Blogs For Victory

The genesis of the discontent which we now see surging all around the Moslem world – and likely to spread to other areas – is the fact that the price of food is rising very fast. Taking off from the point of food, it is taking on a decidedly political tint.

It hasn’t bit us here in the United States because we still pay such a tiny percentage of our income for food. But for people who spend half their income on the basic necessities, any price hike hurts. And prices have been spiking very high. Mish goes over a very large number of reports about the riots in Egypt and observes the following:

Most of the increases in food prices are due to droughts in South America, floods in Australia, and poor growing conditions in many places.

However, Bernanke’s “Quantitative Easing” policies combined with rampant credit growth in China and India have led to increased speculation in commodities. That speculation has forced up food prices.

If you are tweeting, please tweet this “Bernanke has blood on his hands”.

Please note that speculation in commodities is not a cause of anything. Rather commodity speculation is a result of piss poor monetary policies not only the Fed, but central bankers worldwide.

It is time to call things as they are. It isn’t deliberate in the sense that Bernanke and central bankers like him didn’t plan for people to have their food prices shoot up, but it is criminal none the less. It should have dawned on them that if you rapidly print up buckets of fake money, then things of real value – including food – will rise in monetary price. They wanted inflation on the insane theory that rising prices means prosperity – what they’ve got is a world on the verge of a breakdown as the poor are losing what little they have…and it doesn’t help matters that the bankers are raking it in.

As I’ve said before, we won’t go hungry here in the United States – even in our stunted form, American agriculture is still the wonder of the world. If we really turned on the power, we’d have food coming out of our ears – but, for now, its just that we’ve got enough, and the prices rises will be an inconvenience for us rather than a matter of life and death (though rising prices, in general, might tip us back in to full blown recession). But many people around the world are getting hurt and it is high time we stopped this – stopped the use of fiat money; stopped using debt; stopped being utter fools. It is time we got back to work – back to honestly earning a day’s pay by doing something useful.

Or, we can continue on – and watch as the world goes up in flames.

UPDATE: the violence continues to spread and increase in intensity.

From Rasmussen:

…Rasmussen Reports asked voters the same three questions about the president’s economic proposals on the two nights prior to the speech and then again on Tuesday and Wednesday nights.

On the first two nights, 39% supported the proposals. On the next two nights, support was 41%.

Fifty percent (50%) of Likely U.S. Voters now oppose the federal government spending more money in areas like education, transportation and technological innovation, up from 45% in the previous survey…

This is getting to be like the border security issue – the people just ain’t buying what the government is selling. Obama can call it “investment” all he wants, but everyone knows it is just more spending – and as a bankrupt nation, we just can’t spend any more.

The GOP holds all the cards in this provided we hold firm – if we betray the American people on the matter of spending and government reform, then we’re toast. If, on the other hand, we do the right thing, then we just might win enough power in 2012 to thoroughly reform our nation.

Suppose tens of thousands of people had marched on Washington on Monday to demand federal funding for abortion – do you suppose the MSM would have been all over that? Well, tens of thousands of people did march on Washington this past Monday…

None of the broadcast news programs from Monday evening and Tuesday morning covered the 2011 “March for Life” in Washington, DC, a pro-life rally that reportedly drew at least tens of thousands of attendees.

Neither NBC, ABC, nor CBS gave any coverage Monday to the March for Life on their respective evening news programs; none of the networks covered the story Tuesday morning. The New York Times did not cover the story, as the MRC’s blog “Times Watch” documented. The Washington Post, however, did provide a fair account of the rally in its Metro section…

The Post’s coverage might have been “fair”, but it still wasn’t all that great – 27,000 young people turned out for a pre-rally, youth event and as the kids were only a portion of the marchers, the number of people attending over all probably stretched to at least 100,000. The Post described this throng as “thousands”. What did the MSM cover? Oscar nominations and Oprah finding a long lost sister…

It doesn’t matter, in the end – the movement for Life is gaining ground all over the country. The Culture of Death just cannot shake the nastiness which is inherent in any position calling for legal abortion. People are growing tired of the nauseating filth in this nation – and it is in a lot of ways the women of America who are showing the most courage and determination to clean up the mess. The MSM didn’t cover this because they don’t understand this – all the women the news producers know are in favor of abortion; such women – though they don’t understand this – are also in favor of continuing to be the mere sexual playthings of degraded men…failing to draw the connection between a callous disregard for life and a cavalier attitude towards sexual responsibility. Those who ignored the march represent a dying attitude – those who marched for life represent that good and decent strain in America which is rapidly surging back to power.

From Reuters:

Police fought with thousands of Egyptians who defied a government ban on Wednesday to protest against President Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year-old rule, firing rubber bullets and tear gas and dragging away demonstrators.

In central Cairo, demonstrators burned tires and hurled stones at police. In Suez, protesters torched a government building as protests intensified in other parts of the country…

If the security forces remain loyal to the government, then the government will prevail – and the thing about long-term dictatorships is that the people running the show tend to build up a cadre of people who can only live well as long as the regime is in power. That means that at least the mid and upper echelons of the security forces would lose out in a revolution, thus giving them a reason to fight the people. But, also, some times even one’s own position isn’t enough to keep up the fight…especially if it gets about that the top leaders are running away (we’ve had reports that Mubarak’s son has already fled the country).

I hope this works out for the best – there is not too much we can do about it. My larger worry is that my brothers and sisters in Egypt – the despised and much-oppressed Coptic Christians – will get hit hard no matter who comes out on top. The New Year’s Day massacre is fresh in memory, and stories that Egyptian Moslems stood as human shields for Christians after that event look greatly exaggerated, at best.

This is what comes from promoting “stability” rather than liberty and human decency. Let this be the final lesson we have to learn in this matter – never, ever back a regime which does not live up to our Declaration of Independence. We hold that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed – no government which doesn’t have this should obtain American aid or trade. Have done with these petty tyrants.

As Reagan once said – some people go through life wondering if they made a difference: Marines don’t have that problem. From Instapundit:

MICHAEL YON EMAILS:

Glenn,

Tonight, I read a detailed message on a private forum from a highly experienced combat writer. Unfortunately, due to the bylaws of that forum I cannot reprint it. What I can say is that it sounds like the US Marines are waging death and destruction on the Taliban in a way the Taliban are not used to. Average patrol finds 1 IED and kills 1 Taliban and they are going night and day.

I made these photos on those battlefields.

Thanks, Michael.

I hope Yon is right – I’ve been growing more concerned about Afghanistan of late, but if the Marines (and soldiers and the rest of the magnificent men and women of our armed forces) are doing the job, then it will all work out right in the end. There won’t be a pretty end to Afghanistan, but if we can at least keep the Taliban from coming back to power and do a good job or wrecking the desire for Jihad in that area of the world, then we’ll have done enough – and as much as we’ll be able to do as long as Obama is President.

President Obama gave his speech last night and it was pretty much as expected and the commentary on it will, also, be pretty much as expected. The SOTU has become a bit of theater which we endure once a year – the real work of what will be done in American politics happens after the SOTU and with little reference to it. And the three main battles of 2011 will be over spending, spending and spending – and the results of these battles will go a long way towards setting the political field for 2012. But, what of America? What of our Union?

During the recent State dinner for the dictator of China, it was noted that at this event the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize winner hosted the man who imprisons the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize winner. A strange world we live in, indeed. What has started to generate a bit of controversy is the playing of an anti-American song by Lang Lang – the song, it seems, comes from a propaganda flick well known among the Chinese and that movie portrays our soldiers as little better than predatory beasts. Some have said this insult – which no American was apparently aware of as it happened – as symbolic of America’s decline. To me, it means something else – it means that the Chinese are a small minded and contemptible people; and the fact that they feel it necessary to stick pins in us like that indicates the truth of our world: America still rules it.

I don’t think that anyone who reads this blog can doubt that I consider our President to be a fool – a man entirely out of his depth. If we’re patient, skillful and ardently pray for our President, we’ll get through his Administration without too much trouble. But for all his flaws, President Obama towers above the likes of China’s “President”, Hu Jintao. Hu is just the public face of a corrupt and cruel oligarchy which has fastened itself upon the Chinese people. He and his like maintain themselves in power by a combination of brute force and bribes to a select portion of the Chinese people – the sort of people who have become the most swinish money-grubbers ever seen…people willing to tolerate anything, as long as they can make money. These are the sort of people who will be happy over the insult offered by Lang Lang.

As for us, it rolls off our backs – what American gives a hoot what the Chinese think of us? This unconcern over the opinion of the world is not arrogance, it is just a recognition that the slings and arrows are just a symptom of ultimate failure. They hate us because they are not and cannot ever be as successful as we are. Only Americans can do what Americans do. People who volunteer for arduous tasks are of a higher quality than those who don’t – and America is made up of people who are volunteers, or descendants of same. All that is best in the world has poured itself in here, and thus we became – and remain – the greatest nation in human history.

Certainly, we have our problems. We made some fabulous errors over the past century. We fell for some siren songs about how things should be done, and we’re now in quite a jam. But while the rest of the world faces absolute collapse, what we face is merely the task of getting back to work. China can fall, the United States can just have some bad times. Revolution spreads in tyrannical regimes, the United States has peaceful elections and prepares to slug it out in the realm of policies and ideas. Welfare dependent Europeans scream for more welfare from their bankrupt States, Americans steel themselves to the fact that belts are going to have to be tightened. We are just different from everyone else.

Obama said one thing last night which was very true – none of us would trade places with any other country. Meanwhile, if we opened our borders 20 million people would move here next year, and another 20 million would be lined up to get in the year after. Even now with unemployment above 9% and the economy teetering on the edge of a double dip recession, people still try to flood in to this nation. We will endure our trials, we will work out the best means out of them and then, like Americans, we will triumph over adversity.

For decades this issue just never really came up in Democrat circles, but all of a sudden its very important:

As states get ready to redraw their congressional maps for the first time in a decade, two Democrats in Congress are resurrecting proposals they say will inject more transparency into the process and prevent the new boundaries from being drawn in a way that gives a lopsided advantage to one political party.

U.S. Reps. Jim Cooper, D-Nashville, and Heath Shuler, D-Waynesville, N.C., said the bills they intend to file this week would lead to more evenly balanced districts and ultimately a Congress that better reflects the will of voters.

“We think it’s what the American people deserve and need,” Shuler said Monday…

Uh, yeah – except for one, little thing: for the past 70 years we GOPers have been cut off at the knees by Democrat-led gerrymandering.

The sheer arrogance of this proposal is astounding – but also reflects the deep fear Democrats have for the future. For the most part, Democrats have been able to control the re-districting process since the post-1940 census. Even after the big GOP gains of 1994, Democrats still held the balance of State power for the post-2000 census. It is only now, in 2011, that the GOP has the advantage last held in 1931. And while it may seem a bit unfair, all that can happen in 2011 is a re-adjustment away from too many districts drawn to unfairly advantage the Democrats. It would take many decades for the GOP to gain the sort of advantage Democrats have built up – we won’t be able to undo it right away. But here are the Democrats, trying to deflect the wrecking ball heading their way – they really don’t like a level playing field.

Well, there is a cost for defeat, Democrats – and this is it. And you have no one to blame but yourselves…had you not spend the last 10 years lying about everything and had you not chosen a hidden leftist as your standard bearer in 2008, you would not have been so soundly beaten in 2010 and thus would retain at least some control of the re-districting process. Next time, try being honest and putting forth candidates everyone knows about – you might lose, but not this badly.

Over at Noonan for Nevada I note the story that the son of Egypt’s dictator has fled the country – and, naturally, I heard a statement from SecState Hillary that Egypt is stable and working to address the legitimate desires of the Egyptian people. Meanwhile, riots spread in Cairo and have been sparked in Lebanon over Hezbollah’s coup.

Well, we’re shortly to have Obama’s take on what is best for America…from what I’ve gathered, it amounts to freezing the budget at its current, bloated, bankrupting levels and then spending bags of money on liberal special interest groups in front of the 2012 election. He may surprise us, but I doubt it.

We’ll also have the “Date of the Union” where some GOPers and Democrats will sit side by side, presumably to keep all us TEA Party types from going off on a murderous rampage. Other than Cantor’s tongue-in-cheek offer to Pelosi for a milk shake and movie, the GOPers and Democrats who will sit next to each other are showing the one thing they have in common – bottomless fear of the TEA Party. It is good that they fear us – and their sitting next to each other will avail them nothing: the revolution will continue.

UPDATE: Text of the SOTU.

UPDATE II: Lots of reactions out there, mostly negative. No, I didn’t check liberal sites because they will be full of enthusiasm for The One…I was looking to see if any right-of-center person was floored by the President’s performance. So far, no.