Blogs For Victory

That is what Obama seems to be demanding in return for not having a massive tax hike on January 1st – from the Washington Post:

…Republicans are demanding that Democrats extend Bush-era tax cuts at all income levels at least temporarily, not just those that primarily benefit the middle class. They are also pressing Democrats to approve a measure to keep the government funded through September, a move aimed at avoiding a fight with the White House over spending that could provoke a government shutdown.

In return, Obama is seeking Republican support for as much as $150 billion in new spending on the economy, including an additional 13 months of emergency jobless benefits and another year of his signature “Making Work Pay” tax cut for working families…

Now, is it worth it? Yes – though we should demand that the $150 billion come out of some other spending and at least press the issue to getting $50 billion in cuts elsewhere. Having a massive tax hike on January 1st could send us straight in to Great Depression – something we’d all rather avoid. We still might get that Great Depression (what with China spiraling in to inflation and Europe on the verge of default), but there’s no sense in shooting ourselves in the foot. Getting the extension is worth a pretty high price – and as our President is a liberal, that price will have to be paid in useless and/or counter-productive spending.

The real battle over spending is for the summer – as we start to work out the FY 2012 budget; in that, we should insist not just upon big cuts in spending, but also on getting the whole budget enacted as of October 1st, the start of the fiscal year. It is in the 2012 budget that we can start to reform America as well as draw a lot of bright lines between ourselves and Obama’s Democrats in front of the 2012 election.

Here we are, Second Sunday of Advent, already. Some how or another, I am tending to remain in very high spirits during this time. It has been a bit of a rough couple years for my family as well as for our nation and world. My guess is that we have all had some great trials of late, and intense disappointments. There is a grim pall over this time, but it hasn’t darkened my spirit. For that I can only thank God – and this prayer from St. Teresa of Avila (courtesy of Catholic Fire) is highly appropriate:

May today there be peace within.

May you trust God that you are exactly where you are meant to be.

May you not forget the infinite possibilities that are born of faith.

May you use those gifts that you have received,

And pass on the love that has been given to you.

May you be content knowing you are a child of God.

Let this presence settle into your bones

And allow your soul the freedom to sing, dance, praise and love.

It is there for each and every one of us.

And then there’s this, from Casting Crowns via The American Catholic:

The prisoners control our prisons – likely with the aid of bribed guards. An extreme example of this from NBC Los Angeles:

Charles Manson on Line One.

The murderous cult leader was one of thousands of California inmates busted with a cell phone last year, which he used to call unidentified people in California, New Jersey, Florida and British Columbia, according to the Los Angeles Times.

“It’s troubling that he had a cellphone since he’s a person who got other people to murder on his behalf,” said Terry Thornton, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Corrections. She added that it is not known if the one-time cult leader, now 76, used the phone to order up any crimes…

A prison should be thus: no television, no radio, wooden barracks for most inmates, concrete cell blocks for trouble makers, no phone communication, all areas of the prison under audio and visual monitoring from off-site locations 24/7, backbreaking physical labor 6 days a week 52 weeks a year from all inmates. Prison guards should be regularly transferred to prevent corruption networks from developing; prisoners should be known to guards only by their numbers.

Under such a regime, Manson wouldn’t be able to get a cell phone – and we wouldn’t have rape, drug abuse, murder and mayhem in our prisons…nor gang lords being able to run their criminal empires from behind bars. Prison is not supposed to be a nice place – it is supposed to be a place where a prisoner has time for really only one thing: thinking about what got him in to prison. The ultimate hope is that the prisoner will finally admit culpability and begin the process of personal redemption – but that is up to the prisoner. Our main concern is that the prisoner be kept away from the public, safe from harm and incapable of doing anything other than thinking about what he did.

We have become a very un-serious society. Creeping barbarism coupled with moral cowardice has led us to a bizarre, Alice in Wonderland world in which welfare recipients and convicted murderers can obtain cell phones while hard working Americans wonder if they’ll keep their job for another month. Revolutionary change is necessary to fix this – and, trust me on this, November 2nd was only the tiniest first step in the journey of a thousand miles. We’ve got a long way to go – and only a limited time to save our nation.

We’d better get ready to put our backs in to it.

How would you like to be found guilty for acts by another person, committed decades ago? Well, all you have to do is become Catholic – and then you’ll find that even if you never did anything wrong (and weren’t even around at the time) you are guilty:

From Delaware Online: Jury faults Delaware parish in sex abuse

In a ruling that likely will have far-reaching implications for about 150 priest sex abuse cases pending or tied up in bankruptcy court, a jury found that St. Elizabeth Roman Catholic parish was grossly negligent in its failure to properly supervise then-priest Francis DeLuca and is responsible for at least $3 million of $30 million in damages awarded to John M. Vai, who repeatedly was molested as a teenager in the 1960s.

Yes, you read that right. A jury has found an entire parish to be at fault for a case of sexual abuse by a priest. According to this ruling, hypothetically speaking, if you are a member of a parish that has ever had a priest convicted of sexual abuse, you are at fault for it…

Do keep in mind that a child is far more likely to be abused by a public school teacher than a priest – and then consider that if someone abuses a child in your local school, you are responsible for it, at least as far as this ruling goes. Additionally, am I the only person who wonders how valid a judgment can be made about events alleged to have occurred decades ago?

What started out as a terrible scandal where the leaders of the Church made egregious errors in dealing with sexual abuse has now become a mere implement to persecute the church and enrich trial lawyers. Enough is quite enough on this – looting the Church has been a common past-time among some for four hundred years and it is time to call a halt to this. Even if you’re not Catholic, do remember that they’ll be coming after you, next. If such a ruling stands, then any group which can be connected with anyone who did a crime will become deep pockets for anyone who wishes to steal some money via the courts.

Justice requires that anyone who broke the law go to jail – though, in most of these cases, the priests in question are long retired, or even deceased. There can be a case made that anyone who suffered abuse should have their psychological and spiritual counseling over the matter to be paid for. Beyond that, its either looting or persecution, and there should be no place for that in the United States of America.

(Note to liberals: The issue to be discussed here is this issue. Any attempt to re-hash the whole Scandal in the Church or drag in absurd accusations won’t fly, so don’t bother.)

Heard this version of the song for the first time today, and thought it so good that I wanted to share it:

There is no other way to describe this – from NRO’s The Corner:

…U.S. Civil Rights Commissioner and Corner regular Peter Kirsanow calls it “the worst piece of proposed legislation ever reviewed by the Commission.” The purpose of the bill is to shore up the Hawaiian government’s ability to discriminate in favor of — and confer special benefits on — those it considers to be “ethnic” Hawaiians. Of course, this would all be to the detriment of Hawaiians of African, Asian, European, or other descent. (How many drops of ethnic blood must one have to be considered an eligible “Native”? The bill doesn’t stipulate, but I am sure there are some old laws from the time of the Confederacy that the “Native” Hawaiian government could use to help make that determination.)

The bill is intended to do an end-run around court decisions and preserve Hawaii’s current practice of conferring government benefits on “Native” Hawaiians, including special home loans and business loans, as well as housing and educational programs…

Hawaii’s Senators – both Democrats – are pressing to have this bill passed in the lame duck session by attaching it to a “must pass” bill. What they are essentially trying to do is pass a law which will judge people entirely by their ethnic background – if you are of the “correct” ancestry, you’ll get benefits no one else gets. This was the basis of the Jim Crow laws of the South – laws designed to ensure that a favored group got preferential treatment by government.

It is disgusting that this would be considered – but entirely in the nature of our modern Democrats who don’t care how lousy a thing is. The only concern here is that Hawaii Democrats maintain their control – and the price of their continued power is to kowtow to the racist ideology of some (but by no means all) people of Hawaiian ancestry. There is no bit of feces Democrats won’t smear all over themselves in order to maintain and expand their power.

And this is just a foretaste of what they want for all of America – they want us all carved up in to groups where if you are in the right group, you’ll get goodies out of the treasury. By playing group off against group and dangling promises of special treatment in front of them, Democrats hope to divide and rule – never caring for a moment if America dies, but only that they remain in charge as long as she lives.

This from Phillip Klein over at the American Spectator:

On Thursday, the California High Speed Rail Authority board unanimously approved the 65-mile “train to nowhere” that would link two tiny towns at a cost of $4.15 billion, all because the state didn’t want to lose $2 billion in federal stimulus funds.

The rail line would connect two central California towns, Borden and Corcoran, with a combined population of 25,000…

…to sum up, a state that’s broke is spending billions of dollars on a project that benefits a tiny percentage of people, so that it doesn’t lose billions of dollars in payments from a country that’s broke…

I’m a fan of high speed rail. I’d like to have us re-work our entire rail system for high speed. I think the speed up of the movement of goods would be a long-term net economic benefit to the whole economy – and I think that high speed rail would be able to capture at least a portion of travel which currently goes by air. But you don’t do it this way.

You don’t do it with government subsidy, other than whatever government action is needed to clear the right of way for the rail lines, themselves. When you do it with government, you get absurd things like starting the project by connecting a couple tiny towns. How about a high speed rail from Los Angeles to Las Vegas, instead? That would make too much sense, I guess. It is just additionally stupid when you realize that the government – State and federal – will really be spending money ultimately borrowed from China and such places in order to fund a project which will do nothing to get us out of our current mess.

An asinine government ruled by a corrupt Ruling Class continues to head for the cliff. And its getting really, really close, now.

So, how’s that economic recovery thing working out for you, Americans?

The U.S. economy added fewer jobs than expected in November and the unemployment rate rose, dashing hopes that the recovery is gaining momentum…

…The jobless rate, obtained from a separate household survey, unexpectedly rose to 9.8%, the highest level since April.

Economists surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires had forecast payrolls would rise by 144,000 and that the unemployment rate would remain unchanged at 9.6%…

That is because most economists – trained to believe that Keynesian theory is correct – are functionally idiots when it comes to economics. You don’t get economic growth by printing and borrowing money and then spending it like mad. You get growth when people work hard, save their money and carefully invest it for the long term. Any economic theory which does other than encourage hard work, savings and careful investment is someone trying to run a con – trying, that is, to steal things from those who have real wealth.

We can get out of this – but not until those in charge change their ways, or are replaced by people with common sense.

We’ve become rather barbaric of late – and I think we can fix it.

Limbaugh on the RINOs/Ruling Class types against Palin.

Proving it takes all kinds to make a world, someone is willing to speak up for printing money as an economic cure. I disagree in the comments.

Will the British cops arrest Assange? I doubt it – I figure he’s going to skate.

Well, we were warned: “You will be hated by all because of my name, but whoever endures to the end will be saved.” – Matthew 10:22. Seems that Christians are the most persecuted religion on the world.

Adm. Mullen: Don’t want to serve with openly gay service members? Then you can get out. Some how, I don’t think that we should replaced “don’t ask, don’t tell” with “pound sand, if you don’t like it”. I think the Admiral has made an error here – essentially insulting those in the armed forces who are apprehensive about this proposed policy change. I’m sympathetic to the idea of allowing openly gay people to serve (with reservations long noted) – but this isn’t the way to do it, Admiral.

Iowahawk strikes back at Assange.