Blogs For Victory

A big, old “hmmmm” on this one:

Fresh off winning reelection and proving she can raise massive amounts of campaign cash, Rep. Michele Bachmann is beginning to consider a presidential run, according to close congressional aides.

As part of that effort, the Minnesota Republican will travel to the early caucus state of Iowa on Jan. 21 to confer with state GOP leaders and address a group of conservative tax activists…

Turns out that Bachmann was born in Iowa – so, can run as a “favorite daughter” candidate there.

While hated by the left almost as much as Sarah Palin, Bachmann would bring to the table much of what Sarah Palin has (attractive, articulate, sheer guts) without having Palin’s liabilities (ie, the fact that Palin has been relentlessly slandered for two years has put a huge negative on public perception of her as a person). Bachman is a hero to the TEA Party and grassroots conservatism, would be nationally a fresh face (we political junkies know who she is, but probably not 1 in 10 unaffiliated voters could identify her) and would simply throw all Iowa calculations in to a cocked hat – making it completely unknown who would win.

Policy-wise, Bachmann is solid. Voted against the GM bailout, unreservedly pro-life, wants to repeal ObamaCare, in favor of a flat tax, solid on Israel…pretty much what any conservative would want. But, could she win?

Always a difficult task for someone as low down the political food chain as a House member. While she’s got the ability to raise vast sums, she hasn’t got the national recognition to really be credible as a candidate. She’d have to come in first or second in both Iowa and New Hampshire to really get people thinking of her. And so, she’s likely an excellent VP candidate for anyone other than Sarah Palin (just too much alike to be an effective team) – anyone, that is, who wants to court Palin’s legions of supporters.

Still, it would be fun to have her in the race – always nice for the GOP to showcase all our beautiful, courageous and hard charging women in contrast to the tired, old men and women who run the Democrat party. And, who knows?, maybe lightening could strike…

While oil prices have pulled back slightly from their recent highs, Bloomberg is reporting that a lot of experts are predicting higher oil prices in 2011 – with some going as high as $100 a barrel in their predictions. Ignored in all this is the role played by Federal Reserve money printing. The whole story is about how, allegedly, people are expecting robust economic recovery and are thus betting on increased oil usage. But the kicker to this story is that embedded in it is the proof showing that it isn’t demand causing prices to rise:

…Production will increase this year while stockpiles are already at a surplus, Evans said. Oil output will rise 0.9 percent this year, according to the Energy Department. U.S. inventories were 339.4 million barrels as of Dec. 24, 7.6 percent above the five-year seasonal norm, the department said on Dec. 30…

What can we draw out of this? First, that demand is not significantly increasing – in other words, if there is an economic recovery, it isn’t causing people to use more oil. That would be a strange economic recovery, if you ask me. Secondly, that oil traders, unless they are complete idiots, aren’t expecting tight supplies to ramp up prices – they are, therefor, expecting the further deterioration of the dollar to press oil prices higher.

Rising prices for basic necessities threatens the entire economy. But there is no way to avoid such rises – there are simply too many fake dollars out there. Bernanke has printed us in to economic ruin. The only thing remaining is for us to pay the piper for it.

On January 4th, I paid $3.09 for a gallon of gas – on January 5th, I paid $3.13.

With hat tip to IMAO for reminding me of it:

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

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Well, the new Congress comes in to power today; from now on, Obama no longer is able to do whatever he pleases. We’ll have to see, however, if the Congressional GOP can really advance the conservative cause.

Discuss this and any other issues which come to mind.

UPDATE: Democrats becoming a party led by old, out-of-touch politicians.

UPDATE II: Pelosi spent her last days as Speaker at a swank Resort in Hawaii; $10,000.00 a night, but nothing is too good for our Ruling Class, right?

UPDATE III: When the battle over the debt ceiling comes up, the GOP can quote Obama against raising it. Too bad, Democrats – all that stuff you said back in 2008 to hit Bush which you never believed for a moment? Its going to come back to haunt you…

As in cut the budget, grow the economy – from NRO:

In his first press conference in his (nearly official) capacity as majority leader, Rep. Eric Cantor (R., Va.) outlined his vision for the new Republican-led House. “I think you could sum up what our new majority is going to be about by saying it is a ‘cut and grow’ majority,” he said…

…Cantor laid out a three-part rule he by which he would seek to abide in the new Congress, which would entail asking every day if the Republican majority’s actions are focused on 1) job creation and economic growth, 2) cutting spending, and 3) shrinking government while protecting and expanding liberty. And if not, to ask, “Why are we doing it?”…

All very good, and we’ll see if they can deliver. We are at a crisis and at a cross road. The United States of America – the most powerful and best nation in human history – is bankrupt; our economy – mining, manufacturing and agriculture – has been hollowed out; our people are in disarray as creeping social breakdown erodes civilization; the world is at risk as a feebly led government seeks accommodation with enemies. If we don’t change course, we’ll die; its really both as simple and as stark as that.

We don’t have many years in which to fix things. If we don’t get our budget under control then we’ll default by 2015 or so. If we don’t revive a wealth-creating economy (all that make/mine/grow stuff I’ve been harping on for years) then even without a default our economic death spiral will continue. If we don’t roll back our moral disintegration (standing firm against gay marriage, starting to work at curtailing pornography and violence in popular culture, reviving a sense of shame at being on public relief, restoring the virtues of hard work, thrift and sobriety) then even if we don’t default and die out economically, we will die as a people – committing slow suicide as our European cousins are doing. We must start to act, now – even as we know that under Obama we won’t really be able to get as much done as we should.

It is good that Cantor will think on those three things – each of them will play a roll in averting default, restoring the economy and, by restoring our Constitutional liberties, allowing we, the people, to take control of our civilization from a Ruling Class which has led us to wreck and ruin. But thinking about it and talking about it won’t be enough – even the upcoming vote to repeal ObamaCare won’t be enough. We’ll need to see the GOP fighting all down the line against everything liberalism stands for. Whatever liberalism might have been about at one point, it is today about nothing other than power and wealth to the Ruling Class and social and economic disintegration for the rest of us.

It is, of course, up to we, the people, to hold the GOP’s feet to the fire. We daren’t for a moment let them out of our sight, as it were. Just ease up on the pressure a bit and the RINOs will come roaring back and start cutting deals with Obama and his Democrats.

And so, to work; and with a will, my fellow Americans. Our country is at stake.

Plus-good that they fixed this:

Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a classic by most any measure—T.S. Eliot called it a masterpiece, and Ernest Hemingway pronounced it the source of “all modern American literature.” Yet, for decades, it has been disappearing from grade school curricula across the country, relegated to optional reading lists, or banned outright, appearing again and again on lists of the nation’s most challenged books, and all for its repeated use of a single, singularly offensive word: “nigger.”

Twain himself defined a “classic” as “a book which people praise and don’t read.” Rather than see Twain’s most important work succumb to that fate, Twain scholar Alan Gribben and NewSouth Books plan to release a version of Huckleberry Finn, in a single volume with The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, that does away with the “n” word (as well as the “in” word, “Injun”) by replacing it with the word “slave.”…

No, no, NO!!! 10,000 times no! Do not do this – do not mutilate our literature because insane liberals have decided that a word is too offensive to be used. The word is offensive – its the first time its ever appeared on Blogs for Victory, and then only because of the context of this article. But it is part of our past – it is how things were done and said; and to take it out because it offends some bed-wetting liberal or “civil rights” con artist is just absurd.

If there’s a book which should ever be burned it would be a book which destroys the work of a great author. Leave the book as it is; let the kids read it and see how things were – engage in lively discussion with them about why Twain used those words…but don’t eliminate them. Don’t substitute a lie for truth.

HAT TIP: The Volokh Conspiracy

From the NY Times:

President Obama’s legal advisers, confronting the prospect of new restrictions on the transfer of Guantánamo detainees, are debating whether to recommend that he issue a signing statement asserting that his executive powers would allow him to bypass the restrictions, according to several officials…

Candidate Obama was very loud in his opposition to President Bush’s signing statements – and our liberals were pretty sure that such statements were a precursor to a fascist dictatorship in the United States. But, now things are different – the difference being that a Democrat is in the White House and so we can see the objection wasn’t to the increase in Executive power, but in the increase of Executive power to a Republican.

Just all too typical of Obama and his Democrats – made issue after issue with President Bush’s handling of the War on Terror, but once in power they are simply duplicating his actions because, let’s face it, they worked. All that opposition to Bush war and security policy was just so much campaign rhetoric…

Its a great game people like to engage in – writing about how America’s fundamental flaws doom us to second-rate status in the face of a new challenger who has really, completely and absolutely figured it out and thus cannot be stopped in their surge to global dominance. It seems to me that our elites like these stories – fits in with their absurd world view that some how, some way, the United States is too flawed to deserve global supremacy. Obama is just the perfect expression of this attitude.

Over at Foreign Policy Gideon Rachman gives us the latest installment in this “America is doomed” meme. Its got all the usual nonsense about how our new challengers – the Chinese – are that clever and how our problems of maintaining our position are insurmountable. I do recommend reading it because it is good to know how these people think. But it is all utter nonsense.

Now, to be sure, we have made a hash out of our nation right now. We got off track and have bankrupted ourselves by a combination of government profligacy and extremely short-sighted economic thinking. But the genius of America is up to the challenge of this – we have, thanks to our Founders, a governing instrument which allows us to conduct a revolution with out all the killing and destruction usual to such events. We can, if we choose, simply change back in to the America which became globally dominant. And we can do it in a few years from “go”.

The reversal which would not restore but maintain American supremacy involves getting rid of those policies which have made it progressively harder to make, mine and grow things in the United States. We also need to adjust our welfare programs to make it certain that any job out there will pay more than any welfare program – except for those absolutely incapable of work, public support should be just enough to keep body and soul together. And, finally, we’ll need to rid ourselves of a political correctness which allows foreigners to remain foreign even after they are long resident in the United States.

These are not easy tasks, but they can be rather swiftly done – and once done the unlocking of American creativity would lead to such domestic growth as to stagger the world…and, as the merest by product of this, kill off not just any Chinese challenge, but any challenge from any where. You see, China hasn’t risen high because they’ve done things better than us, but because we’ve hobbled ourselves and essentially handed our wealth over to them. The race was between an Olympic gold medalist and a 90 year old man using a walker…but the gold medalists bound himself hand and foot. Take off the bindings and we can walk to the finish line miles ahead of our nearest competitor.

China is a sad joke of a nation – but the sadder joke is how people in the United States actually believe it when China announces 8 or 9% GDP growth. For goodness sake, China is ruled by a corrupt oligarchy which is determined to show that it is on top of things…you think that you’re going to get the truth out of such people? Even a little bit? No; they are going to put on a show and try to make you believe that the dazzle represents the reality.

People who fall for dazzle have done just that – fallen for the dazzle. No one has the foggiest notion of what China’s real GDP is; what China’s real inflation rate is; what is the state of China’s financial system…we can only gather hints and clues, and one big clue is the massively absurd prices people are paying for property in China’s biggest cities…prices like that are not the result of a rational economy thumping along in good standing…they are a sign of an economy over heating on fiat money and bad debt. We’ll see where it winds up.

But whether China crashes or keeps going along, the only way they can surpass us in power and wealth is if we let them. If, that is, we continue to hobble ourselves and refuse to get to work and do what we know we must do.

As for me, I have confidence in my fellow Americans – the TEA Party and the 2010 election results show that in spite of a Ruling Class willing to roll over and play dead, the people are still on fire to be Americans: hard working and dedicated to building a better life for all. While we have Obama in office we won’t be able to address the fundamental issues which bog us down…but with a GOP House we can at least make a start on it, and once we do get back in to the White House – provided we elect someone who understands both what ails us and what needs to be done – then we’ll take off an leave everyone in the dust.

And then we can wait for 2020 when we’ll be warned that we cannot stop the Indian juggernaut from burying us…

Alberto de la Cruz has a terrifying and depressing look at the state of affairs in Mexico these days. It is an article all should read.

The bottom line of the situation is that corruption has so pervaded Mexico’s government that no reliance can be placed upon the Mexican government’s ability to curtail the drug lords and secure peace and justice for the Mexican people. The risk to us is if Mexico completely falls apart in to drug gangs fighting for territory while no central authority is in command that we will take, first, an enormous hit to our economy (trade between the US and Mexico is massive) and then a flood of refuges fleeing the violence. Mexico’s problem is, ultimately, our problem, too.

But it is exceedingly complicated. Any attempt by the United States to project power beyond the border and assist the Mexican government in fighting the drug gangs will rub up against Mexico’s prickly national pride…they still haven’t forgotten that we took half of Mexico in 1848 and once flew our flag over Mexico City; nor have they forgotten the repeated interventions in Mexican affairs through the years. It is a point of honor, to Mexicans, to stand aloof from the United States.

And yet, we cannot allow such considerations to control our actions – we must do something positive to help the Mexican people. The first step must be to enforce our own laws – the reason the drug cartels are so powerful is that they make huge sums illegally transporting things across our border. Not just drugs, but all manner of items – and the people coming across are just another commodity in the drug lords’ operation…they loot the illegals mercilessly (and, often, rape and kill them, in to the bargain) and you can rely upon it that not a single person crosses our border without permission…they are just getting permission from the drug lords (and paying the price for that permission) rather than getting ours. Enforcing our laws so that not a single illegal person or thing can cross the border is the most important thing we can do…it will immediately cut in to drug cartel finances and thus limit their ability to buy weapons, goons and government officials.

Beyond that, we must offer whatever para-military help we can. Even if it means recruiting mercenary forces from ex-US service members of hispanic background. The main thing is to get powerful forces on the ground who will not be susceptible to either bribery or threats – and a battalion of US trained soldiers, even if not officially part of the US military, would be highly effective against the drug lord rabble. And the key to success would be to back these forces with US military assets on our side of the border – aerial support, supplies, safe havens, etc.

Whatever happens, we cannot just stand aside – the call of humanity and raw politics commands us to do something. Our friends in Mexico are suffering, and soon their suffering will come here, unless we help the Mexicans get control of the situation.