resources will be allocated more justly than in any possible socialist system (though, of course, the market has to be really free – no crony-capitalists having a rake-off and getting special privileges from government; nor can there be special privileges and rake-offs for government officials, either).

But there they were, on May Day in Los Angeles proclaiming their faith in a communist future. Their faith, that is, in Gulag; in punishment cells; in “loot the looters”…because if they get their way, that is what will come to America.